Reconsider Federalism and Con-federalism in Issues of Refugees and Migrants: City-level Mechanisms

This blog article bases upon the Brookings Institution Youtube channel, 2017 U.S.-Islamic World Forum: Refugees and Cities

I make my own title upon the reflection from the talk. It has no commercial means.

Deputy mayors, mayor and scholars discussing on Refugees and cities during US-Islam Forum

On September 16-18, 2017, the Brookings Institution, in collaboration with the State of Qatar, convened the 13th annual U.S.-Islamic World Forum. The theme of this year’s Forum was “Crisis and Cooperation.” which has different panel discussions on different topic. This topic lies in "Refugees and Crisis", coordinated by Bruce Katz, an expert scholar on urbanization and jointed by following figures in politics and governance:

Papagiannakis, City of Athens’s Vice Mayor for Migrants, Refugees and Municipal Decentralization,

Ann-Margarethe Livh, Vice Mayor of Stockholm,

Alex Aleinikoff, United Nations Deputy High Commissioner for Refugees

Marvin Rees, Mayor of Bristol City

Wolfgang Schmidt, Foreign Minister of City State of Hamburg,

Since refugee crisis in 2015 cities became the frontline where increasing number of refugees and migrants take place. Despite difficulties in short term and long term integration, those cities have tried to create networks and multidimensional mechanisms supposed to deal with the influx of migration.

With concern on current situation of refugee today, UNHCR’s deputy, Alex Aleinikoff, has an insight into a change in refugee pattern. Only 20 to 25 per cent of world refugees are now in the camps while many of them are in the cities. In the past UNHCR dealt with rural settlement of camps so it was easier to control the refugees. Remarkably, now more and more migrants and refugees swarmed to cities, so tighter control and difficulties are inevitable.

Particularly, city state of Athens which was once a transit city now became the destination. When people are stuck in the city, national policy is created to provide services such as schooling and housing. However, Athens is still working on its own without outside supports such as finance, means and personnel. The city is calling for outside supports to transform the city to be more adapted and more resilience to the reality.

According to Athens’ deputy mayor, Papagiannakis, the number of refugees is not important. What matters the most is a well-prepared mechanism to keep the city resilient to the problem. According to Athens’ experience of policy making, the federal state would not have implemented the refugee policy proposed by city state if the people had not talked about it.

Stockholm city which holds 900 thousand inhabitants is the biggest city in Sweden. The city is independent to decide and rule itself. The city is considered successful with programs and models to respond the incoming refugees and migrants in spite of existing segregation and suburbs. However, in 2015 the city was stunned by great influx of people, which makes the city not prepared for it. So far, the high number of 7000 arriving refugees creates a problem of housing. Housing problem is a double burden since Stockholm already had existing housing difficulty of finding housing. Not different from Athens, City of Stockholm has a problem with state government in terms of fiscal policy, according to Ann-Margarethe Livh, Vice Mayor of Stockholm.

Bristol city also have the same problem since fiscal power in Britain is very centralized. The city mayor, Marvin Rees, points out that austerity and de-investment in cities create slush of money from public spending. Consequentially, the real problem is related to public issues such as housing, healthcare, public transportation.

Marvin Rees in panel discussion on Refugees and Cities, 2017 US-Islamic World Forum

Another problem is the echo of Brexit which takes back sovereignty—from who? Related to this, Bristol city created a Brexit working group to look at tensions including social tension and hate crimes since it receives mass in-migration from Jamaica, Southeast Asia, Eastern Europe, Africa. Demographic change is represented by 16 % non-white British yet 33 % non-white British school population. Hence, sense of ownership of the city starts to be controversial. The city works on how to make domestic population confident about their own identity to be able to deal with dynamic of culture in their city.

A good lesson is learned from Hamburg City in terms of strong self-governance. According to Wolfgang Schmidt, the city of Hamburg has leverage from the federal government and collects taxes by its own. It becomes a rich city holding 1.8 million inhabitants of cultural diversity so it arrives at a sense of identity—for example of non-German footballers such as Kheidira, Ozil and Poldeski. 35 per cent of population is non-German background. Not only refugees but also inner German migrants make the Hamburg a large city.

Hamburg's vice mayor, Wolfgang Schmidt, answering Bruce Katz's question

In context of European free movement of labor, 230 million of skilled workers can choose where to work and Germany has the most liberal migration laws even more than Canada. Germany shares a million refugees to 16 states while Hamburg shares 2.53 per cent of refugees. Yet, in 2015 Hamburg unprecedentedly received 60,000 refugees more than 22,000 which a number it should have received. Between 200 to 600 refugees arrived in the city per day in autumn 2015. It raises anti-migrant resentment.

In 2014 Hamburg spent 300 million euro on refugees. In 2015 it reached 600 million euro and continued to peak at 900 million in 2016. To sum, it is over 2 billion euro spent by city state of Hamburg alone. Social welfare of refugees is 420 USD for refugees per month per member of refugee family plus shelter and healthcare.

Innovation response to refugee problem must relate to “earn, learn, and belong”. For an example, Stockholm city sees tight integration in context that modern economy in Sweden demand integration longer time and higher education. As a result, most political refugees from Africa are now unemployed. Getting employed and education remains a big problem in Stockholm in addition to language barrier where people need to speak Swedish in local employments such as hospital.

An insight from Hamburg is that it is difficult to integrate over 25-year-old refugees into German society in terms of language and skills training. Therefore, it has been focusing on children education in the camp where they are obliged to learn German.

With regard to labor market, Alex Aleinikoff acknowledged that most countries violate refugee convention which says refugees have right to work. 100 to 200 thousand refugees resettle each year, so we have to leave a center room for livelihood of refugees.

Is there a possibility to have a platform where cities learn from each other and create a model and mechanism to address the issue of refugees?

Alex Aleinikoff suggests that city-to-city mechanism helps better to resettle refugees from city to city with less centralized intervention from the federal power. Deputy Mayor of Athens responds that European capitals have been trying to work out such the city-level mechanism, yet it failed due to immigrant policy contradictory to the federal government. Federal governments do not allow city governments to resettle the refugees because they could lose power because of that, according to Athens’ deputy mayor.

Bristol: “…not see a city as a place to find responses but actually a place to drive new kind of world.” says Marvin Rees. By a new kind of world, he means that city leaders need to re-balance sovereignty so that we can find a new idea to find how to deal with the issue. It implies to have a network of city-level government where city leaders can work collaboratively with balanced regard of identity and sovereignty. His point is that city mayors are the one who stay closer to people and look at people in the eyes and find solution.

What has and has not worked out?

In case of Hamburg, “city is an early warning system” says Wolf Gangsmith. Germany started to discuss refugee problem in 2015, but in fact many German cities argued with federal government in early 2013 about refugee problem. City has to consider population to make sure that they are in line with the policy in terms of public trust to information of refugees. Domestic inhabitants can access to a data base which provides update information about refugees. Another problem is housing price which continues to rise.

In response to a question on what extend have European cities worked with refugee-sending cities, Papagiannakis, Athens’s Vice Mayor perceives that those cities are also having the same problem related to centralized power. Decision making is still dominant at federalism. At the meantime, in Stockholm city network is still working informally and less consistently.