Resilient urban turnaround in migration governance studies

Abstract

AbstractToday, cities are under multiple pressures because they must provide responses to global migration challenges, but have limited governance capacity. This is placing chronic stress on physical infrastructures, basic resources, and urban planning, which most often cities must face alone. There is a rising awareness that doing nothing may increase instability and social conflict, giving rise to more segregation, and racism. Focusing on the crucial tension between what cities might do (sovereignty) and what they can do (constraints), this article seeks first to incorporate ‘urban resilience thinking’ into the current ‘local turn’ literature on migration governance. In order to achieve this theoretical advancement, a fourth‐pronged approach is followed. First, the article proposes that ‘urban resilience’ captures the emerging but dispersed patterns of pro‐active cities, and urges for an analysis of the development of migration governance capacities. Second, a transformative approach to urban migration governance resilience is proposed, and its conceptual consequences explored. Subsequently, the article's focus is on demonstrating the distinctive characteristics of urban resilience when applied to migration governance research, with a particular emphasis on the potential novel contributions that may arise. Finally, in light of the novelties of this research area, the main empirical environments of urban resilience are specified. The concluding remarks close the argumentation by returning to the place of urban resilience thinking within the local turn literature, while also pointing to its normative and methodological potentialities.