Season 3, Ep. 2: What is a solidarity city?
Show notes
Below, you will find links to all of the research referenced by our guests, as well as other resources you may find useful.
Project Page
Soli*City - Urban Sanctuary, Migrant Solidarity and Hospitality in Global Perspective.
Donate or Get Involved!
Lawyers Without Borders (external link)
PRAIDA (external link) (Regional Program for the Settlement and Integration of Asylum Seekers)
Solidarity City (external link)
Solidarity Across Borders (external link)
Noone is Illegal (external link)
OCASI | Ontario Council of Agencies Serving Immigrants (external link)
Media & Blogs
Bauder, H & Landau, L. (4 October 2018). Why cities hold the key to safe, orderly migration (external link) . World Economic Forum.
H.B.C. (22 November 2016). What are sanctuary cities? (external link) The Economist.
Inclusive Cities, Communities of Solidarity. (external link) Youtube. IOM.
Lasch, C. N., Chan, R. L., Eagly, I. V., Haynes, D. F., Lai, A., McCormick, E. M., & Stumpf, J. P. (2018). Understanding sanctuary cities (external link) . Boston College Law Review, 59, 1703.
Robbins, L. (25 October 2017).‘Sanctuary city’ mayors vow to defy Trump’s immigration order (external link) . New York Times.
Penny, E. (13 December 2016). Solidarity cities (external link) . The Conversation.
Solidarity City Vienna (external link) - Media.
Unzueta, T. A. (30 January 2017). (PDF file) Expanding sanctuary. What makes a city a sanctuary now (external link) ? Mijente.
What are Sanctuary Cities and Why do they Exist? (external link) (12 July 2012). World Refugee.
Hogan, G. & Smith, R.H. (13 February 2024). What exactly is a sanctuary city adn what does that mean for NYC? (external link) The City.
What makes a city solidary? (external link) Podcast. Salto.
Reports and Policy
Charta of Palermo, 2015 (external link)
(PDF file) Cities of Solidarity in the Americas, Concept Note (external link) . (2022). UNHCR.
Inclusive Cities, Communities Of Solidarity - EU (external link)
Books & Book Chapters
Bagelman, J. (2016). Sanctuary city: A suspended state. Palgrave McMillan.
Bauder, H. (2021). Urban sanctuary and solidarity: a global challenge to sovereignty and migrant repression (external link) ?. In Migration, Security, and Resistance (pp. 183-204). Routledge.
Hausman, D. K. (2020). Sanctuary policies reduce deportations without increasing crime (external link) . Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 117(44), 27262-27267.
Kuge, J. (2022). Countering illiberal geographies through local policy? The political effects of sanctuary cities (external link) . In Questioning Planetary Illiberal Geographies (pp. 54-75). Routledge.
Paik, A. N. (2020). Bans, walls, raids, sanctuary: Understanding US immigration for the twenty-first century. Vol. 12. University of California Press.
Scholarly Articles
Anderson, B., Sharma, N., & Wright, C. (2009). Why no borders?. (external link) Refuge, 26, 5.
Bauder, H. (2016). Possibilities of urban belonging. (external link) Antipode, 48(2), 252-271.
Bauder, H. (2017). Sanctuary cities: Policies and practices in international perspective (external link) . International Migration, 55(2), 174-187.
Bauder, H. (2021). Urban migrant and refugee solidarity beyond city limits (external link) . Urban Studies, 58(16), 3213-3229.
Bauder, H. (2019). Urban sanctuary and solidarity in a global context: How does Africa contribute to the debate? (external link) MIASA Working Paper 2019(1).
Bauder, H., Dreher, N. Lujan, O. & Asolo, O. (2023). (PDF file) Decolonizing migration studies: The case of hospitality, sanctuary, and solidarity. TMCIS/CERC Working paper no. 2023/03. Toronto Metropolitan University.
Bauder, H., & Gonzalez, D. A. (2018). Municipal responses to ‘illegality’: Urban sanctuary across national contexts (external link) . Social Inclusion, 6(1), 124-134.
Bernhard, K., Young, J. & Goldring, L.. (2023). (PDF file) Access to Early Childhood Services by Precarious Status Families: Negotiating Multiple Borders in a Sanctuary City, Toronto Canada. Working paper no. 2023/02. Toronto Metropolitan University.
Casellas, J. P., & Wallace, S. J. (2020). Sanctuary cities: Public attitudes toward enforcement collaboration between local police and federal immigration authorities (external link) . Urban affairs review, 56(1), 32-64.
