European cities have spent the past decade building inclusion and integration. From the arrivals of refugees from Syria and the Middle East in 2015 to the displacement caused by Russia’s war against Ukraine, and from ongoing economic migration to changing demographic patterns, local governments have often been at the forefront of fast-moving societal change.
But while emergency responses remain essential in the moment, they are no longer enough. Cities today are more diverse than ever, with migrants shaping local economies, demographic growth, neighbourhood life and public services. This reality requires a shift: from reactive, short-term responses to long-term, strategic and whole-of-city approaches to newcomer inclusion.
Why strategic responses matter
“Migration is not an exceptional event,” explains Alexandra Weerts, Senior Project Coordinator at Eurocities. “It is not a phenomenon that cities only need to think about in moments of emergency or when arrivals suddenly increase. It is a permanent feature of urban life, and it should be treated as such.”
Cities are already operating in a context of continuous change. Newcomers are increasingly diverse, including refugees and people seeking asylum, but also international students, skilled workers, and people displaced by climate change.
Migrants are also central to economic and demographic growth. They fill labour shortages, contribute to public services, create businesses and help offset the impact of ageing populations.
Yet this contribution can only be fully recognised and supported if cities move beyond traditional governance models built around short-term funding, siloed departments and emergency-only tools and instead implement sustainable integration structures.
As part of the everyday reality of urban governance, migration and population change require a more forward-looking approach. Strategic newcomer inclusion, Rachel Marangozov, Director at MigrationWork, argues, is not about “changing the newcomer” but about changing city systems so that people can arrive, settle, belong and contribute.
Democratic resilience in Glasgow
We’re not shying away from the challenges in terms of housing and homelessness, but we are also clear about the significant addition and enhancement that this population has made to our city.
For Susanne Millar, Chief Executive of Glasgow City Council, this question is particularly urgent. Glasgow has been an asylum city for 26 years and has built a strong identity as such. Most recently, Glasgow’s approach has evolved from early accommodation and support services to stronger partnerships with civil society and now towards a more strategic, city-wide approach to inclusion.
“We’ve been really clear about the positive,” says Millar. “We’re not shying away from the challenges in terms of housing and homelessness, but we are also clear about the significant addition and enhancement that this population has made to our city.”
Glasgow’s experience highlights that listening to communities is non-negotiable. The city has had to reflect on how to engage with residents who feel excluded, anxious or influenced by far-right narratives, while maintaining clear red lines around racism, violence and human rights.
When a wider anti-immigration campaign targeted an English-language class for migrant mothers at a primary school in Glasgow’s East End, city leaders chose engagement over confrontation. The protest focused on four mothers attending an ESOL class hosted by the school for parents from refugee and asylum-seeking backgrounds. In response, Glasgow’s Executive Director of Education, the headteacher and the chair of the parent council spent the day speaking directly with those gathered outside.
A pivotal moment came when one of the local protestors recognised one of the women leaving the class as a neighbour whose child attended the same school. As school staff explained that the women using the service were parents whom residents already encountered in playgrounds and around the neighbourhood, the debate was no longer about an anonymous group of newcomers.
For Susanne Millar, the experience demonstrated the power of direct, local engagement in challenging assumptions and building understanding. “There has to be a really hyper-local approach,” she said. “There’s something about getting in and amongst our communities.”
Munich, from crisis management to institutional capacity
So how can cities transform moments of arrival into longer-term systems? In Munich, the arrivals of 2015 and the displacement from Ukraine in 2022 led the city to strengthen its planning, coordination and communication structures.
Maria Prsa, Policy Officer in the Department for Social Services, Office for Housing and Migration in Munich, explains that the city moved away from emergency-only responses and developed more strategic approaches to accommodation, integration and communication. Munich now runs 46 decentralised municipal housing facilities, with a capacity of around 9,500 people, alongside state-run centres and smaller housing projects for people with specific needs.
