At the start of the summer, migration moved to the forefront of public debate in Dublin and in Berlin.
On 8 June, anti-immigrant protests escalated into several days of riots in Northern Ireland following a knife attack in Belfast, while thousands of demonstrators gathered in Berlin calling for a halt to current migration policies, reflecting growing national discussions around asylum, border controls and integration.
In Belfast, homes, businesses and vehicles were attacked, with migrant communities among those targeted, sparking renewed discussions about racism, misinformation and social cohesion.
The impact of these events was felt well beyond Northern Ireland’s capital. In Dublin, where 17% of the population are non-Irish citizens, an anti-immigration rally took place two days later, drawing attention to opposition to the EU Migration and Asylum Pact and reflecting broader concerns about migration policy.
Around the same time, organisations, local authorities and community groups were working to promote a different conversation through integration initiatives and Refugee Week Ireland activities, focused on inclusion, dialogue and mutual understanding.
In Berlin, the protest came amid wider political efforts in Germany to tighten migration policies and reform asylum procedures. At the same time, local authorities, migrant organisations and civil society groups continued to advocate for inclusion and participation.
This contrast highlights a tension increasingly visible across Europe: while migration is often debated through the lens of control and security at national level, cities remain focused on the practical challenge of fostering inclusion, social cohesion and a sense of belonging for increasingly diverse populations.
Dublin – toward a shared understanding of integration
Against this backdrop, Dublin’s efforts to strengthen its approach to integration take on added significance. The challenge the city faces is not simply to provide services, but to improve coordination across service providers and develop a long-term strategic vision for inclusion.
In discussions with representatives from Fuenlabrada, Ghent and Zagreb, Dublin identified challenges and explored ways forward for a more effective integration system. “This peer review, delivered as part of the EU-funded CONSOLIDATE project, offers Dublin a valuable opportunity to reflect on its current work and gain fresh perspectives from cities facing similar challenges,” explains Reuben Hambakachere, Local Authority Integration Team Support Coordinator at Dublin City. “By aligning with European best practices, we are ensuring Dublin continues to be a welcoming, inclusive, and well-coordinated city for all.”
Meetings in Dublin brought together experts, politicians, NGO representatives and civil servants, who actively participated in long discussions about local inclusion. The CONSOLIDATE project team, including the city’s representatives, the so-called Integration Champions, “came up with some recommendations and identified concrete things that were absent in our conversation about integration,” explains Hambakachere. “Coming up with the idea that we don’t have a shared understanding of the word integration and what we are looking for was very powerful.”
That was the starting point, but discussions also highlighted the importance of moving beyond troubleshooting individual issues towards a more strategic approach that connects policy, services, communities and institutions around shared objectives. As Hambakachere explains, “There is no shared understanding of what we, as a city, want to achieve; what we are asking other stakeholder groups to do; what the state is asking those groups to do; what organisations working with people seeking protection are asking of them; and what the host community expects from people arriving here.”
Without a shared vision on what integration entitles and how success should be measured, coordination becomes more difficult and services risk developing in isolation from one another. It is also important to recognise that integration is a two-way process: it requires not only newcomers to adapt, but also services and institutions to evolve in response to the needs of the communities they serve. The visit also reinforced the idea that cities do not need to wait for national frameworks before acting, as is the case in Dublin. Zagreb was experiencing the same obstacle back in 2020. Now, the city is the mirror of other authorities in Croatia in defining priorities, coordinating stakeholders and shaping integration policies.
And Dublin already has a strong foundation on which to build. “Dublin has already taken significant steps in supporting applicants for international protection,” explains Kristel Danel, Policy Officer for Asylum, Refugees and Undocumented Migrants at Ghent Municipality. “Given the increasing challenges related to the reception, integration and risk of homelessness among this group, the visit offered valuable insights into Dublin’s policies and practices and provided an opportunity to reflect on and further strengthen our own approach.”
Beyond local borders
The exchange generated valuable insights, strengthened international networks, and created opportunities for future collaboration and mutual learning between European cities facing similar integration challenges.
