Migrants with a Precarious Status Evolving Approaches of European Cities IMISCOE Research Series

This open access book is an exploration of city responses to migrants with a precarious status in Europe. It provides new evidence and analysis from research on three cities in Austria, Germany and the UK: Vienna, Frankfurt and Cardiff. The book explores strategies and services of municipal authorities towards precarious migrants and their cooperation with non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in service provision. It focuses on healthcare, education, housing and access to advice; and particular attention is given to the situation of women.The book develops the concept of precarity in relation to migration status, and of horizontal governance arrangements within municipal authorities. It explores the tension between exclusion and inclusion of migrants who have limited rights of access to welfare services, and contributes evidence on the factors shaping municipal policy making, as well as on the framing of rationales for providing access to essential services.

Chapter 1. Introduction.- Chapter 2. The Shaping of Municipal Policies on Inclusion.- Chapter 3. Contextualising three cities: migrant populations and regulatory frameworks.- Chapter 4. Cardiff.- Chapter 5. Frankfurt.- Chapter 6. Vienna.- Chapter 7. City approaches compared.- Chapter 8. Conclusion.

Sarah Spencer was the first Director of the Global Exchange on Migration and Diversity at the University of Oxford and is a former Deputy Director of COMPAS where she is an Emeritus Fellow. She represented COMPAS on the IMISCOE Board of Directors and was chair of the Board from 2018 – 2022. Sarah’s research has focused on human rights, ‘integration’ and migrants with an irregular status, on which recent publications include Spencer, S. (2022). The Contested Concept of ‘Integration’ in P. Scholten (Ed) Introduction to Migration Studies: An Interactive Guide to the Literatures on Migration and Diversity. Springer. IMISCOE Research Series; Spencer, S. (2022). European city network on migrants with irregular status: Exploring functions and outcomes on a sensitive policy issue, Global Networks 22(3):413-429; Spencer, S. & Charsley, K. (2021). Reframing ‘integration’: acknowledging and addressing five core critiques. Comparative Migration Studies 9:18. Springer; Spencer, S. & Triandafyllidou, A. (2020). (Eds) Migrants with Irregular Status in Europe: Evolving Conceptual and Policy Challenges. Springer; Charsley, K., Bolognani, M., Ersanilli, E. & Spencer, S. (2020). Marriage Migration and Integration: British South Asian Transnational Marriages and Processes of Integration. Palgrave MacMillan; and Spencer, S. & Delvino, D. (2019). Municipal activism on irregular migrants: the framing of inclusive approaches at the local level. Journal of Immigrant & Refugee Studies 17 (1): 27 – 43. Sarah’s research on irregular migrants was instrumental in the creation of the City Initiative on Migrants with an Irregular Status in Europe (C-MISE) of which she was Director/later Co-Director from 2017 – 2021. She has also been the PI on a series of empirical research projects with European and North American partners, including most recently the LoReMi project on which this books dra