Jung, J., Hudson, G. & Bauder, H. ( 2024). (PDF file) Urban sanctuary in Canadian mid-sized cities. Working paper no. 2024/02. Toronto Metropolitan University.
Lacroix, T. (2022). Migration-related city networks: A global overview (external link) . Local Government Studies, 48(6), 1027-1047.
O’Brien, B. G., Collingwood, L., & El-Khatib, S. O. (2019). The politics of refuge: Sanctuary cities, crime, and undocumented immigration (external link) . Urban Affairs Review, 55(1), 3-40.
Setrana, M. B. (2022). Promoting peace and managing farmer-herder conflict: the role of civil society organizations in Agogo, Ghana (external link) . African Studies Review, 65(2), 430-454.
Setrana, M. B., & Kyei, J. R. K. O. (2021). Migration, farmer-herder conflict and the challenges of peacebuilding in the Agogo traditional area, Ghana (external link) . Ghana Journal of Geography, 13(2).
Transcript
Maggie Perzyna
Welcome to Borders & Belonging, a podcast that explores innovative migration research and connects the dots to real world impacts. This series is produced by CERC Migration in collaboration with Lead Podcasting. I'm Maggie Perzyna, a researcher with the Canada Excellence Research Chair in Migration and Integration program at Toronto Metropolitan University. Today we're taking a closer look at research tackling an important and understudied question, how can cities become sanctuaries for migrants and refugees? In this episode, we'll explore the grassroots efforts and city level practices that can create inclusive urban environments. We'll look at how civil society and local governments collaborate to create policies that not only welcome migrants and refugees, but also empower them to thrive. I'll be joined shortly by two esteemed researchers who will tell us about the Soli*City project, an international initiative creating urban strategies that help migrants and refugees to integrate into their communities. But first, let's talk about the real ground zero of migration - cities. While national governments may control borders and set policies, cities provide the first line of support. Cities are where newcomers find a place to live, access essential services and begin their integration into a new society. But they're often overlooked when it comes to policy making. Today, we're starting in Montreal, a city that currently holds a record breaking 560,000 non-permanent residents, according to Statistics Canada. For years, Montreal has played a key role in how migrants are welcomed and integrated into the city, partnered with strong support from the provincial government. This approach hasn't just strengthened local efforts, it's also contributed to shaping international migration policies through its global connections.
Véronique Lamontagne
Montreal is playing a role in terms of migration, and with that, it really opened the door to an agreement With the immigration department, which provided to the city for the Newcomers Office, $12 million over three years, at the time I was there.
Maggie Perzyna
That's Veronique Lamontagne. She's a lawyer and the executive director of Lawyers Without Borders Canada. With years of experience in city diplomacy, she sees how cities can innovate and offer solutions that national governments might miss.
Véronique Lamontagne
I quickly realized that cities were really well placed to support migrants in their integration, and that the cities are at the forefront of the services, the response that can be provided to migrants and refugees. And when I realized that, I said, okay, we have to do something on migration, because it wasn't really in the portfolio of our international relation office, but it was a growing feel at the city, because the Newcomers Office just that has been created few years or a year before, so it makes sense to connect what we were doing locally to what we could do internationally.
Maggie Perzyna
But addressing migration at the city level comes with its own set of challenges. As Veronique points out, cities often lack the formal responsibility or necessary funding to fully support migrants.
Véronique Lamontagne
I think that the most difficult thing is to get some support, not only financial, but support from other level of government to fulfill the responsibility they are taking. Because for most of the cities, dealing and taking care of migrants, not only migrants, but homelessness, it's not part of their formal competencies. So, it makes it difficult for them to use their core budget to support migrants. So, they often need the support of other levels of government. So, they really have to be really agile to convince them that it's part of their work and to also get some funding to support the work they're doing.
Maggie Perzyna
Despite these hurdles, cities find creative solutions through partnerships. In Montreal, the collaboration between the city and civil society resulted in the Pride Up Program, which provided a comprehensive range of services to migrants.
Véronique Lamontagne
And there's over, I think, over 200 organizations that work in support of migrants in Montreal, which is huge, and also necessitate some kind of coordination so that there's no duplication. Then everyone receives some kind of support. And there's also work with the group called PRAIDA, who is funded by the government of Quebec, who happens to be a really good model that we should promote more, I think internationally, because PRAIDA is a really holistic approach how to welcome, integrate migrants with all kind of services, psychological help, finding a job, help finding housing. It's really comprehensive, legal services also. So, it's a really good model that we're proud to have in Quebec and in Montreal.
