Sven-Kåre Evenseth/Flickr. (CC 2.0 by-nc-nd)
While leaders in the European Union hold high-level meetings on how to best address the ‘crisis’ by sending migrants back the way they came, more migrants continue arriving daily in cities from Athens to Berlin to Barcelona. After perilous journeys, migrants reach Europe with the hope of finding security and building better lives for themselves. Their immediate needs often include housing, healthcare, legal aid, language training, and assistance finding employment. Much of the practical work being done to provide for these needs is performed by individual city governments, but their local strategies are often at odds with national and regional plans. Such policy incoherence is the result of representatives of cities being largely absent from the negotiations taking place at the international level.
Barcelona became a ‘city of refuge’ last September, and since then it has worked to welcome asylum seekers to the city.
