AFRICAN CITIES AND INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION GOVERNANCE: FROM GLOCAL IDENTITIES TO MULTILEVEL SOLUTIONS?

• Author: Sturner-Siovitz, Janina

INTRODUCTION (1)

At the Valletta Summit 2015, the city network United Cities and Local Governments of Africa (UCLG Africa) called upon African Union (AU) and European Union (EU) member states to include local authorities as rightful stakeholders in regional policy dialogues on migration. Three years later, African city representatives discussed the role of local authorities in the UN Global Compacts for Migration and Refugees during the Africities Summit and adopted the Charter of Local and Subnational Governments of Africa on Migration. (2) This municipal engagement may seem surprising at first, given that most African cities lack mandates for action on migration at the local, let alone the regional or international level. (3) However, in practice, a growing number of migrants and refugees are settling in African cities.

As the continent with the fastest urban growth worldwide, Africa's population is expected to double between 2020 and 2050, with twothirds of that population growth occurring in urban areas. (4) Migration into urban areas is also contributing to African urbanization, and movements towards intermediary and smaller cities are expected to play a particular role in the continent's urban growth. (5) The latest African Migration Report, published jointly by the African Union Commission and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) in 2020, highlights that "most African migrants are not crossing oceans, but rather crossing land borders" with a majority moving within their respective regions. (6) While obtaining reliable data on migration and displacement in Africa remains challenging, recent data published by IOM and the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA) estimates that the number of international migrants recorded in African countries rose from 15.1 million in 2000 to 26.6 million in 2019, with African countries collectively hosting 10 percent of international migrants worldwide. (7) Overall, it was estimated that approximately one quarter of all international migrants in Africa were refugees. In 2019, 25 percent--7.3 million--of the global refugee population, including asylum seekers, were living on the African continent. (8) As African cities gain in importance as spaces of origin, transit, destination, and return, African local authorities are increasingly confronted with core issues of the international governance of migration and displacement such as mixed movements and protracted displacement. (9)

Finding local solutions to migration poses a great challenge to African cities struggling with incomplete decentralization reforms, limited access to fiscal transfers or international humanitarian funding, and outdated census data. (10) Driven by pragmatic interests in expanding funding, resources, and mandates, a small number of African cities including Freetown, Kampala, Ouagadougou, Sfax, and Sousse have thus sought to engage directly at the regional (AU/EU) and at global levels of migration governance. But how do African cities claim agency and develop action in regional and global migration governance?

To explore this question, this article examines the transnational municipal agency of African cities in the AU-EU context and in global processes governing migration. Following Michele Acuto and Steve Rayner, cities shall be understood here as "local governments." (11) As international agency is "the capacity to act in international politics," (12) transnational municipal agency may be defined as the capacity of local governments to act through their representatives in the context of regional and global policy processes. Finally, adopting an inclusive understanding of migration governance proves advantageous to the analysis of city perspectives that rarely differentiate clearly between various types of cross-border human mobility. This article therefore follows Jorgen Carling in his definition of "migration as a global phenomenon and policy field that also includes refugees."' (3)

The article is structured as follows: The first part sets out the benefits of a multidisciplinary dialogue between migration studies, urban studies, and international relations (IR) for addressing the research gap on African city diplomacy in migration governance. Building on Michele Acuto's analysis of an international city identity, part two examines how African city representatives present and draw on a framing of cities as glocal actors of migration governance to promote proactive and predominantly hybrid forms of transnational action. These actions include (1) co-shaping narratives on human mobility to highlight migration's potential for urban development and to counter security-biased narratives, (2) setting transnational municipal standards to protect the rights of migrants and refugees as well as to promote inclusive strategies for the benefit of all urban residents, and (3) demanding a voice in intergovernmental processes. In closing, the article reviews challenges and risks of African migration city diplomacy and reflects on broader policy implications for multilevel cooperation on urban migration governance.

THEORIZING CITIES AS MIGRATION GOVERNANCE ACTORS

Following recent calls for enhanced dialogue between the study of international relations (IR), migration studies, and urban studies, (14) this article combines findings of each of these disciplines to bridge thematic and geographic research gaps on city diplomacy in migration governance. While migration studies have the potential to introduce a thematic focus on migration governance into urban and IR city diplomacy research, literature from IR and urban studies can enable migration studies' "local turn" to go global, expanding the analysis of transnational municipal agency and action beyond federal and regional levels. Furthermore, a multidisciplinary dialogue could strengthen a joint focus on city diplomacy originating in the Global South.

As of the late 2000s, migration studies' "local turn" has been promoting a shift towards research on municipal action in local contexts as well as in multilevel systems. (15) Given that migration is an important driver of urbanization in many parts of the world, cities are receiving growing attention within this "local turn," (16) with recent studies exploring a "city turn," (17) the creation and functioning of city networks, (18) and typologies of "cities of migration." (19) In this context, literature analyzing transnational horizontal and vertical interaction between cities, city networks, NGOs, states, and international organizations has gained in importance. (20) This literature presents findings that are crucial to distinguishing between different forms of municipal action, such as the shaping of transnational migration narratives, transnational municipal standard setting, and the agency of cities and city networks in intergovernmental processes. (21) However, most of the local turn literature focuses on municipalities from the Global North and limits itself to discussions of city agency in local, national, or regional systems. This is not surprising, given that only a small number of cities from the Global North and South have rather recently begun engaging in questions of international migration governance. Among them are, for instance, Amman, Athens, Barcelona, Bristol, Freetown, Gaziantep, Kampala, Los Angeles, Milan, Montreal, New York, Ouagadougou, Quezon, Rabat, Sao Paulo, Sfax, Sousse and Zurich. Arguing that the growing interdependence between urbanization and migration results in intergovernmental migration agreements having a direct impact on local authorities, these cities are demanding that their expertise be heard in international policymaking processes. (22) Scholars of migration studies should thus pay greater attention to transnational agency and action of cities from the Global South. In doing so, migration studies could benefit from a multidisciplinary exchange with urban studies and IR literature theorizing city diplomacy.

Overcoming the concept of cities as pure spaces of international action, scholars of international relations and urban studies have been exploring cities as actors in different international policy fields for some time now. (23) Understood as "city diplomacy," such engagement may be defined in Rogier Van der Plujim's terms as "the institutions and processes by which cities, or local governments in general, engage in relations with actors on an international political stage with the aim of representing themselves and their interests." (24) While IR literature provides growing expertise on city diplomacy in the policy fields of environmental protection, climate change, and security, especially among Northern cities, research on city diplomacy in migration governance has remained underdeveloped. (25) Still, in particular literature linking IR and urban studies can yield valuable insights for research on African city diplomacy in migration governance. In a seminal contribution, a group of scholars including David Bassens, Luce Beeckmans, Ben Derudder and Stijn Oosterlynck argue that embedding research on "global urban political agency" in urban studies may enable both IR and urban studies scholars to find more contextualized answers to whether and how cities can act as political actors at the global level. (26) Assuming an interdisciplinary perspective, Kirsten Ljungkvist argues that cities' global-level agency may be influenced by whether or not they are perceived as relevant actors for addressing global topics. In this sense, she shows how the growing recognition that many global challenges need to be solved at the local level, and increasingly in urban contexts, leads to a reframing of these global issues in urban terms. In consequence, urban local governments gain opportunities to claim agency in addressing such multilevel governance challenges. (27)

However, if we focus solely on problem framing--in this case, the...