Abstract
This article deals with the interplay between the rescaling processes of cities and pathways of asylum seekers’ integration. Building on scale theory and employing a downscaled mid-sized city in the Netherlands as a unit of analysis, two research questions are answered. Firstly, what kind of urban planning strategies do urban authorities of downscaled, midsized cities develop to rescale their cities? Secondly, how are these strategies related to the imagined pathways of asylum seeker integration? Here, the term ‘scale’ does not refer to an absolute ‘spatial object’ that is able to affect social reality. Rather, scales are socially produced through negotiation processes which are contested and heterogeneous. It is argued that Dutch urban authorities and housing corporations take a normative view of ‘pathways of integration’ and standardise these in terms of space, time and financing. By these socially produced scale processes, asylum seekers’ accommodation is well-managed, keeping the residents regulated and ‘in place’. Urban authorities utilise ‘scalar narratives’ to legitimate their interactions with asylum seekers and the way in which disadvantaged neighbourhoods in mid-sized cities are transformed. Using the Dutch mid-sized city Kerkrade as the case study, it is illustrated that local opportunity structures for integration are confined by (1) urban planning strategies mainly based on residential and tourism economies, (2) the perception of successful integration via a small-scale social mix within neighbourhoods, and (3) the neglect of public representation of cultural diversity.
Highlights
Mid-sized cities of up to 50,000 inhabitants have not been the main destination of asylum seekers arriving in the Netherlands in recent years
A significant proportion of asylum seekers were allotted beyond the metropolitan areas, in small and mid-sized cities (Rijksoverheid, 2018)
The first research question asks which kind of urban planning strategies are developed by the urban authorities of downscaled, mid-sized cities to rescale their cities
Summary
Mid-sized cities of up to 50,000 inhabitants have not been the main destination of asylum seekers arriving in the Netherlands in recent years. A large number of asylum seekers depend on social benefits, at least in the first phase of their settlement, and affordable flats in the big cities are rare Owing to these conditions, the local opportunity structures become relevant for the chance to get access to (further) education, employment or healthcare. (1) flows of political, cultural, and economic capital within regions and state-based and globe-spanning institutions, and (2) the shaping of these flows and institutional forces by local histories and capacities They argue that the ‘relative positioning of a city within hierarchical fields of power may well lay the ground for the life chances and incorporation opportunities of migrants locally and transnationally’ This article does not deal with all of these different perspectives, but first and foremost with the agency of urban planners and housing corporations, whilst suggesting that their ‘scalar narratives’ are neither new nor unique to this place, but rather illustrate patterns of rescaling processes that probably characterise other European downscaled mid-sized cities
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