Suchergebnisse

AbstractThis article examines digital tactics adopted by refugees and asylum-seekers in the Netherlands to cope with spatial and temporal dimensions of uncertainty during different stages of their arrival. It draws attention to how particular modes of Dutch asylum and refugee reception governance, such as dispersal and housing allocation policies, give rise to spatial and temporal uncertainties. Based on participant observations and 23 qualitative interviews with recognized refugees in the cities of Utrecht and Houten, the article offers insight into how refugees used digital tactics and mobile connectivity to 'navigate in' and 'negotiate beyond uncertainty'. The article seeks to contribute to this conceptual differentiation between 'navigating in' and 'negotiating beyond' uncertainty, engaging with work on migrant agency that acknowledges their acts of resilience, reworking and resistance. Lastly, I discuss this understanding of digital tactics to cope with uncertainty in light of recent critiques in forced migration studies of essentialist understandings of uncertainty and utilitarian narratives of digitally connected migrants.

In many regions around the world, the governance of migration increasingly involves local authorities and actors. This edited volume introduces theoretical contributions that, departing from the 'local turn' in migration studies, highlight the distinct role that legal processes, debates, and instruments play in driving this development. Drawing on historical and contemporary case studies, it demonstrates how paying closer analytical attention to legal questions reveals the inherent tensions and contradictions of migration governance. By investigating socio-legal phenomena such as sanctuary jurisdictions, it further explores how the law structures ongoing processes of (re)scaling in this domain. Beyond offering conceptual and empirical discussions of local migration governance, this volume also directly confronts the pressing normative questions that follow from the growing involvement of local authorities and actors. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core

In many regions around the world, the governance of migration increasingly involves local authorities and actors. This edited volume introduces theoretical contributions that, departing from the 'local turn' in migration studies, highlight the distinct role that legal processes, debates, and instruments play in driving this development. Drawing on historical and contemporary case studies, it demonstrates how paying closer analytical attention to legal questions reveals the inherent tensions and contradictions of migration governance. By investigating socio-legal phenomena such as sanctuary jurisdictions, it further explores how the law structures ongoing processes of (re)scaling in this domain. Beyond offering conceptual and empirical discussions of local migration governance, this volume also directly confronts the pressing normative questions that follow from the growing involvement of local authorities and actors.

Abstract In dit artikel kijken we naar de rol van smartphones en sociale media in het proces van je ergens thuis gaan voelen tijdens de overgangsfase van vluchteling naar buurtgenoot in Utrecht. Gebaseerd op participerende observaties tijdens het huisvestigingsproces van
statushouders in Utrecht, semi-gestructureerde interviews met statushouders uit Eritrea, Iran, Irak en Syrië en foto's door statushouders zelf genomen is er inzicht verworven in een veelvoud aan vormen van place-making en gebruik van smartphones en sociale media. Er is zowel een
zon- als een schaduwzijde bij dit gebruik in kaart gebracht. We constateerden dat er een spanningsveld bestaat tussen enerzijds het uiting willen geven aan verbondenheid met de stad en anderzijds zorgen over impact op ingebeelde kijkers, die door middel van smartphone en sociale mediagebruik
in toenemende mate deelgenoot kunnen worden gemaakt van het proces van je thuis voelen in Utrecht.

Increasingly, urban actors invoke human rights to address inequalities, combat privatisation, and underline common aspirations, or to protect vested (private) interests. The potential and the pitfalls of these processes are conditioned by the urban, and deeply political. These urban politics of human rights are at the heart of this book.

An international line-up of contributors with long-term engagement in this field shed light on these politics in cities on four continents and eight cities, presenting a wealth of empirical detail and disciplinary theoreticalisation perspectives. They analyse the 'city society', the urban actors involved, and the mechanisms of human rights mobilisation. In doing so, they show the commonalities in rights engagement in today's globalised and often deeply unequal cities characterised by urban law, private capital but also communities that rally around concepts as the 'right to the city'. Most importantly, the chapters highlight the conditions under which this mobilisation truly contributes to social justice, be it concerning the simple right to presence, cultural rights, accessible housing or – in times of COVID – health care.

Urban Politics of Human Rights provides indispensable reading for anyone with a practical or theoretical interest in the complex, deeply political, and at times also truly promising interrelationship between human rights and the urban.

