WORLD MIGRATION REPORT 2015 Migrants and Cities: New Partnerships to Manage Mobility
165 5.1
INTRODUCTION
The world is urbanizing and its impacts are wide-ranging far beyond the boundaries of cities, metropolises, megacities and metropolitan regions. Those boundaries are seriously blurred not only between the urban and rural but also on an urban, regional, national and global scale through the ever increasing connections among them. Cities are characterized not only by their population density, economic agglomeration or infrastructure concentration but also as a dynamic site and by the outcome of broader social transformation processes. Urban governance therefore assumes the challenges of coordinating such complex interconnections, while the growth of the city remains essential to the politics of cities. Human mobility is a major contributor to this urbanization, both as a narrow demographic change as well as a broad societal transformation, and migrants contribute to the cities’ complex interconnections through their sustained global communication, institutional linkages and exchange of resources among migrants, homelands and wider diasporas. Migrants can be key players in city development, growth, resilience and sustainability. They are often found among the architects and constructors of growing cities, the service providers, the entrepreneurs, employers, innovators and as part of a global diaspora, “bridge builders”, traders, business links and humanitarian support between countries. As migration flows diversify, different opportunities become available to migrants in their specific localities. A mobile and diverse world requires flexible migration governance that can account for change and transition. As cities are nested in a hierarchy of regional, state, federal or even supranational entities, migrant inclusion is intimately intertwined with the relationship among different levels of governance. Effective immigration management by the national government can be a considerable boost for local economies as migrants could help create jobs and fuel growth. Yet cities in general do not actively participate in the policymaking processes that influence such migrant movements. Urban citizenship is a pragmatic policy tool to further enable migrants’ inclusion and an important element of such opportunity structures.
5.2 MIGRANT INCLUSION AND URBAN GOVERNANCE
The biggest challenge for urban governance is the need to ensure adequate infrastructure and service delivery to diverse and growing populations. This requires new and innovative policy approaches that recognize urban diversity as a positive aspect and take an inclusive approach to all segments of society. Human mobility contributes to this global urban transition and the way in which cities and countries manage this transition is critical to their future. Migration and how it is governed is thus at the frontline of urban planning and sustainable development. The participation and inclusion of migrants in their host cities is an indispensable part of building stable, open and vibrant communities that assure the socioeconomic future of a country. Ensuring adequate infrastructure and service delivery to diverse and growing populations poses the biggest challenge for urban governance. Recent research has found a strong correlation between the effective provision of services and urban development in all of the major emerging economies (EPF and CIRD, 2013). In pursuing more inclusive urban governance, cities today can link local urban social cohesion to economic growth and global competitiveness (Metropolis, 2011).