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Somalis in European Cities presents an overview of a comparative research series developed by local experts in Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Helsinki, Leicester, London, Malmö, and Oslo. The research aims to capture the everyday, lived experiences of Somalis as well as the type and degree of engagement policy makers have initiated with their Somali and minority constituents.Somalis in European Cities builds upon and develops the work of an earlier Open Society research series, Muslims in Europe, a comparative analysis of 11 EU cities. The research sprung from the realization that, compared with older minority communities in Europe, Somalis comprise a new, rapidly growing community that is little understood by policy makers.When the Somalis in European Cities research started, these communities were at risk of social exclusion and there was a need for solid research evidence to support the development of effective inclusion and integration policies. Integration policies and measures in European countries have largely been created based on labor migration. But for these groups, which are largely refugee communities whose entry point into European societies is different than that of labor migrants, such policies do not necessarily take into account their unique challenges and nuances.The overview presents a snapshot of the main conclusions and recommendations of each report, particularly on six areas of local policy—employment, education, housing, health and social protection, political participation, and policing and security—as well as broader themes of belonging and identity and the role of the media.Somalis in European Cities portrays European Somali communities as dynamic, diverse, and highly motivated. Arriving mainly as refugees, Somalis across different cities encounter similar struggles, such as language barriers, disruptions connected with leaving a country in turmoil, and prejudice and discrimination. The research suggests that there is nevertheless a strong commitment to integration. The good practices highlighted in the city reports point to the potential for making this process more successful for everyone.The findings from the Somalis in European Cities and the Muslims in Europe series led to a third comparative series titled Europe's White Working Class Communities. This groundbreaking research demonstrates that marginalization—be it economic, political, social, or cultural—is not a phenomenon reserved for minority communities but can also apply to segments of the majority.

Despite the high priority refugees are given in the public and political discussion, urban planning has not yet started to systematically consider the role of planning in asylum policy. Mostly, the subject of refugees' arrival is addressed in local projects and housing without framing challenges and opportunities in the national and European context. A wider discussion on the used terminology of "integration" is missing just as much as a self-critical reflection on the orientation of planning discourses on the issue of housing only. In this editorial, our thematic issue "European Cities Planning for Asylum" is introduced and presented.

The importance of entrepreneurship as a driving force in the economic development has been widely recognised. Respectively, a growing number of empirical studies have focused on explaining variation in entrepreneurial activity at various spatial levels with the majority of them taking either a cross-country perspective or looking at the inter-regional differences. Given limited city-level data availability, scarce work has been undertaken so far on cross-city entrepreneurship within the spatially oriented entrepreneurship research. Furthermore, to our best knowledge, no empirical studies exist on entrepreneurship across European cities and our paper aims to bridge this gap. The object of the paper is to analyse the variation in entrepreneurial activity across European cities. More specifically, by harmonizing the city level data in 31 European countries, based on European Urban Audit Survey (Eurostat) data, we undertake a panel data study of how various demographic, socio-economic, ethnic and geographical characteristics of European cities and institutional country-level settings affect entrepreneurship in 377 European cities during the period of 1989-2006. We use the rate of self-employment as a measure of entrepreneurship. While controlling for various spatial effects across cities we find that the rate of self-employment is largely explained by city size, socio-economic characteristics, such as the level of education and city inhabitants' wellbeing, city ethnicity and size of a local government. Institutional quality, including a property right system and democratic institutions, and city location affect entrepreneurship. Our findings fail to support a hypothesis of the importance of capital city incubators, Euroregions and EU enlargement for entrepreneurial activity. Surprisingly, our city location results suggest that cities in the south of Europe are more entrepreneurial than in the north. Along with a positive effect of a lower education and insignificant effect of a city typology associated with high-tech entrepreneurship.