Ubi Minor, Maior Cessat: When Cities Rewrite the Rules of Migration Governance

The original saying "ubi maior, minor cessat" – literally, “where the greater is present, the lesser ceases”– conveys a simple and familiar idea: in the presence of a more important person, authority or entity, the less important one loses relevance. However, over the past decade, we have witnessed a striking inversion of this logic. Although states remain the formal custodians of borders and legal status, cities have become key actors in responding to the practical challenges posed by migration governance –especially when national action proved to be inadequate, restrictive, or even absent. Academic literature has increasingly described this phenomenon as “the local turn”, which contributed to reframing cities as more than mere implementers of national policies.

The Mediterranean Local Turn

This tendency first gained visibility in the United States through the experience of the so-called Sanctuary Cities, municipalities limiting their cooperation with the national government to enforce immigration law as a way of protecting migrants. However, this phenomenon soon found a new expression on Mediterranean shores. This “local turn” became particularly noticeable in the wake of what is remembered as the 2015 European Migration Crisis, a period of significantly increased mobility especially from West Asia (also known as the Middle East) and North Africa. As a way of reacting, several municipal actors started reframing 2015 events less as a crisis of migration itself than as a crisis of governance, coordination and solidarity. That said, being confronted with immediate needs on the ground, mayors and local actors acquired an amplified importance to proactively respond to problems of reception, accommodation and inclusion.

The earliest signs of this change were symbolic and took the form of municipal declarations or city-led programmes. Among these, the Charter of Palermo, which advanced a rights-based vision of mobility, and Barcelona’s Ciutat Refugi’s plan, which explicitly positioned the city as an entity of migrants’ protection. This was followed by later initiatives, such as the Gaziantep Declaration for Migration, supported by over 30 mayors from 4 different continents highlighting the critical role of cities in managing migration and displacement. Thereafter, multiple city networks were also created to shape a common ground where to share good practices and learn from each other, as in the case of Mediterranean City-to-City Migration (MC2CM) and MedCities. These initiatives were followed by rather pragmatic efforts as well, as shown by the Athens Coordination Center for Migrant and Refugee Issues. The latter aimed at establishing connections between municipal authorities, NGOs, international organizations and newcomers themselves to facilitate integration processes (for example entrance to the job market and promotion of intercultural dialogue), with all these activities additionally supported by the tireless work of civil society.

The Other Side of the Coin: the Local Trap

The local turn should not be read in normative terms, nor as a way to idealize cities and demonize states. At times, national governments promoted initiatives of reception and protection, while some cities proved to be far less willing to welcome diversity. For instance, Spain has recently approved an extraordinary regularization expected to grant legal status to around 500,000 undocumented migrants. While this measure can hardly be seen as a definitive solution as its effectiveness will depend on broader economic and social conditions, this shows a proactive stance towards integration.

By contrast, the far-right wave in many Mediterranean countries translated into more exclusionary approaches at the local level as well. Still within Spain, a town in the Catalan Autonomous Community, is one such case: Ripoll. The town became embroiled in controversy after the election of its mayor Silvia Orriols, who constrained migrants’ access to municipal registration (empadronamiento) and basic services. The same tension spilled into the cultural sphere as well. The winning poster for the town’s 2024 “Festa Major”, the main local festival, featured a veiled woman among many other figures representing Ripoll’s population. In response to that, Orriols censored the image, arguing it promoted the “normalization” of the Islamic veil.

Some might object that Ripoll is an exceptional case, given that it was the base of the terrorist cell responsible for the August 2017 attacks in Barcelona and Cambrils. While the town’s particular configuration may have contributed to tensions emerged later on, a broader shift at the local level can be observed in other contexts as well.

One very recent example shows how central migration issues remain to urban political narratives. We are talking about March 2026 municipal elections in France, which were arenas for heated debates on various themes connected to migration: security, identity, and belonging.

Marseille was probably the most striking example of these tensions. A major Mediterranean port with a long history of migration, shaped in part by France’s colonial past, the city became one of the key battlegrounds of the elections. Over the previous 6 years, the municipality had been governed by the left-wing mayor Benoît Payan, under whom Marseille was recognized as a best-practice model in managing migration. Despite France’s highly centralized system, in 2019 the state and local authorities designed an agreement, the Territorial Reception and Integration Contract (Contrat Territorial d’Accueil et d’Intégration), to fasten the integration of newcomers. In November 2021, Marseille implemented the pact, which made it possible to assess reception conditions for migrants and to formulate proposals to better meet their needs. By hiring and training social workers, establishing partnerships with interpretation services, and providing newcomers with accommodation, the municipality sought to ensure that migrants could access their rights regardless of their legal status.

Nonetheless, the far-right party Rassemblement National (RN), long associated with hard-line anti-immigration policies and discourses, tried to turn Marseille into its first major urban victory by campaigning heavily against migration – specifically on security and identity. With roughly 35% of votes in the first round, against the 36.7% obtained by Payan, Franck Allisio (RN) emerged as one of the central figures of the elections and as a sign of a broader political shift in the city. Payan ultimately held on to the city hall in the second round, but the tight results showed how salient matters related to migration play a crucial role even in one of the Mediterranean’s most diverse cities. In fact, RN concurrently took over several other Mediterranean municipalities, such as Nice and Perpignan.

So, ubi minor, maior cessat?

Taken together, these developments raise a broader question about the meaning of the local turn itself. Has the reversed quote “ubi minor, maior cessat” ceased to hold? Not quite, but neither can it help us make sense of the present in a simple way. Just like the political wind is changing globally, it might also be changing in cities. On one hand, some municipalities still push back against restrictive national and supranational frameworks and try to build inclusive forms of reception. On the other hand, some cities are reshaping their local politics around fear and exclusion, often in response to pressures linked to insecurity and claims of cultural threats. This is perhaps the clearest lesson of the so-called local turn: cities are no longer simply the places where migration is managed, but arenas where its meaning is increasingly contested, entangled with other significant issues and constantly redefined.