Maggie Perzyna
PRAIDA has a French acronym which translates to 'the regional program for settlement and integration of asylum seekers'. It's been around since the 1950s helping to connect asylum seekers with all kinds of services, from lodging to medical care to assistance with their immigration process. In 2023 Quebec received more than 65,000 asylum claims, more than any other province in Canada. Pride has stepped in assisting more than 25% of those new arrivals. One of the most essential services they provide is helping migrants access official forums and identification cards.
Véronique Lamontagne
A good program has been the work that has been done for ID cards for migrants so that they could access services in the city. I must say that it's an amazing example, and it's also taking inspiration from the New York model. So, it's something that exists in many cities, and I think that it's something that facilitates the access to public services without having the fear of being identified as someone who could be in an irregular situation.
Maggie Perzyna
City level involvement in migration policies is becoming increasingly significant. It's where the real, tangible impact happens. However, cities are often overlooked when it comes to shaping broader policies at the international level.
Véronique Lamontagne
We participated in many conferences, organized conferences, at the City of Montreal. We led a declaration that was supported by the 140 members of Metropolis, which is a big network of cities. And that declaration went out at the very moment where Trump was withdrawing from the negotiation of the Global Compact on Migration. So we were lucky enough to have 15 large US cities, non-member of Metropolis, joining the declaration. So, and it helped us also make it really public that declaration. And we were able to influence the process, because both the Compact on Migrants, the Compact on Refugees, mentioned local authorities as players, and we continued to advocate during the approval of the Global Compact on Migration. It also led to important change for cities on migration because it led to the creation of the 'mayor's mechanism' within the Global Forum on Migration and Development, and it also led to the creation of the 'Mayor's Migration Council.
Maggie Perzyna
Not only did the coalition lead to real, important change, Veronique says it was met with open arms by the decision makers at the conference.
Véronique Lamontagne
We were with the negotiator of the Global Compact on Migration, and we were a bunch of cities who came and said, we are really committed to make migration work well and support migrants and refugees in our cities. And we're doing this and we're doing that. And he said it's really refreshing, because we talk to the country you belong to, and they say we can do that, or we cannot do that, or it's difficult to do that, and here you go saying we already do that, and it works. So, I think it was welcome. And I think it's really, I'm biased [laughs], I really think it brought that freshness into the discourse and that a new voice that was constructed in those discussions.
Maggie Perzyna
That's a powerful example of how cities are not just talking about what's possible. They're already doing it. And that's exactly why it's so important for these city level voices to be heard by policymakers. These are the people on the ground actually putting policies into action, often finding solutions long before national governments even catch up. Véronique Lamontagne is the executive director of lawyers Without Borders Canada and an international advisor for the Soli*City project. Many thanks to her for sharing her insights on how cities can play a crucial role in supporting migrants and influencing global migration policies. To help us explore how cities can transform into welcoming and inclusive spaces for migrants are Professor Mary Satrana and Professor Harold Bauder. Mary is the director of the Center for Migration Studies at the University of Ghana, and often advises national governments on migration governance. Harold is a professor at Toronto Metropolitan University and leads the international partnership project Soli*City, urban sanctuary, migrant solidarity and hospitality in global perspective. Welcome to you both.
Harald Bauder
Thank you. My pleasure.
Mary Boatemaa Setrana
Thank you.
Maggie Perzyna
Let's start with some context. Mary, what is a solidarity city?
