Mayors and Migration Policies in the United States and Europe

Discover how mayors have emerged as crucial players in migration policy in the US and Europe. In this talk, Professor Els de Graauw will present her research on mayors’ leadership on immigration, integration, and the challenges they face.

Presentation

This book chapter provides an overview of research on the role of mayors in immigration and integration policies in the context of the United States and Europe. It describes why mayors have become important actors in the migration policy arena and why they deserve attention from migration and public policy scholars, for both theoretical and empirical reasons. It also describes how this area of research has developed, focused on (1) efforts to typologize mayoral leadership on migration issues, (2) determinants of mayoral leadership on migration issues, and (3) methods and data used to understand the role of mayors in the migration policy arena. It provides an overview of what mayors have done on immigration and integration issues, discussing also the situations when mayors can lead inclusively on migration issues and when instead they struggle to do so. The chapter concludes with a brief discussion of fruitful directions for future research.

Read the book chapter here (pdf).

About the speaker

Els de Graauw is Professor of Political Science, Public Policy, and International Migration Studies at Baruch College and the Graduate Center, both at the City University of New York. She studies immigration, civil society organizations, urban politics, government bureaucracies, public policy, and qualitative research methods, with a focus on understanding how governmental and nongovernmental organizations build institutional capacity for immigrant integration and representation in the context of the United States.