The Standing Committee on “The Multilevel Governance of Immigrant and Immigration Policies” is organizing a Workshop on "Mediterranean Cities and Migration Studies", chaired by Ricard Zapata-Barrero, at the 2019 IMISCOE Annual Conference in Malmö (26-28 June). This Panel is part of the activities of EuroMedMig (European Mediterranean Research Network on Migration).

Framework debate

Mediterranean cities have developed through the influence of diverse people and cultures that have arrived at their territories along the centuries. Trade and colonialism nurtured Mediterranean cities in the past. Nowadays, globalization and the growing disparities between richer and poorer countries provoke human mobility with the consequence of placing migration and diversity management at the centre of the cities' political agenda. The duration and the intensity of current human mobility, the frequency of contacts, the variety of cultures, religions, languages and traditions shape these cities and reflect the uniqueness of the Mediterranean. 

Current migrations give new shape to urban settings in the Mediterranean region. Mediterranean cities can be considered as laboratories of dialogue.

In this WS we aim at opening a wide reflection on how cities can be a focus for promoting a Mediterranean migration flow framework. The EU-Mediterranean policies have been basically centred on EU-State relations through EU multi-level governance neighbourhood policy programmes.  Cities are potentially more flexible to foster contact, they are politically and socially much closer to people, more pragmatic in diagnosis processes and problem-solving actions. Furthermore, it is easier to connect the city of Oran or Tel Aviv and the city of Roma or Barcelona, than Italy, Israel or Algeria. This city-based approach for the promotion of Mediterranean Migration is now contextually justified: on the northern shore of the Mediterranean, cities are becoming new agents and interlocutors within the EU in relation to human mobility challenges, integration policies and diversity management. On the southern shore, it has been widely accepted that the so-called 2011 Arab Revolutions have basically been an urban phenomenon and an action taking place in public spaces within cities (squares and streets becoming symbols of the revolutions).

The main purpose of this WS is to attract contributions on how cities today can foster a new Mediterranean narrative, based on common values, concerns and common frameworks. For instance, today cities are at the centre of a humanitarian and policy narrative of welcoming people escaping from war, based on human rights and understanding the root-causes of these movements.   We look at contributions that make theoretical assessments and empirical studies, multi-sited case studies are welcome, as well as more normative papers focusing on Mediterranean citizenship and free movement thorough cities.

See the Workshop program.