In recent years, local authorities in Europe have increasingly developed bordering practices that hinder or further migrant rights, such as the freedom of movement. They bypass national borders by facilitating refugee resettlement, they claim local space to welcome or shun certain migrants, and they develop or break down local impediments to migrant mobility. These local practices, we argue, can best be understood from a multiscalar perspective, which considers processes of placemaking as reproductive of power dynamics. Applying such a perspective to local bordering practices in Greece, Turkey, the Netherlands, Italy, and Germany, we point out the importance of the multitude of the actors involved; legal pluralism; and the contextual role of social, economic, and spatial factors. This offers a theoretical foothold for understanding the power dynamics at play when local authorities become bastions or bulwarks, in which some migrants are welcomed, and others are not.

AbstractThis article classifies and theorizes the strategies of divergence that local authorities employ when confronting the discretionary spaces offered by domestic migration law. We propose a distinction between strategies that are either within or outside the perceived boundaries of the law and those that adopt an explicit or an implicit approach to positioning, thus harnessing or downplaying the communicative potential of the law. Based thereon, we introduce a fourfold typology of strategies of divergences that include defiance, dodging, deviation, and dilution. This typology was developed and refined based on field research in local authorities in Greece, Turkey, Italy, and The Netherlands. The case material also leads us into a preliminary exploration of which types of cities and conditions may lead to the adoption of one strategy over another. As such, this article draws attention to the relevance of law within multi-level migration governance and to the meaning of legal ambiguity and discretion as shaped by law and legal interpretation. The strategies of divergence that mould discretionary spaces, in turn, either mitigate or exacerbate legal uncertainty and should be considered a significant factor to account for change in migration governance.

In recent years, local authorities in Europe have increasingly developed bordering practices that hinder or further migrant rights, such as the freedom of movement. They bypass national borders by facilitating refugee resettlement, they claim local space to welcome or shun certain migrants, and they develop or break down local impediments to migrant mobility. These local practices, we argue, can best be understood from a multiscalar perspective, which considers processes of placemaking as reproductive of power dynamics. Applying such a perspective to local bordering practices in Greece, Turkey, the Netherlands, Italy, and Germany, we point out the importance of the multitude of the actors involved; legal pluralism; and the contextual role of social, economic, and spatial factors. This offers a theoretical foothold for understanding the power dynamics at play when local authorities become bastions or bulwarks, in which some migrants are welcomed, and others are not.

"Increasingly, urban actors invoke human rights to address inequalities, combat privatisation, underline common aspirations. The potential and the pitfalls of these processes are conditioned by the urban, and deeply political. These urban politics of human rights are at the heart of this book. An international line up of contributors with a background in practice and theory and long-term engagement with the cities shed light on these politics in cities in four continents and eight cities, presenting a wealth of empirical detail and disciplinary theorisation. They analyse the 'city society', the urban actors involved, and the mechanisms of human rights mobilisation. In doing so, they show the commonalities in rights engagement in today's globalised and often spatially deeply inequal cities characterised by urban law, private capital but also communities that rally around concepts as the 'right to the city'. At the same time, they show how very different these dynamics play out in postcolonial contexts and specific political dispensations. Most importantly, the chapters shed light on the conditions under which this mobilisation truly contributes to social justice, be it concerning the simple right to presence, cultural rights, accessible housing or - in times of Covid - health care. Urban Politics of Human Rights provides indispensable reading for anyone with a practical or theoretical interest in the complex, deeply political, but also truly promising interrelationship between human rights and the urban"--

Human rights have been facing criticism on many fronts, including the challenges of the "enforcement gap" and the "citizenship gap", laying bare the shortcomings with regard to the implementation of human rights law as well as regarding its protection of highly vulnerable groups such as refugees. Research on the effectiveness of human rights, the "localisation" of human rights through invocations and practices on the ground, the increased engagement of local authorities with human rights, are all responses to such challenges to some degree. Based on empirical research conducted within municipalities in four countries, this chapter focuses on a missing piece of the puzzle in terms of conceptual and empirical research: the role of "individual agency". We adopt a socio-legal perspective on human rights and demonstrate that individual agency can make an important contribution to the effective implementation of human rights in the field of migration governance. Behind the black box of the state and local authorities, we find individuals who use human rights—as law, practice and discourse—in local policymaking, in circumstances where invoking human rights is not self-explanatory. Finally, we put forward the notion that reasons such as individual background, motivations, and interactions between individuals influence municipal officials' engagement with human rights, and we reflect on the conceptual and practical implications that result from this.