Mary Boatemaa Setrana
Thank you very much Maggie. Solidarity city - I don't want to go into all the definitions, but I mean conceptualizing what refers to what I would describe in the context where I work, I mean speaking from the West African context, also speaking from the Ghanaian context, and more broadly, speaking to the African context, I would refer to it as the communal life that we, I mean we as West Africans have always experienced, or have always lived. So, prior to the colonial times, before the division of cities and the boundaries were created, there was a sense of commonality, and I think that has also not gone away, even maybe I've not lived long, but I remember, even in my community, everybody was responsible for my upcoming or my upbringing. And so the sense, I see solidarity is not a new term, although we don't have, I mean, people use it in different contexts, sanctuary, they use different words for it. But solidarity has been used to describe the associational life, the communal life, of people from different places, not necessarily from the same family, not necessarily from the same hometown or from the same country, but once you come together within a particular space, each other's concern or problem becomes the others, and we are responsible for taking care of each other. And so if you transfer it into the solidarity city discussion, we are more looking at these cities, although we talk about diversity, we talk about cities growing, we talk about urbanization, there should be some kind of solidarity, some kind of communal living within those busy and expanded cities. And so that's how I would describe it, and then maybe relating it to issues of migrants. And so for the West African context, I will speak beyond using solidarity to refer to or perhaps talking about practices and policies that support people's livelihoods. I'll use it beyond migrants. You can talk about groups like the nomads. The nomads, for instance, are the people that take care of animals. We call them herders. And so they move from one West African country to the other, particularly from the Sahel to other parts of the region. These are highly mobile persons, and so sometimes they are marginalized because of their way of life. They are marginalized because of the consistent movement which makes them not attached to a particular place, and then sometimes even leading to statelessness for some of them who decide to settle. And so, describing that, I would include such people as part of the marginalized communities, beyond international refugee, international undocumented migrants that we may describe. Again, I would also use it to refer to people, the many rural urban migrants who settle within cities of West Africa. So for instance, Accra Lagos, there are lots of rural urban migrants. So, people are moving from the rural area to the urban centers. These are usually people that need to find their own means of living within the communities. They need to find their own sense of practices that could bond them, because usually they settle in places that are described as slums, and so they are somehow marginalized, but studies that we have done have shown that although they are marginalized, they contribute enormously to their families back home. And so, in that sense of marginalization, their practices keep them together and help them contribute back home. And so that's also another category. We can also talk about IDPs, so internally displaced persons, and for us within West Africa, the IDP as a word, has been, I think the definition, the book definition, has taken off many other categories that we need to consider. Particularly, yes, when we talk about IDPs, officially, we are talking about people who are displaced within our context, or within a particular country context. But because of the nature of our borders, we are also finding that some people easily move across borders. Sometimes they call them unapproved borders. Sometimes they call them, I mean talking about policies. Policies may call them unapproved, irregular. But these people to them are not causing irregular borders. They are causing pathways that lead them to places where they can find safety. And so, in terms of that, we need to also nuance the people that we classify and how they enjoy those kinds of solidarity practices within the enclaves they find themselves.
Maggie Perzyna
So, Harold, the Soli*City project was your brainchild. Can you tell us about the project? What inspired the focus on city level practices for accommodating precarious migrants and refugees.
Harald Bauder
Well, my own research has always been relating to migration, refugees and the city and inclusion and exclusion. And what really got me interested in this idea is when I moved to Toronto in 2009 and I took a job at what was then Ryerson University, now it's Toronto Metropolitan University. I became really interested in Toronto as a hub of migrants and Toronto's policies with migration and refugees. And there was probably a key event in 2013 when Toronto City Council voted to support sanctuary city policies and practices, and for me, that was sort of a trigger that triggered an entire research agenda. And first, my initial research was that I wanted to understand what these sanctuary policies and practices are in Canada and the US, where this term of sanctuary city is being used. So, I did a literature review, an initial literature review, to get a handle on the complexity of these policies and practices. But then I also saw, I've done a lot of research in Europe, I'm of German origin, so I've been comparing migration policies in Germany, in Canada, and initially I started the national level, but then I became aware that European cities, German cities, and cities elsewhere, they have something similar, but it looks very different. I thought that this sanctuary idea is something really larger. It's an international concept, even though the term sanctuary is not applied everywhere in the same way. And then after a bit of time, I expanded the research together with students in a graduate program in immigration settlement studies here at TMU to other places in the world. So, for example, I had one student who was interested in cities in Chile and Spain, and we found that there are very similar kinds of policies in place and practices in place, even though they're called different, they have different labels. But there's something about this urban approach that is very unique, and it's different from the national approach towards including migrants and refugees. And we found in this research, as we are continuing, that there's a huge gap in terms of our knowledge. We have a group of researchers in Europe, for example, that examine the European cases. We have a group of researchers in North America that look at sanctuary cities, but they're not well connected, or they were not well connected at the time. And that was really when I thought it's time, and we need a larger international kind of partnership that makes these connections globally and internationally. So, in our partnership, we got together with researchers like Mary in Accra in Ghana, but also in Santiago de Chile, in Germany, and here at TMU and Montreal and other places, and we developed a larger kind of network. We call them the hub and spoke model, where we have different research hubs in different continents, and they draw on their own kind of networks and expertise to develop research projects locally, and then we're trying to connect those through our project internationally. And we're also bringing together researchers, academics and practitioners and policymakers, because we really are not only interested in academic research, but also want to develop local policy and connect policy makers and practitioners internationally as well.
