Urban Anchors of Local Citizenship: Political Will and the Governance of Migration in Europe

Objective

Cities increasingly shape migration governance, not only by implementing national rules but by recognising residents through services and administrative inclusion. ANCHOR: Urban Anchors of Local Citizenship investigates how structurally diverse European cities cultivate, sustain, or dismantle elements of local citizenship for un(der)documented migrants. Addressing a persistent large-city bias in research and policy, ANCHOR brings medium-sized cities into focus alongside major urban centres. Situated at the intersection of urban geography, migration studies, political science, and governance theory, ANCHOR introduces a novel conceptualisation of political will as urban infrastructure, embedded in services, routines, and spatial arrangements. It adopts a cross-national, cross-local comparative design in Greece and the Netherlands. It focuses on four preliminary cases-Thessaloniki and Ioannina (Greece), Rotterdam and Amersfoort (Netherlands)-to be co-selected with municipal and civil-society actors. Methods include qualitative fieldwork, spatial analysis, and participatory tools: interviews, focus groups, governance co-mapping, and document analysis. ANCHOR pursues five aims: (1) identify forms and practices of local citizenship; (2) trace how they emerge, endure, or erode over time; (3) compare governance responses across national and urban scales; (4) theorise political will as infrastructure; and (5) co-produce policy-relevant insights through participatory methods. It advances theoretical understandings of inclusive and resilient urban governance while producing practical outputs and co-developed recommendations. Open science and a commitment to diversity are embedded throughout. Hosted at Erasmus University Rotterdam, the project embeds two-way knowledge exchange and interdisciplinary training, complemented by a secondment with the Soli*City project at Toronto Metropolitan University and a placement with PICUM (Brussels) to broaden comparative and policy impact.