How cities and regions are turning immigrants into citizens, whatever the central governments think

What drives regions to engage in immigrant integration policy making? And why would regions choose to go beyond the minimum standards of social welfare set by national legislation? Regions tend to be more concerned with social inclusion and access to regional labour markets than with grand narratives of national identity and symbolic belonging. Regional politics rather than demographic or economic incentives substantially shape regional policy-making in the field of immigrant integration: regions governed by left-wing parties emerge as particularly active providers of social citizenship.

However, comparing the Rokkan regions with ordinary regions shows that the former place greater emphasis on cultural-religious integration and are more likely than ordinary regions to have assimilationist policies. Heightened concerns with issues of regional identity, culture and language means that Rokkan regions tend to act in more similar ways to the national level, whereas ordinary regions appear to be more similar to the local level of government in their focus on socio-economic integration.

There are several benefits that arise from the growing involvement of regions in immigrant-integration policy-making, and regions take up different roles: Regions often become policy laboratories, inspiring policy-making at other governmental levels. Region-to-centre learning occurred in Spain, for instance, where the autonomous community of Barcelona introduced a Plan on Immigrant Integration’ in 1993; and the Spanish government followed with a similar plan in 1994. Region-to-region policy learning occurred in Belgium, where Wallonia followed the Flemish example and recently adopted more assimilative cultural integration policies.

Regions can act as successful mediators between different levels of government within one state: the UK government in Westminster would not finance education for those children waiting in detention centres for the processing of their asylum claim, which de-facto excluded them from the right to education. The city of Cardiff (where a large detention centre was located) demanded that these children be granted access to education in light of their future development – but Cardiff had no financing. The region of Wales jumped in and provided partial funding to overcome the conflict.

Border regions even have the potential to mediate between nation states, as the Euroregion Tyrol-South Tyrol-Trentino, straddling the Italian-Austrian border did, during the migration crisis in early 2016, preventing the border closure by Austria in response to the increasing number of refugees moving north.

Regions may step in where no central policy exists, assuming the function of ‘gap fillers’ For example, the lack of an Italian national strategy for providing health care to undocumented migrants motivated regions such as Tuscany to provide specific services to this vulnerable group within the framework of their general welfare services. The Belgian case shows that although Wallonia and Flanders learned from each other, there is still no Belgian national model of immigrant integration.

Regions have emerged as alternative loci of emotional belonging and identification and they redefine the contours of ‘affective citizenship’: By determining the degree of ease or difficulty of immigrants’ access to certain regional rights, entitlements and benefits, regional policies send both material and symbolic signs of inclusion or exclusion. Surely also the “Zuri City Card” is such an example: by providing undocumented persons with the ability to access certain material benefits, their affection to the city grows, and in turn shapes attitudes and behaviour, turning immigrants into (re-)active regional and urban citizens – which is surely all to the good.