Suchergebnisse

Transnational city networks (TCNs) focused on international migration and migrant integration are an outcome of cities' ever-larger role in migration governance beyond city boundaries. Although the nascent TCN literature has focused on networks' emergence and expansion, TCNs' effects on local actors within member cities remain underexplored. The article seeks to understand and explain the extent to which migration and integration TCNs contribute to collaboration between local governments and nonstate actors in member cities. To do so, I use collaborative governance to examine collaborative activities between local governments and nonstate actors in the context of two cities' membership in TCNs: Barcelona and Rotterdam. My findings show that full collaboration, as the goal of collaborative governance, between local governments and nonstate actors within the framework of TCNs' membership has not been achieved in the cities studied. Instead, I argue that collaboration with nonstate actors is selectively used by local governments to legitimize their position on TCNs and in the overall response to migration and integration. By establishing a nexus between TCNs and collaborative governance, the article offers a nuanced understanding of what collaboration between local governments and nonstate actors implies for (local) migration governance to migration scholarship. When collaboration does not reach its full potential, as findings show, then transnational debates on governing migration and integration from the city level become a distant reality for local nonstate actors, and by extension, local residents including migrants.

La presente tesis doctoral investiga la formación de alianzas entre partidos políticos y asociaciones de inmigrantes en presencia de conflictos politizados sobre inmigración a nivel local. Esta investigación incorpora la importancia de actores específicos en la literatura sobre inmigración basada en las estructuras de oportunidad política. Con este fin, se desarrolla, en tres artículos, un estudio comparativo basado en métodos cualitativos (fuentes secundarias y entrevistas semi-estructuradas) donde se analiza el surgimiento de alianzas en tres conflictos localizados en tres ciudades de Cataluña: la campaña anti-rumano-gitana en Badalona; la prohibición del burka en Lleida y el no empadronamiento de inmigrantes en situación irregular en Vic. Las conclusiones del estudio defienden que las alianzas están: primero, conectadas a la movilización de recursos; segundo, son el resultado de distintos patrones de movilización; tercero, profundamente conectadas al ambiente político y finalmente, son el resultado de las estructuras de poder que los inmigrantes enfrentan a nivel local. ; The Ph.D. thesis studies the formation of alliances between political parties and immigrant associations in the presence of politicized immigration conflicts (PICs) at the local level. With this in mind, I introduce the importance of alliances between specific actors in the immigration literature following the political opportunity structure (POS) approach. To do so, I develop, in three articles, a comparative case-study research based on qualitative methodology (desk research and semi-structured interviews). I analyze the emergence of alliances in three conflicts located in cities in Catalonia, Spain, namely: the anti-Romanian-Roma campaign in Badalona, the burka ban in public buildings in Lleida and the banning of undocumented immigrants from the local census in Vic. The results show that alliances are: first, connected to the mobilization of resources; second, the outcome of different patterns of mobilization; third, strongly shaped by ...

The political opportunity structure (POS) debate has mainly focused on how institutional and cultural factors shape the mobilization of immigrants in receiving societies. Nevertheless, they have not focused on alliances between specific actors as a political opportunity. This paper aims to construct an interpretive framework, within the POS, to study how the resolution of politicized immigration conflicts (PICs) at the local level facilitates alliances between political parties and immigrant associations. The guiding question is: How do alliances between political parties and immigrant associations emerge in the resolution of PICs at the local level? I argue that these alliances emerge because of the specific local political environment surrounding the resolution of PICs. This framework seeks to expand the POS debate by challenging the existing literature that considers alliances an explanatory factor of mobilization; highlighting the importance of specific alliances in the local management of immigration and offering a typology of alliances.

Alliances are a political opportunity that reinforce the claims made by different players in the political sphere. However, the literature on the political participation of immigrants pays little attention to the formation of alliances and their effects on the interaction between immigrants and institutional actors, especially under circumstances of politicization. This article aims to explain the emergence of alliances between political parties and immigrant organizations when immigration is politicized locally. I argue that the need to legitimize the political parties' position on the politicization guide their alliances with immigrants. Using qualitative methods, I analyse the emergence of alliances in the anti-Romanian-Roma campaign in Badalona and the burka ban in Lleida, both in Catalonia, Spain. The findings portray these relationships as the outcome of strategic interactions that respond to the balance of power between institutional and non-institutional actors.

Cities and towns are the proximity context where immigrants interact with political actors who can channel their demands. Treating immigration as a salient policy field in this setting reveals how political parties and immigrant associations relate to each other. In this paper, I study when political parties become (or do not become) elite allies of immigrant associations following the approval of policies of exclusion at the local level. To answer my question, I qualitatively study the interaction between these actors with regards to the approval of two policies in two cities in Catalonia, Spain: the burka regulation in Lleida and the exclusion of undocumented immigrants from the local census in Vic. The findings make evident that local factors related to the political conflict over immigration and the associational web provide immigrant associations with varying degrees of agency that condition their relationships with political parties as elite allies.