“If we want to cooperate, we need at least to talk between departments and units,” explains Prsa, describing Munich’s interdepartmental approach.
Since 2015, the German city has established an interdepartmental task force on accommodation for refugees and homeless people, developed a database of more than 1,000 potential sites, and invested in more flexible forms of housing, including modular construction, office conversions and interim use of available flats.
Crucially, the city has also embraced the principle of “integration from day one”, offering language courses, counselling and support regardless of status, and strengthening cooperation with civil society organisations at district level.
Prague, turning emergency response into long-term coordination
Resilience doesn’t happen in times of crisis. You must have long-term trust, long-term collaboration.
Similarly, in Prague, the arrival of people fleeing Ukraine pushed the city to rapidly expand its coordination capacity. Geti Mubeenová, Regional Coordinator of Strategic Management in the field of adaptation-integration of temporary protection holders from Ukraine, explains how an initial emergency response evolved into a more structured approach involving several municipal departments, city districts, civil society organisations and experts.
As a capital city and semi-autonomous region, Prague includes 22 city districts, each with its own mayor and political priorities, making coordination and trust-building challenging but essential. Over time, the city moved from crisis response towards a coordinated governance model that brings together municipal departments, city districts, NGOs, experts and political representatives around shared objectives.
“We saw that crisis management alone does not help. We need collaboration, shared responsibilities and long-term solutions,” says Mubeenová. “Resilience doesn’t happen in times of crisis. You must have long-term trust, long-term collaboration.”
The city increased annual municipal integration funding by more than 400%.
Civil society as a bridge between communities and institutions
Participation of civil society is a defining feature of resilient city responses to migration. Drawing on research examining migrant inclusion policies across 28 European cities, Nick Dreher, Researcher with the Soli*City Partnership at Toronto Metropolitan University, found that municipalities rarely achieve sustainable integration outcomes alone.
Instead, long-term resilience emerges through partnerships between local authorities, migrant organisations, community groups and civil society actors. Across the cities studied, civil society was often not simply a delivery partner but the driving force behind some of the most influential integration initiatives.
In some cases, community organisations identify needs and develop solutions, while city governments provide political support, funding and institutional capacity. “Moving past political will alone is key,” says Dreher. “Taking political will and civil society work on the ground, and embedding it in structures, partnerships and civic identity, is what leads to sustainability.”
Taking political will and civil society work on the ground, and embedding it in structures, partnerships and civic identity, is what leads to sustainability.
In Gdansk, for example, the city’s Immigration Integration Model originated from a proposal developed by a civil society organisation and was subsequently co-created by local authorities, NGOs, academics and migrant communities. The model later became embedded across municipal departments and evolved into a regional framework used beyond the city itself.
In Swansea, meanwhile, the City of Sanctuary movement that began as a civil society campaign, eventually grew into a network of more than 100 organisations, with the city council participating as a member rather than simply acting as a funder. This collaborative structure has helped sustain integration efforts despite changing political and economic circumstances.
For Adla Shashati, Director of the Greek Migrant Forum, participation must go further than consultation. Speaking from the experience of migrant communities in Athens, she underlines that “integration, or better as we call it, inclusion, is most successful when migrants are not seen only as beneficiaries of policies, but also as active partners in shaping these policies.”
She points out that civil society and migrant-led organisations are not only service providers but bridges between communities and institutions, and sources of expertise in their own right. Shashati mentions the Athens Migrant and Refugee Integration Council, an important platform for dialogue between migrant communities and the municipality.
Yet she also points to its limits: migrants can contribute, advise and raise concerns, but they do not have formal decision-making power or local voting rights. “The challenge of the future is quite clear. It is to move from participation without power towards participation with actual representation,” she states.
Communicating migration through local identity in Fuenlabrada
The city of Fuenlabrada, in Spain, has built a strong local narrative around coexistence, participation and belonging. Fuenlabrada grew rapidly from around 7,000 inhabitants in 1970 to almost 200,000 today. Its growth was shaped first by internal migration from other parts of Spain, and later by international migration from countries including Romania, Morocco, Nigeria, China, Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador and Equatorial Guinea.
