Using a Scalar Perspective for Approaching European Migration Policies Reform: A (Provocative) Reflection on the Case of the International Alliance of Safe Harbours

Transnational Municipal Networks: new actors, new spaces?

In the academic debate, a general trend of decoupling between national policy design and local implementation practices has been identified (Oomen, 2019; Scholten, 2015; Scholten & Penninx, 2016; Caponio & Jones Correa, 2017; Panizzon & van Riemsdijk, 2019). The nation-state and its territorial emissaries were, thus, partially ousted from its migration competencies. The duties concerning the management of international migrations (Panizzon & van Riemsdijk, 2019) have slightly slipped away from the hands of the state and redistributed: upwards to the Common European Asylum System (CEAS), downwards to subnational levels of government and outwards to non-governmental actors (Guiraudon and Lahav, 2000). This contribution intends to focus on a specific vector of redistribution: cities and municipalities, while having achieved spaces of discretionality (Oomen et al., 2021) in implementing policies more attuned to their values, have created proper arenas in which their common issues could be treated, deepened and tackled. 

The creation of transnational municipal networks (TMNs, henceforth) throughout Europe imposes reconsidering the policymaking architecture (Oomen, 2019; Spencer, 2021) and the positions (and roles) actors maintain in the structure. The central idea of this article is that municipalities, through the creation of transnational arenas of confrontation and debate, have led to a restructuring of the policymaking arrangement in the European polity. In particular, through strategies of divergence (Oomen et al., 2021), public and private actors have challenged how migrant reception (and integration) policies were imposed over territories. Such a radical revision of paradigms has opened new political opportunity structures (Tarrow, 1994; Bak Jørgensen, 2012) for innovating and changing European migration and reception policies. 

Several authors have proposed some definitions of TMNs. Lacroix et al. (2022) define these networks as a group of municipalities characterised by a form of organisation denoting voluntary engagement and common objectives. To introduce the cross-national feature of these networks, Oomen et al. (2019) delve into the organisational structure pinpointing the pivotal role of local municipalities in developing policies on specific issues with the thrust of arranging a solid link with international organisations. An instructing example is the Council of European Municipalities and Regions (CEMR), created under the auspices of the Council of Europe. Caponio (2022) moves another step in highlighting the agency of municipalities in articulating their actions in multilevel political systems, imposing their divergent visions of asylum and migration policies over the national logic:

“[TMNs] contribute to redefining relations in the vertical dimension, favouring the emergence of direct EU-local authority relations beyond and above the national state CNs reflect and are the outcome of processes of empowerment of cities in the post-Cold war international context characterised by the weakening of the role of states and the emergence of global governance understood as a system of complex and multilevel interdependency” (Caponio, 2022b, pp. 32-33).

Furthermore, it has to be stressed the importance of being involved in this arena to attract further funding from EU institutions to enact policy projects on the ground. Especially in a period of severe restructuring of public expenditure for local governments (Bommes & Radtke, 1996; Douillet & Lefebvre, 2017; Oomen, 2019), this aspect is an invaluable asset. 

Multilevel governance/ multilevel politics or scalar perspective of migration governance?

This article aims to link together different scholarly traditions. Many of the contents derive from the multilevel governance perspective and policy studies, and the authors have helped uncover the interconnections between polity and policymaking structures. They have built a scaffolding within which the actors organise the policies that shape the reality of our societies. Ordered and hierarchically organised ‘chains of command’ developing along vertical and horizontal dimensions, involving public bodies of government and private entities and citizens nested in authoritative relationships (Marks, 199, 1993, 1996; Hooghe & Marks, 2003; Bache & Flinders, 2004; Piattoni, 2010). Many have also tried to represent the multilevel political dynamics within and across levels (Alcantara, Broscheck & Nelles, 2015; Hepburn, 2014; Trucco, 2021; Bazurli, Caponio & de Graauw, 2022; Caponio, 2022a).

Nevertheless, they failed to grasp the flexibility the reception and integration system needs to cope with the shifts in the number of people welcomed, political will and majorities, and citizens’ perceptions. All these aspects influence the governance of the migration phenomenon in cities and municipalities. The practical implementation of policies demonstrated the absolute rigidity of the multilevel system paradigm. Public and private actors react to emergencies with innovative thinking and profiting from the specificities territories can offer regarding competencies and facilities. Territorial features endow municipalities with polymorphism in the arrangement of the reception system, and divergence strategies enacted against national policies prove that. Thus, it is impossible to think of a national strategic reception plan. Guidelines must be developed from the centre to the peripheries, but the governance epitomises the form of the political and social equilibria shaping the arenas in which it takes place. Academics and policymakers have to relate to this topic with a scalar perspective. The Ukrainian crisis shows again that reasoning in terms of emergency without reconsidering the overall architecture of authorities and responsibilities leaves them stuck in a rigid frame and does not help overcome crises on the ground.

The TPD has underlined the inconsistency of the European asylum project. While municipalities and civil society are taking the scene in reception management and migration governance, the EU continues to promote political will as the key to changing European migration policies. Of course, there is a matter of legitimacy. Only member states are endowed with the legitimacy to control and improve immigration policymaking. Yet, new actors, in new forms, are innovating the migration governance architecture effectively. Can member states continue to ignore their proposals when those projects are implemented (quite successfully) daily? Can political elites shift the gaze far from what happens in municipalities and regions? Are political elites sufficiently mature to give up the political weapon of consent spent for emergency measures to improve people’s lives? It is helpful to imagine new mechanisms to implement more open and inclusive policymaking structures in which cities and local civil societies may voice institutions and promote adequate reception and integration practices. Transnational Municipal Networks have anticipated this trend and have begun to occupy strategic positions in the MLG policymaking structure. Figure 1, provides a useful graphic representation of how TMNs remodel the multilevel governance system.

International Alliance of Safe Harbours

The case the author proposes is intentionally extreme, both in its constituent logic and the conclusions it may lead to. As a project for policy change, it is unlikely feasible in European politics, as member states dominate it. But, as an extreme case, it brings to light some dynamics that, even more nuanced, can be further explored by academia and policymakers.

First, the case of the Palermo Charter Platform and the International Alliance of Safe Harbours (IASH) result from the most divergent strategy promoted by municipalities and civil society organisations in the frame of decoupling migration policy between national and local dimensions (Scholten, 2013; Oomen, 2019; Lacroix et al., 2022). Second, the network is the product of political dynamics that constantly exclude state representatives in its development. Third, in its funding, focus and geographical scopes, the Palermo Charter Platform and the International Alliance of Safe Harbours position themselves at the end of the scale of the transnational networks in sharp opposition to Eurocities and CEMR, to name a few. It represents an instance of what Lacroix and colleagues (2022, p. 4) have called ‘militant city networks’, defined as groups of municipalities created to trigger reform stances of European migration policies and contrast authoritarian immigration policy. Conceptually, they are opposed to ‘sponsored networks’, that is, those whose inception has been sustained by European or national institutions.

The International Alliance of Safe Harbours and the Palermo Charter Platform process, which epitomise its political initiation program, are essential for the EU migration policy reform and to understand the scalar approach to migration governance mechanisms. To better understand why delving into the historical-political context that causes them and their creation’s political process is necessary.