Cities, towns and rural areas may respond differently to similar challenges posed by the arrival of immigrants. While New York or London are large-scale, global cities; residential cities outside of Madrid or Lisbon may be considered small-scale ones. I propose an analytical framework that problematizes the political mobilization of immigrant associations in small-scale cities through a multi-scalar lens. I illustrate the utility of this framework by studying the mobilization of immigrant associations in the 2010 local census controversy in the Catalan city of Vic, Spain. I highlight the potential that small-scale settings have for the multi-scalar mobilization of immigrant associations.

AbstractEU agencies have emerged as entities offering technical coordination to member states and support to the European Commission in different policy areas. Their expertise may play a role in responding to unexpected crises. Against this backdrop, we examine under which circumstances EU agencies, through their specialized expertise, are involved in transboundary crisis responses, and when they acquire a leading position in coordinating those responses. To do so, we study four agencies which faced crises: the EBA and the 2012 banking crisis; the ECDC and the 2014 Ebola outbreak; EFSA and the 2011 E. coli outbreak; and Frontex and the 2015 refugee crisis. Our findings discuss to what extent agencies' involvement in transboundary crises is related to functional (sector characteristics) and institutional (delegation of authority) variables. We also identify that under certain political conditions EU agencies' coordination capacity is activated, allowing them to emerge as leading institutions in transboundary crisis resolution.

EU agencies have emerged as entities offering technical coordination to member states and support to the European Commission in different policy areas. Their expertise may play a role in responding to unexpected crises. Against this backdrop, we examine under which circumstances EU agencies, through their specialized expertise, are involved in transboundary crisis responses, and when they acquire a leading position in coordinating those responses. To do so, we study four agencies which faced crises: the EBA and the 2012 banking crisis; the ECDC and the 2014 Ebola outbreak; EFSA and the 2011 E. coli outbreak; and Frontex and the 2015 refugee crisis. Our findings discuss to what extent agencies' involvement in transboundary crises is related to functional (sector characteristics) and institutional (delegation of authority) variables. We also identify that under certain political conditions EU agencies' coordination capacity is activated, allowing them to emerge as leading institutions in transboundary crisis resolution.

European Union agencies have been studied explicitly or implicitly from two distinct perspectives: an intergovernmental and a supranational point of view. Both relate to broader dynamics that aim to understand the forces that EU agencies respond to. However, different authors have pointed out that both perspectives can be observed simultaneously in EU agencies. This is because they combine intergovernmental coordination and access to supranational power with different intensities under conditions of institutional isolation and a strong professional identity. This article takes as its starting point this integrating vision and argues that EU agencies function as a new type of regional trans-governmental body that is flexible, adapts to the new age of global governance and actively participates in it. The paper discusses the literature on EU agencies along these lines and concludes with a plea to favour an analysis that includes global governance to understand how these bodies operate in transnational spaces. The fragmentation of sovereignty into multiple levels and regulatory spaces, where complex sectorial systems take on a global dimension to produce public goods, requires articulating hybrid institutional structures. EU agencies respond perfectly to this need as their institutional design endows them with a strong capacity for multilevel interaction. ; This study was supported by the TransCrisis project (grant number 649484) under the European Union Horizon 2020 programme.

European Union agencies have been studied explicitly or implicitly from two distinct perspectives: an intergovernmental and a supranational point of view. Both relate to broader dynamics that aim to understand the forces that EU agencies respond to. However, different authors have pointed out that both perspectives can be observed simultaneously in EU agencies. This is because they combine intergovernmental coordination and access to supranational power with different intensities under conditions of institutional isolation and a strong professional identity. This article takes as its starting point this integrating vision and argues that EU agencies function as a new type of regional trans-governmental body that is flexible, adapts to the new age of global governance and actively participates in it. The paper discusses the literature on EU agencies along these lines and concludes with a plea to favour an analysis that includes global governance to understand how these bodies operate in transnational spaces. The fragmentation of sovereignty into multiple levels and regulatory spaces, where complex sectorial systems take on a global dimension to produce public goods, requires articulating hybrid institutional structures. EU agencies respond perfectly to this need as their institutional design endows them with a strong capacity for multilevel interaction.

This paper focuses on how multiple actors promote civic and political participation of immigrants locally. The dominant approach in scholarship on political participation of immigrants —the political opportunity structure—focuses mostly on the role of local institutional actors to examine the constraints and opportunities for immigrants' civic and political participation. We argue that this main focus on top-down actors and processes does not allow for understanding the complexity of actors and dynamics involved in the promotion of immigrants' participation in cities. For this reason, we propose to expand our conceptualization of the city and to combine both top-down and bottom-up dynamics to investigate how local contexts shape immigrants' civic and political participation. Drawing on empirical research in Italy and Spain, we map the multiplicity of actors involved in the promotion of participation of immigrants in seven cities, identify the channels they offer and assess how their interactions explain variations.