Javier Bokesa, Councillor for Economic Development, Employment, Trade and External Cooperation at the City of Fuenlabrada, argues that the city encouraged migrant communities to organise through associations and become part of local civic life, eventually contributing to the creation of the Table for Coexistence, a broad civil society platform that now includes neighbourhood associations, migrant organisations and other local actors.
Over several decades, the municipality deliberately supported neighbourhood associations, migrant organisations and participatory structures that enabled residents to shape local decision-making. Over time, these relationships evolved into the Table for Coexistence, which now serves as a key mechanism for managing cultural diversity, responding to emerging challenges and shaping municipal responses to migration-related issues.
“We were never reactive,” argues Bokesa. “Whenever there is some sort of issue related to migration, the Table for Coexistence shapes the municipal response.”
You may question whether you are Spanish or not, but you are never going to question whether you are from ‘Fuenla’.
For Fuenlabrada, communication is not simply a matter of campaigns or public relations. It is rooted in local identity and long-term relationships. Bokesa shares that young people with migrant family backgrounds in Fuenlabrada are rarely asked where they are from. “You may question whether you are Spanish or not, but you are never going to question whether you are from ‘Fuenla’,” he says.
Building autonomy through housing in Vienna
Vienna’s approach illustrates how cities can transform housing from an emergency response into a longer-term integration tool. Rather than focusing solely on accommodation, the city combines housing support with counselling, orientation services and practical guidance designed to help newcomers move towards independent living. Housing is part of a broader strategy that connects integration, employment, social inclusion and long-term stability.
For Sidonia Estl, Strategy Manager for Refugees and Basic Care at Fonds Soziales Wien (FSW), housing support is about more than providing a place to live. “Housing counselling deserves special attention because it is one of the most important factors for successful integration,” she explains. Counselling services help people understand rental contracts, housing costs, tenant rights and the realities of Vienna’s housing market, reducing uncertainty and strengthening their ability to navigate the system independently.
This long-term perspective also informs initiatives such as Start Wien, which provides orientation services for newcomers across a range of topics, and Project Fini, which supports refugee families as they transition towards independent living.
Together, these measures reflect Vienna’s effort to build the skills, knowledge and confidence that enable newcomers to participate fully in city life while reducing long-term dependency on support systems. “The target group of the Start Wien programme is not only refugees, but all immigrants coming to Vienna,” explains Birgit Wachter-Wallner, Advisor for Integration and Diversity at the City of Vienna.
Looking ahead, Dominique Dallabrida, Executive Assistant at Fonds Soziales Wien (FSW), mentions Vienna’s emerging action plan to create a multilingual digital platform offering refugees easy access to housing and integration information.
Building inclusive cities takes time
To embed migration and integration into long-term local planning, cities need time, support and resources to coordinate across departments and sectors. They work to engage civil society and migrant-led organisations as strategic partners to create real conditions for participation. Building inclusive cities is not about quick fixes. It is about collaboration and long-term commitment.
Reactive responses will always be needed in moments of emergency. But they must be connected to something deeper: proactive migration strategies that are embedded across departments, rooted in communities, supported by civil society, built on trust and resilient enough to face future challenges.
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This was the focus of the third training session under the EU- funded project CONSOLIDATE, which explores how cities can build resilient responses to population change. The training session brought together city officials, researchers and civil society representatives to explore how local authorities can build anticipatory capacity and long-term resilience. You can watch the training session here.
This third training session, organised by Eurocities, MigrationWork and the European Network of Migrant Women, examined what cities need to move from crisis management to proactive planning: strategies that are anchored politically and institutionally, coordinated across sectors, connected to civil society and migrant communities, and resilient to future shocks.
Previous training sessions include:
