Schmidtke, Oliver (2021) ‘Rescaling Citizenship: Inclusion and Exclusion of Refugees in Europe’s Multi-level Governance Structure’. In: Mackert, J., Wolf, H. and B. Turner (eds.). The Condition of Democracy (Volume 2). New York: Routledge, 19-35, 2021.
The recent ‘refugee crisis’ in Europe has highlighted structural deficiencies of both the international human rights system and national citizenship regimes that have become manifest in the treatment of irregular migrants. This chapter investigates the dynamics of including and excluding refugees through citizenship practices at different levels of governance. Empirically the chapter addresses the UN-led Global Compact on Migration, the EU’s common asylum policy and citizenship status, as well as urban communities providing support for refugees. The analysis points to the urban context as the scale of governance where the support for refugees is most substantially decoupled from the exclusionary logic of a national, territorially defined citizenship status.
