Towards the Emergence of Urban Asylum Regimes: Policies, Approaches and Consequences of the Reception of Refugees in European and US American Cities

Forced migration is a global phenomenon, which is politically regulated on supranational and national levels. However, it is the city where the arrival, accommodation and integration of refugees predominantly take place. Whereas current research explores the failures of nation-states to address the needs of refugees and to provide solutions to the challenges of housing and integration, there is a lack of scholarship on how urban policies will be central to refugee resettlement, housing challenges and integration practices. This PhD investigates the city’s abilities to handle and integrate refugees in European and US American migration regimes. It focuses on 1) the relation between federal state authority and urban autonomy and the development of national and local asylum policies, 2) the local implementation of housing forms and their objectives, 3) built and social urban (infra-)structures as well as 4) the refugees’ perception on the consequences of housing and integration practices. Applying a qualitative research approach consisting of policy and stakeholder analysis, interviews with experts, local authorities and refugees as well as spatial analyses of refugee infrastructures, the thesis clarifies the role of the urban in the face of different political systems and national approaches towards refugees in arrival cities in Europe and the US. It assumes that metropoles develop particular practices – despite national frameworks – towards urban asylum regimes.