Theorizing Local Migration Law and Governance

In many regions around the world, the governance of migration increasingly involves local authorities and actors. This edited volume introduces theoretical contributions that, departing from the ‘local turn’ in migration studies, highlight the distinct role that legal processes, debates and instruments play in driving this development. Drawing on historical and contemporary case studies, it demonstrates how paying closer analytical attention to legal questions reveals the inherent tensions and contradictions of migration governance. By investigating socio-legal phenomena such as sanctuary jurisdictions, it further explores how the law structures ongoing processes of (re)scaling in this domain. Beyond offering conceptual and empirical discussions of local migration governance, this volume also directly confronts the pressing normative questions that follow from the growing involvement of local authorities and actors. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

Moritz Baumgärtel is an assistant professor in law and sociology at University College Roosevelt and was the senior researcher of the ‘Cities of Refuge’ research project based at Utrecht University. He is the author of Demanding Rights: Europe’s Supranational Courts and the Dilemma of Migrant Vulnerability (2019).

Sara Miellet is a postdoctoral researcher in the ‘Welcoming Spaces’ project at Utrecht University. Between 2017 and 2022, she was a PhD researcher in the ‘Cities of Refuge’ research project based at Utrecht University.