Marie Mallet-Garcia

Both Europe and the United States have experienced mirrored influxes of irregular migrants in recent years, and their cities must now manage the presence of a large number of irregular migrants. This is challenging due to conflicting national and local priorities, polarity in public opinion, and limited knowledge on the needs of these migrants. Some policymakers have attempted to form knowledge-exchange networks between cities, but there is a lack a thorough understanding of the contexts in which inclusion policies are successful. Scholars have started to examine local inclusion, but have struggled to provide generalizable findings due to the variability in local contexts. The project addresses this important challenge by providing the first pilot study offering generalizable model of local inclusion of irregular migrants. It does this by adopting an innovative ‘whole of society’ approach using the examples of Madrid and Paris. This allows to analyze the complex landscapes that bind various actors (irregular migrants, policymakers, NGOs, and the public) and societal forces (structural, political, social, cultural, and legal) within different local and national frameworks in order to provide an unprecedentedly refined understanding of the dynamics of local inclusion as well as practical tools for policymakers, citizens, and scholars to address the important challenge of managing the presence of irregular migrants.