Chapter 5 Urban partnerships to manage mobility
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responds to the needs of local labour markets and to engage employers, local chambers of commerce, colleagues and vocational schools in addition to nonprofit actors such as social enterprises (see text box 23, Business-city partnerships in Rotterdam, the Netherlands). Successful migrant inclusion initiatives tend to be those programmes that are tailored to the needs of particular communities. Inclusion happens at multiple levels and is often the outcome of international cooperation, state laws and local policies. In Germany, a highly federalized state where local governments enjoy constitutionally guaranteed autonomy, almost all cities today have their own integration plans, which conform to the binding and verifiable targets for integration set by the national Immigration Law on Integration and the National Integration Plan (Bendel, 2014). Text box 28 sets out the example of Stuttgart.
Text box 28
Stuttgart, Germany: The intercultural city – arrive, stay and shape Major German cities started implementing a policy of integration and diversity as per the National Integration Plan endorsed in 2007 and based on the new 2005 Immigration Law. All governmental levels (national, federal states and communal), civil society and migrant organizations have agreed on the National Integration Plan with its measures for education, labour, housing, cultural activities, sports and elderly care. Financial responsibilities are shared. National resources support integration courses, counselling for new immigrants and labour market inclusion measures while federal states finance schooling. However, cities and communes have to rely increasingly on external funding from private foundations or the European Union (EU) to maintain successful programmes and initiatives. Cities have an important role to play in the National Integration Plan, as most integration efforts take place at the local level in everyday interactions. With their expertise based on long experience of integrating increasingly heterogeneous populations, cities can develop successful strategies for social participation of immigrants and ethnic minorities in their respective host community. Cities also have to face the consequences of failed integration processes. Stuttgart (“the city”), the state capital of Baden-Württemberg, is a cultural and economic hub in the heart of Europe, with migrants from over 180 countries representing 40 per cent of the city’s population. Migrants actively participate in integration programmes as collaborators or city employees. The Forum of Cultures, an umbrella association of all migrant organizations in Stuttgart, significantly supports this intercultural approach. The city learns from other cities and civil society institutions through national and international networks and tries to contribute to the development of a common integration framework. For example, the city coordinates the communal working group composed of integration commissioners of some 30 cities and municipalities, representatives of the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees, the Association of German