This article sheds light on the lack of cohesion in asylum approaches between EU member states and questions the dominance of the ‘integration’ paradigm. It argues that civil society organisations (CSOs) have, through solidarity, challenged the bias ‘integration’ involves and the exclusion it generates. To do this, it examines three case-based practices led by CSOs that operate in three European capital cities—Rome, Brussels and Berlin—and that embrace mobility in the context of front-line, transit and destination countries, respectively. With the ‘refugee crisis’ of 2015 acting as a threshold moment, the cases navigate a complex web of relationships amidst a fragmented debate about asylum, and varying national and local frameworks in Europe. Through the comparison of cases, the article argues that the political possibilities of such practices and their enduring engagements with the urban, remain limited. However, the shift in discourse from ‘stasis’ and ‘integration’ to ‘mobility’ and ‘solidarity’ that the three cases embody, represent a critique that fundamentally challenges urban planning and its role for asylum.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.