Urban asylum policy in openly conflicting, decoupled migration governance: the case of Barcelona

Abstract

This paper uses Barcelona’s Nausica asylum seeker integration program to understand 1) what leads local governments to diverge from national policy on migration issues within decoupled, openly conflicting governance arrangements, and 2) what can result at the local level from cities’ and national actors’ diverging policy perspectives. Based on interviews with policy elites and the nonprofits managing Nausica, this paper argues that differing state and local logics of care can lead municipalities to utilize devolved competencies to address migration-related needs. Adding to the literature that examines municipal engagement on migration policy issues, the article focuses on city-level governance and definitions of citizenship, which works to combat methodological nationalism in migration studies and relates to migrant cosmopolitanism. The paper’s results also raise additional questions on how these insights can be applied by cities currently responding to the outpouring of refugees from Ukraine.