Eva López Coronado, Business Development and Employment Coordinator, Department of Economic Development, Employment, Trade and External Cooperation, Fuenlabrada City Council, stresses that peer learning visits make it possible to discover different ways of addressing complex challenges such as migration, integration and access to employment. Reflecting on the experience, she quotes the American philosopher and educational reformer John Dewey: “We do not learn from experience… we learn from reflecting on experience.” For López Coronado, this captures the essence of peer learning, where the value lies not only in observing what another city does, but in collectively analysing challenges, assumptions and possible solutions.
Shauna McIntyre, Senior Executive Officer, Community & Social Development at Dublin City Council, explains that the visit made Dublin representatives see the administration’s strengths and the challenges they face, as well as successes and what is still to be done.
For Lopez Coronado, however, one of the key challenges of this type of exercise is the difficulty of fully grasping the complexity of a city within a limited period.
“Local realities, particularly in areas such as integration, are highly multifaceted and require a depth of contextual understanding that is not always possible to achieve during a brief visit.” In this regard, Dublin’s experience incorporated a particularly useful element: a series of online interviews conducted beforehand, allowing the review team to arrive with a more solid understanding of the local context and key issues.
“The takeaway for people who participated in the process is that it’s not only Dublin city that is facing these challenges; it’s something right across Europe and we can learn from each other,” adds Hambakachere.
Indeed, politicians and representatives from other local authorities in the Dublin Metropolitan area attended the presentation of the recommendations. Hambakachere shares that one coordinator from one of these local authorities was initially hesitant about developing a shared integration strategy for the entire Dublin area, as their authority had already started working on its own plan. However, after hearing the recommendations, this coordinator came to support the idea
Berlin – towards a coordinated action
Approximately 25% of Berlin’s 4 million inhabitants are foreign nationals, and the city receives between 15,000 and 30,000 new arrivals every year. Around 42% of Berliners have a migration background, meaning they are either foreign nationals or German citizens with at least one migrant parent. This is among the highest share for any major European city.
Diana Botescu, from the Senate Department for Labour, Social Affairs, Equality, Integration, Diversity and Anti-Discrimination in Berlin, points to the structural complexity of the city: “It’s a huge city. It’s actually a region. And the so-called integration needs are also big, as the German system is very complicated to grasp.”
In a city as big and complex as Berlin, many services for newcomers are already in place, but “existing services – including language courses, integration guides and migrant social support programmes – are often delivered separately despite pursuing similar goals,” explains Alexander Lautsch, Assistant to Katarina Niewiedzial, Commissioner of the Berlin Senate for Participation, Integration and Migration. In the context of budget constraints, he adds, bringing these services together into a more integrated structure could improve coordination and make more efficient use of resources.
Following the visit, momentum increased significantly, with NGOs actively seeking information on next steps and district commissioners forming a dedicated focus group, creating a growing sense that a new arrival structure was becoming a shared objective.
As Berlin City is composed of 12 districts with very different characteristics, the challenge was not to replicate the state-level Welcome Center in each district, but to explore how district-level structures could complement its work by bringing support closer to residents, while the central Welcome Center continues to provide key functions at state level: “The question is to what extent and in what way the different districts could be able to and willing to open a one-stop shop,” explains Kaja Skowrońska, responsible for migration at the City of Nantes, and one of the Integration Champions.
However, Lautsch emphasises that any future model should be developed through dialogue with local stakeholders. To support this, he suggested the Commissioner organising a series of visits across Berlin’s districts, bringing together civil society organisations, district commissioners and political representatives to build a common understanding of local needs.
Similarly to Dublin, Berlin welcomed representatives from Nantes and Vienna. The visit from the international champions acted as a turning point in Berlin’s discussion on creating a new arrival and welcome structure for newcomers. According to Lautsch, the external perspective brought by the champions helped unlock the debate that had been ongoing for more than a year. Their strong preparation, insightful questions and understanding of Berlin’s governance system were particularly valuable.
By bringing together around 35 participants from political parties, district administrations and civil society organisations, the visit created the conditions for an open and constructive exchange. “Because the recommendations came from respected peers from other European cities rather than from actors directly involved in the local debate,” explains Lautsch, “they were received with greater openness and credibility. Following the visit, momentum increased significantly, with NGOs actively seeking information on next steps and district commissioners forming a dedicated focus group, creating a growing sense that a new arrival structure was becoming a shared objective.”