Maggie Perzyna
Mary, what is your role in the project?
Mary Boatemaa Setrana
I started off as a researcher on the project, and then later on, I became the director. So, I became a co-lead for the Africa hub. So within the project, Harold nicely created something he calls the Africa hub. And so, I co-lead that with Joseph Teye. So, I've been with the project since the beginning. We started off with a literature review, kind of trying to see what this solidarity thing is all about in our context. So, we try to search different words, urban sanctuary, solidarity. These things were not popping up within the migration space that we find ourselves. And so, we then came to a conclusion that, no, I think this is an interesting thing, but we need to do it our way. And I like what Harald - that the project is flexible for you to see it within a particular context. You need to customize it to make it make sense to you. And so through our literature review, we realized that the talk about urban sanctuary solidarity are things that are not used often. And so what we decided to look at is to look at other ways, or perhaps coming from the angle of practices and policies. We know what the solidarity is. We know what the urban sanctuary is from our partners from Europe or from North America. So, then we said, let's see whether the migrants, whether refugees or internal migrants have these kinds of practices among them. And so from the literature we did, and also from the field work, we realized that there are some practices like associational life, so we specifically decided to look at Kayayei. These are head porters, female head porters from the north of Ghana who migrate to Accra to look for livelihoods, and then we consider that, we compare it with refugees. And so, because literature has received a lot [about] refugees, studies have received a lot of attention when it comes to solidarity, we said, okay, let's see if these things when it comes to internal migrants. And so, in Ghana, these head porters are women who have moved to the south, particularly to cities, because they are coming to look for livelihoods. So, they carry loads, and you take money for them. So, they carry to a certain distance, and then once they reach there, they charge you, or sometimes they don't even charge. They ask you to pay them. So, we find out also from our previous studies that although from the government perspective, such migrants, especially the rural-urban ones that settle in the slums, are negative to the government side, they have negative influence on policy. So, they create urbanization and these problems, the overcrowding and sometimes the places, the enclaves where they settle, are described as places where criminal activities are occurring. Sometimes the government even goes there to clear them so that they could resettle, or perhaps even sometimes pick the land for development projects, or sometimes for road development. And so we noticed that it is better we study these kinds of people who are marginalized in addition to the refugee that our project is looking at, and see which practices are they building to ensure their acceptance and safety within the cities they find themselves, and so among such people, or particularly the head porters, we find that association is a very key point. So, either they belong to religious groups or they belong to ethnic groups. So, the ethnic groups are based on where they are coming from, or which ethnic group they belong to, maybe largely, or perhaps they are coming from a particular community. So we noticed that association is an important part, be it a faith-based organization or faith-based association, or based on ethnic or maybe countries or communities of origin, were very key to them. Again, when they had arrived, what also supported them was the fact that they had to lean on migrants who had been here for long. And so they are new entrants. The new entrants settle at places where they could find older migrants. Sometimes they don't even know. They don't even have any links until they arrive at the destination. And so that those kinds of names and contacts that we found, or maybe associations, were some of them that helped them. And so people live communally, and people care for others in a particular enclave. And that's the same idea that has been carried on into the cities. But in all the associational life is very important. The network, whether it's family, professional or based on countries of origin or places of origin, are very important to their livelihoods and their existence in the cities.
Maggie Perzyna
Harold, how important is the role of civil society and developing and implementing these urban sanctuary policies?
Harald Bauder
I think that that's a great question. I think they are very important. Actually, we were speaking about an urban solidarity infrastructure, which includes, on the one hand, municipalities, so including the city administrations, police, school boards and so forth. But then also a range of civil society actors, including NGOs, so non governmental organizations. They are working on issues such as, say, human rights, health, education. They are part of this infrastructure, but also grassroots, more grassroots based, community-based organizations that often have very addressed, very local needs. As Mary just mentioned, the faith-based organizations, churches, temples, mosques and other faiths are very important, and then also activists and advocacy groups. And I would also include labour unions, which sometimes play a role. But I think what's interesting is the combination of these that differs in different parts of the world and actually differs in each city that we're looking at. For example, in Toronto, we have had decades of engagement of grassroots activists that have been very important in getting this idea of this sanctuary city, even on the radars in organizations like, No One is Illegal, for example. And they've also worked with city councilors and the administration and NGOs and community-based organizations. And there's also regional organizations that are involved. I'm thinking, for example, of OCASI, the Ontario Council of Agencies Serving Immigrants. So, that really depends on the kind of role that they're playing in these civil society organizations. It really depends on the kind of particular context of a particular city, and in other parts of the world, the situation might be different. Mary was just talking about ethnic groups and informal networks that are probably more important in an African or in an Accra kind of context. And if we're looking at other parts of the world, and we see there's other players involved again. So, I think this really shows the complexity of this whole idea of the solidarity city with the question that you started out with.
