Irish Regions Office Website

August 20, 2009

Locally managing migration

A new policy paper from 19 members of the Eurocities network has called for local authorities to be given a greater say in the development and monitoring of immigration strategies. 'Cities and Economic Migration: challenges and local policy responses' is a contribution to the Commission’s ‘Stockholm Programme’, launched earlier this summer as a proposal for a common framework on how Member States should deal with immigration, asylum and integration over the next five years, and set to be debated by Justice Ministers in the autumn.

The paper describes current migration trends and their impact on cities which reach beyond the labour market to encompass a range of areas for which local authorities may have responsibility. These include promoting social inclusion; combating discrimination and racism; ensuring political participation; planning accessibility and transport; communicating migrant issues with both the established and newly-arrived communities; the need to develop institutional links with the migrants' countries of origins; and the need to carry out accurate research to reflect the actualities of these cumulative local-level effects.

Based on a collection of good practices in this field, the study offers a toolkit for cities that wish to improve their economic migration policies. Among the key observations are the need for practical measures taken at the local level to be designed in a sustainable way, rather than as one-off interventions; and for civil society organisations, notably migrant groups and NGOs, and, where appropriate, businesses, to be closely involved in the development of actions and strategies.

The need to view human mobility in terms of its potential to contribute to long-term positive demographic replenishment and, more immediately, to economic productivity, are underlined in the study. On the latter point, national and European authorities and employers are urged to work with cities to recognise migrants’ skills and professional qualifications, and to develop these further, including through making access to language training easier and cheaper and by clamping down on unethical labour exploitation. In terms of the adequacy of support available to achieve proper social inclusion for migrants, the paper warns that greater provision should be made for the integration of intra-EU migrants. It is suggested that this would require a reorientation and simplification of some EU support programmes such as the Integration Fund which is currently exclusively focused on non-EU nationals.

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Posted by iroronan at August 20, 2009 01:38 PM