Scaling Migration Through European City-Regions

In this post-Brexit era characterised by doubt over what Brexit entirely means for British and European citizens—amidst mass migration, a refugee crisis, rescaling nation-states, state-city relations, transnational networks, ethnic and non-metropolitanised right-wing populist nationalism, politics of austerity and division, spatial segregation and inequalities, and diversity integration policies in neighbourhoods and districts—we could ask how migration can be scaled throughout European city-regions (Hoekstra, 2017, Burridge et al., 2017, Bürkner, 2017). According to Keith (2013), the city has historically been seen as an ‘integration machine,’ the site where most people could describe themselves not only as ‘citizens of the city’ but also—as we are observing recently— increasingly as ‘citizens of the non-city’, thus, invisible citizens of the visible city. Thus, migration is a multi-scalar and multi-territorially-defined changing phenomenon that has become a constitutive principle in the public’s understanding of city-ness.

In this European messy and complex migration context, Europe is at a crossroad, and its cities and regions are bearing the brunt of multiple challenges from macro, meso and micro scale perspectives. This workshop hence is an invitation to rethink ‘urban Europe’ around how migration could still assure that cities and regions are international conduits for the passage of trade, commerce, and most importantly, citizens.