Mary Boatemaa Setrana
So, we also noticed that within the Accra cities, and even in some West African countries. Recently a study that, I'm not the one collecting the data, but I'm part of the supervisors. It's the same thing in Anglophone West Africa, Anglophone and Francophone. So, we've noticed that people carry along their cultures, and that is part of the practices in ensuring that they still have one sense of belongingness and also feel comfortable where they settle. And so, for instance, in very various locations or communities of origin, there are Chiefs. It's the same in Nigeria, you can find it in Ghana, you go to other parts of the region is there, and so they have Chiefs. So, these are traditional leaders who have authority over communities. In cities where they may not necessarily have a sense of belonging in terms of owning the land once they become these ethnic groups, or maybe these people from different communities settle, they form an Association, and within that Association, sometimes, along the lines of original ethnic groups, they select a Chief, or they select a lead, and so that Chief or queen, still has the same authority in many sense, just as the one in the communities or countries of origin. And so, they hold a lot of power. They support the community, they hold meetings, they hold durbars, and so, even in some of the communities that we've looked at in Accra, these ones are the ones who even mobilize the migrants for us to speak to. And so, they carry along these kinds of practices to their new places, which helps them to settle, or perhaps find safety or find some kind of sense of belongingness, so that somebody speaks on their behalf, somebody negotiates on their behalf when they need it. So, in addition to the ones that we have mentioned, these traditional authorities are also very important in the new places where especially people of marginalized groups settle.
Maggie Perzyna
Harold, what are some common challenges that cities face when integrating migrants and refugees?
Harald Bauder
Well, first, let me say that all cities exist because of some form of migration, either from other countries or from within the country, from rural areas and so forth. And only, I think we think of migration as a 'problem' in quotation marks only if it's international migration. And from a city's perspective, it doesn't necessarily matter if you're a migrant from within the country or if you're if you're crossing international borders. The city really has a different kind of mission to serve and service inhabitants or residents within their city. A few years ago, I did an interview with the mayor of Palermo, in Italy in Sicily. His name is Leoluca Orlando. He's not the mayor anymore, but at that time, he was. He's been for decades, on and off the mayor, and he was a very vocal advocate for migrants and migrant rights, and he said, I'm paraphrasing, that if you're in Palermo, then you're part of our community, then you're part of Palermo. And I think this is an approach that many, many cities are taking, as opposed to the kind of national perspective. And that said, cities face many challenges arising from migration, be it international migration or from other parts of the country. So, any kind of arrival, families arriving, any kind of newcomers coming to the city, they need shelter. They need to find work. Their children need to go to school, health care needs arise. So, there are all kinds of challenges that cities face all the time. But I think it's now in the context of our project, we're really interested in the vulnerabilities that migration, international migration, creates, and that relates, often to the kind of problems that, in a way, the nation state created by status categories. And I'm speaking, for example, about a family, let's assume that there's a family that is not granted regular status or visa or permanent residency by the nation state, and often the cities have to cope with these kinds of challenges then. So, for example, a family may not have citizenship or full permanent residency, which can then make it very difficult for cities to provide services. So, then questions arise, how can we make sure that non-status people receive medical services? How can we make sure that children can go to school without the parents having to worry about deportation? Can people go to the police and report crimes without fear of being detained and then deported eventually? So, these are the kinds of challenges that come with the kind of categories that the nation state imposes and that the cities have to deal with. I think that's one of the key questions in our project.
Mary Boatemaa Setrana
Yes, I want to talk about informality, which has not been mentioned so far. So, when we look at our context of West Africa, the Ghana case, and some of the other African countries I've worked with, 70% of the people, particularly the migrants or forcibly displaced persons, are in the informal sector. And so talking about cities providing access to education, providing access to health, people have had, studies have shown that they have had different ways of arriving at the same point, not necessarily through the government provision. So, one government may not even have that provision on their minds, and sometimes the rules may be too neutral or even not so silenced that people need to interpret to fit in. And so, we are finding that the informal sector, it's one of the means by which people have access to health, have access to education, they have access to the basic services within the community. So sometimes, for instance, a typical example is an enclave where water has to be sold, so the one who has money tries to provide water. You go to buy it when you want to cook. You buy it when you want to go to the toilet. You buy it when you want to bathe. And so you realize that before the day closes, any water you use, you would have paid for it if you want to visit the if you want to go to the washroom or you want to take your bath, you have to pay for it. If you want to sleep, you need to pay for the space, that small space. And so although the city authorities are not providing that, informally, people are the migrants themselves, the so called marginalized, are finding ways by which they enjoy such benefits. Again, I want to talk about some of the challenges. I mean, broadly, I would say that in the West African contest, integration is quite different. I think people rather sink roots. I don't know which other way to describe the sinking roots, but it's just like integration. But people sink roots, people find their feet within or maybe they find comfortable within the spaces compared to elsewhere, because of several means. I mean several means, because of the ties with families across borders, because of the informal sector, and many other factors that may arise out of that. The challenge with these is that when people, particularly we've realized that when there are conflicts in the origin countries, you may assume that once they are in the cities, because people are struggling and trying to find survival strategies, they may click. Sometimes, when they grow in numbers, and then various groupings and ethnic groups and countries of origin grow in numbers. You realize that those same conflicts are carried from the origin to the cities. So, I remember a typical example of going to do a study among rural urban migrants, particularly among the head porters, and then I go to a particular ethnic neighborhood, not knowing the differences. After I finished the interview, the other group said I couldn't interview them because I spoke to their rivals. So, it tells you how kinds of conflicts extend borders, whether internally or externally, to the cities and the new places that these people find themselves. We brought the community authorities together with some of these refugees, and little did they know that language would be a problem, because they thought that everybody could understand English, everybody could understand Twi, and so they didn't think that language could serve as a barrier for a refugee to go to the market and trade and perhaps have other effects on them. And so, these are some of the challenges that looking at the projects, we have also found out. That's really interesting what Mary says, and I think what the kind of issues that she raises really speaks, again, to the complexity of this solidarity city kind of idea that here in North America and also Europe, we're really concerned about citizenship and status. That's really a global, northern perspective, or even Eurocentric perspective. And in other parts of the world, the issues are very different, different political situations, different geopolitical situations. It might not matter much whether you have citizenship or not in some cities, and then very different kinds of problems arise for migrants and refugees. And then all very different kinds of solidarity structures emerge from that too. But nevertheless, the urban solidarity concept, I think, is able to capture this and connect those different contexts in very, very interesting ways.
Harald Bauder
Mary has the Soli*City project highlighted any innovative solutions developed by cities to deal with these challenges?
Mary Boatemaa Setrana
Yes. So I think what is interesting about the solidarity project is right from the application process, we had to include somebody from the local authority. They actually provided a letter to offer support. We also got it from the Ghana Refugee Board. And so strategically, we got these government authorities, the policy makers, to be part of the project. So, I know that they have been, I mean, our first meeting in Germany, for instance, the city authority, the director of one of the local governments, was present, and he spoke about some of these issues. And so, what they have done, it hasn't materialized, is try to create space where, particularly refugees and some of these internal migrants we are talking about, could access and could perhaps reach out to the local government authorities to ask for support. These are things they are thinking about. But I think what is unique about the project, one the fact that we can understand solidarity from our own context, and the fact that we have been able to think about the solidarity practices that migrants themselves have created, irrespective of government efforts, irrespective of government policies, restricting them to access what basic services they need to access. And so we found that the government, they haven't done much. We are still working with them, but I think what they have done is to mainstream. When they say mainstream, they have been able to integrate migration into the development agenda at the district level, and a lot of sensitization is ongoing. More than when the project started. And again, the other part is making sure that they are utilizing the effort of migrants to mainstream some of these policies that are under. So, I think these are unique things that, even though the project has not ended, we are seeing and we hope to see more.
Harald Bauder
And of course, the project is right in the middle of the project. So, in the later phases, we want to translate a lot of research that we've done into policy, especially local policy, and also cross pollinate some of the ideas that were developed in, say, North America. Are they applicable in Europe? Some of the ideas in Latin America, there's really interesting stuff going on in Latin America. Can that be translated to other local policy contexts? That's also part of our project, but I don't think we're quite there yet. We need to do a bit more research to be able to move there.
Maggie Perzyna
Are there differences in how urban sanctuary policies are created and implemented between the Global North and the Global South.
