Comparing Urban Citizenship, Sanctuary Cities, Local Bureaucratic Membership, and Regularizations

Abstract

Irregular migrants tend to live in dense urban settings. Cities respond to this phenomenon with a variety of urban immigration and citizenship policies in support of irregular migrants. These urban policies produce a disparity between local inclusion and national exclusion. This article describes and compares such urban policies, namely, urban citizenship, sanctuary cities, local bureaucratic membership, and regularizations. Urban citizenship serves as the normative foundation of these policies because it claims membership for all people who inhabit a city. Regularization programs confer national residency status on irregular migrants. Pro‐immigration actors favor this policy; however, when regularizations are not possible, cities can turn to sanctuary city and local bureaucratic membership policies. It is important for practitioners to comprehend and engage with these types of urban policies since they are likely to travel to cities worldwide.

Who Should We Count as Citizens? Categorizing People in Public Administration Research

“…In another study, Kaufmann (2019, 444) offered two definitions of citizenship: “the ‘formal citizenship’ of the nation‐state” and “the ‘substantive citizenship’ of the city based on the mere reality of presence and residence in a place.” Kaufman noted the increasing popularity of this latter definition, under which it is possible to count unauthorized immigrants as citizens (444).…”

Get Your Shades Now—The Future's Still Bright: Leveraging Human Resources for Tomorrow's Public Service

“…The first, by David Oliver Kasdan (), continues our behavioral science theme by analyzing several neoliberal agenda issues with potential nudge responses for practical implementation, as well as a justifiable call for action to protect the public welfare in the absence of policy guidance. In the second Viewpoint contribution, Kaufmann () discusses the urban response to immigration and citizenship policies in support of irregular migrants. These urban policies produce a disparity between local inclusion and national exclusion.…”

Urbanising migration policy-making: Urban policies in support of irregular migrants in Geneva and Zürich

“…At the same time, national states adhere to their sovereignty over immigration and citizenship by trying to manage and control migration. These different logics often create conflicting policy priorities between the regulatory policies of the national state and the more inclusive policy-making of cities (Ataç et al, 2020; De Graauw, 2014, 2020; Kaufmann, 2019; Varsanyi, 2006), especially as the city is ‘a space that challenges the exclusion perpetrated at the level of the nation-state’ (Darling and Bauder, 2019: 4). This urban–national tension in migration policy-making is especially evident in policies that target irregular migrants.…”

“…This urban–national tension in migration policy-making is especially evident in policies that target irregular migrants. 1 In times of stricter national policies towards irregular migrants in the Global North (see De Haas et al, 2016), cities develop a variety of policies and practices in support of irregular migrants although they do not formally possess the legal power to expand the de jure rights of irregular migrants (Darling and Bauder, 2019; De Graauw, 2020; Kaufmann, 2019).…”