Horizontal Local Governance and Social Inclusion: The Case of Municipality-Civil Society Engagement During Refugee Reception in Malmö, Sweden

Claudia Fry,Mine Islar

doi:10.3389/fpos.2021.643134

Abstract

This study takes its departure from literature on the far-reaching engagements from civil society during the 2015 “refugee crisis” in Europe as it seeks to understand the status of collaborative governance at the local level. It takes an in-depth look of Malmö, a city in Sweden which in 2015 became the centre for the Swedish refugee reception and solidarity initiatives. The study identifies challenges and opportunities of horizontal collaborations to develop the social dimension of city resilience. It includes eleven interviews with key actors from the civil society sector as well as from the municipality and utilizes theory on solidarities in the “refugee crisis” together with social cohesion and inclusion as a framework for analyzing data. This allows for a comprehensive appraisal of the (spatially produced) responses to migration from the city's horizontal alliances. The findings suggest that there are diverse conclusions to be made about the long-term potential of horizontal collaborations in bringing about social resilience. On the one side it is discovered that short-term project collaborations may only serve to “fill the gap” left by neo-liberal local governments and not bring about the structural change needed. On the other side, it is found that horizontal collaborations can be a strategy for civil society actors to influence more inclusive alternatives by bringing the realities of refugees into local policy making, particularly those refugees otherwise rendered invisible due to legal categorizations. Lastly, there are suggestions made for how to enhance the opportunities of horizontal collaborations in creating a socially cohesive, inclusive and resilient city.

Highlights

In recent years, local migration governance has become increasingly important in global agendas such as the UN Sustainable Development Goal 11 “Sustainable Cities and Communities” (United Nations, 2020) and the New Urban Agenda (United Nations, 2015)
We identify that some underlying structural issues that hinder social cohesion in cities are areas of contention in refugee reception governance
This study shows that civil society actors bring a “frombelow” perspective into collaborations with the municipality which, on the basis of theory (Miciukiewicz et al, 2012), we interpret to hold an opportunity for developing policy promoting social cohesion and inclusion

Summary

INTRODUCTION

Local migration governance has become increasingly important in global agendas such as the UN Sustainable Development Goal 11 “Sustainable Cities and Communities” (United Nations, 2020) and the New Urban Agenda (United Nations, 2015). We suggest that there is a need for more long-term civil society-municipal collaboration This should be based on the aim to bring civil society’s socially inclusive practices into policy development rather than on a mechanism to outsource welfare services. Local migration policies have been developed in cooperation with civil society organizations and has enabled more inclusive responses to the “refugee crisis” than that of the Spanish nation state (Agustín and Jorgensen, 2019; Garcés-Mascareñas and Gebhardt, 2020). Institutional solidarity refers to the formalization of solidarity between the civil society and policy making, enabling structures that cultivate connections between the government and civil society (Agustín and Jorgensen, 2019) It is explored at the urban scale in the context of refugee reception. In order to combat housing-related issues, Malmö municipality have engaged in collaboration with organizations and networks from the civil society

METHODOLOGY

CONCLUSION

Findings

ETHICS STATEMENT