Harald Bauder
I think our conversation has revolved around these differences. And I think one of the big challenges in our project is that, just from a research perspective, we have a lot of literature. We have a lot of research being conducted in North America and Europe. I think our infrastructure, just to get a handle on what is going on in terms of urban solidarity practices and policies, is very strong in the Global North. So, the literature is extensive. We know a lot about these practices and policies in Europe and in North America.And what we are finding is that there's very little research in the Global South. And I think this is also where our project becomes very important, because in the first phase, we have conducted literature reviews in our hubs in Africa and Latin America. And we also added a new hub in Asia, where we're also conducting a literature review right now. And in many ways, this is the first time that this urban solidarity idea is applied in these contexts, in research. And maybe we do know some of the processes that Mary, for example, talked about earlier. There is some research, of course, but we've never connected it to an urban approach. We never really connected it to an urban solidarity and sanctuary approach. So this is something where we really, I think we make an important contribution to the global literature that we're bringing - conducting research in the global south that was not conducted before. So, I think this is a really important contribution. It's a really important gap that we're filling too. For example, what our Latin American team discovered is that they drew first in the Global North and looked at the literature, and they found that in Global North, we often see that top down kind of approaches, solidarity initiatives by municipalities, and these grassroots, bottom up approaches that come from from civil society and from activism, they tend to converge. I did interviews a few years ago in Berlin, and one of the activists there said it's like a ping pong game between grassroots activists and the municipal administration. So the activists, they go on the street, protest, make some policy suggestions, and then the municipality responds to it, and Berlin, it's a Senate responds to it, and then it goes back and forth, and it's a negotiation process between top down and bottom up kind of parties. And the research in Latin America found that this connection between top down and bottom up initiatives is not as tight as elsewhere. So, that's a really interesting kind of finding, and there's certainly more research that we're doing at the moment to get a handle on how the municipalities are handling this situation in various parts of Latin America and the Global South, for example.
Maggie Perzyna
So to wrap up our discussion, I want to ask you both, maybe Mary, starting with you, why does this research matter?
Mary Boatemaa Setrana
The research matters in many ways. One, it's bringing awareness. I mean, like, as I've already said, we did the literature and found that there was solidarity linking to migration, linking to refugee studies, or rural urban migrants, people of marginalized groups or migrants in vulnerable situations, were not what was coming up. What we were finding were more networks, both formal and informal networks. What was coming up was more people belonging to different associations. So, the word used would be a sense of belongingness more. So, this is something that came up strongly, and that's what directed the study that we decided to do in our part of the world. But what we are also finding is that since already at the macro level, there are no structures - and this one I'm speaking, particularly to the Ghana case - there are no structures to create that solidarity a bit I think it is taken for granted that everybody is okay. If you don't belong, that means you have a peculiar problem. We need to help you here. But our studies are finding that no, that is not it. So for the government policies to work already, migrants and people in migrants in vulnerable situations, be it rural, urban migrants, be it international migrants, in those marginalized situations, have already created their own practices that make them belong, that make them feel comfortable and accepted within their spaces in the cities. And so it's a matter of the government now coming down to that level to grasp that and then make it the center of policy, which we haven't gotten there yet. And so, I think what makes it matter is the fact that we are doing studies, and As Harold said, we already, we are in the middle. I believe when it gets to the dissemination stage, we would get more government involvement by creating awareness, presenting our findings, both within the migrant communities and also to the policy makers.
Maggie Perzyna
So Harold same question for you. Why does this research matter?
Harald Bauder
Yeah, if I can zoom out at the end here, I think we've taken for granted that migration is controlled by the nation state. But there are many different players involved in the regulation of migration and cities, I think in particular, are key sites where belonging, where inclusion, and participation in political, economic and social life are being negotiated in very different ways at the national level. And what our project is trying to do is to give a positive narrative to urban inclusion and participation at a time when migrants and refugees are often unfairly blamed for other kinds of challenges and our own failures in society.
Maggie Perzyna
Thanks to Mary Setrana and Harold Bauder for joining me today, and thank you for listening. This is a CERC Migration podcast produced in collaboration with Lead Podcasting. If you enjoyed the episode, subscribe to Borders & Belonging on Apple Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. For more information on inclusive policy making, please visit the show notes. Do you want to share your thoughts or additional research about sanctuary and city level policies? We'd love to hear from you. Follow the Borders & Belonging LinkedIn page and be part of the conversation. I'm Maggie Perzyna. Thanks for listening.