Not starting from scratch
District-level services should be easier to access, in Botescu’s opinion. “The merging of public and NGO services in the districts’ welcome centres is important,” she says. “District services such as education or registration are difficult to get as they’re in German, so it’s of utmost importance that we can facilitate that access.”
All services can be gathered and accessed through a one-stop shop, but a takeaway from the visit was that it cannot simply be copied from one district to another. It must be built around local needs and with local actors to match the local context. For Berlin, this local adaptation is especially important because districts have different needs, different structures and different understandings of the role of their integration commissioners.
But Berlin is not starting from zero. Many actors support newcomers, especially NGOs and civil society organisations. The challenge lies in how to connect and coordinate these efforts.
As Skowrońska observes: “That’s a great advantage for building something, but also, it’s a constraint as you must get all those people around the table. It’s better to work with them than without them.” Much of the peer learning work was about helping different actors move in the same direction.
This is closely connected to the broader issue of coordination across services and departments. “How do you make sure that migrants can navigate the system easily with all the complexity of the administration?” she wonders. But for her, this is not just Nantes or Berlin, but all CONSOLIDATE partners had similar challenges when breaking silos and building something easy to read for a newcomer who needs to access services.
Learning from experience, not perfection
Local realities, particularly in areas such as integration, are highly multifaceted and require a depth of contextual understanding that is not always possible to achieve during a brief visit.
The Berlin exchange also says something important about the role of the integration champions themselves. Skowrońska stresses that the champions do not come as cities with all the answers: “It’s not about as we’re champions, our cities are perfect, we do this right, we have all the good practices. It’s more about what we’ve learned through participating in CONSOLIDATE, and now we can use it. We may have the tools.”
“What’s being done in Berlin already is quite interesting,” she adds. For her, a lot of really involved actors are doing many things, “and it’s, as for all of us, more of a question of putting together and coordinating things that are already there.”
López Coronado agrees with Skowrońska. “Learning is not always a one-way process, nor is it simply about ‘importing’ good practices. Learning involves sharing approaches, methodologies and tools that have proved effective in our context, not to replicate them elsewhere, but to provide a point of reference that the host city can adapt to its own political, social and cultural realities.”
She also points out that the exposure to different intervention models, institutional frameworks and administrative cultures encourages us to question our own practices and expand the range of possible solutions.
From Vienna’s perspective, the value of the role also lies in learning from other cities and in bringing in expertise from different policy areas. Dominique Dallabrida, Specialist officer in Vienna’s refugee assistance service at the FSW, Vienna Social Fund, states that she would do it again. She added that it is useful to include professionals with different backgrounds, including experts, who can bring not only the expertise but also the outside perspective.
Learning as mutual support
Dublin is adapting to rapid recent growth in diversity, while Berlin has decades of experience as a city of migration and now has nearly half of its population with a migration background.
By aligning with European best practices, we are ensuring Dublin continues to be a welcoming, inclusive, and well-coordinated city for all.
Despite differences in population, trends and local contexts, the exchanges around Berlin and Dublin show that peer learning is most useful when it helps cities think together on steps forward and ideas to solve challenges, rather than comparing themselves with other local contexts.
In Berlin, that meant helping a large and complex city reflect on how to better coordinate services, improve access and make existing support structures easier to navigate. It also meant creating a space where NGOs, experts, civil society and political actors could engage in a broader discussion about the future of integration support.
In Dublin, the discussions helped shift attention from individual service challenges to broader policy questions. Participants reflected on what integration should mean in practice, how responsibilities are shared between institutions and communities, and how a common vision can guide future action. The process also helped strengthen collaboration between local authorities and contributed to discussions on a more coordinated regional approach to migrant integration.
“The visit provided the City of Ghent with an opportunity to share and validate its expertise in integration policy, while also reflecting critically on its own approaches through exposure to a different urban context,” explains Danel. And she adds, “The exchange generated valuable insights, strengthened international networks, and created opportunities for future collaboration and mutual learning between European cities facing similar integration challenges.”
And perhaps that is the clearest lesson of all: cities help each other not because one has all the answers, but because each brings experience, questions and perspectives that can help others move forward. And the value of peer learning does not lie in finding a model to copy, but in creating opportunities to reflect, question assumptions and adapt ideas to different contexts.
