The external relations of mediterranean cities with civil society organisations in migration governance

Abstract

Following the attention brought by a ‘local turn’ (Zapata-Barrero, Caponio & Scholten, 2017) and multi-level migration governance theory, this paper aims to prove that city diplomacy does not describe well the decoupling of local governments from national agendas in their foreign relations. The guiding question that the paper addresses is why some cities have decoupled from State agendas and engaged with ICSOs to tackle migration challenges. The analysis is based on the city-to-CSO agreements of Barcelona with ProActiva Open Arms and Marseille with SOS Méditerranée on the one hand, and the involvement of Terre d’Asile Tunisie with the municipality of Sfax (Tunisia) in the ICMPD-led Mediterranean City-To-City project on the other. The findings reaffirm that mayors play a major influence in migration governance (Lacroix, Hombert and Furri, 2020; Bazurli, Caponio, and de Graauw, 2021), and on the detachment of the city’s relations from the security-oriented and managerial idiosyncrasies of national governments.