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Urban Global Justice: The Rise of Human Rights Cities
Abstract
Cities increasingly base their local policies on human rights. Human rights cities promise to forge new alliances between urban actors and international organizations, to enable the 'translation' of the abstract language of human rights to the local level, and to develop new practices designed to bring about global urban justice. This book brings together academics and practitioners at the forefront of human rights cities and the 'right to the city' movement to critically discuss their history and also the potential that human rights cities hold for global urban justice.
The book introduces the reader to an emerging trend in law and social science, with up-to-date insights from prominent authors on the phenomenon of human rights cities. Its interdisciplinary approach to the relationship between human rights and cities makes this relevant to lawyers, sociologists, urban geographers and activists. The book provides a fresh set of perspectives and theories on the potential and pitfalls of global urban justice, but also abounds with examples of the implementation of human rights cities
... This perspective is being today a focus of great concern by an emerging literature embracing the "local turn" proclaimed in migration studies (Zapata-Barrero et al., 2017) or the "new localism" trend according to leading urban researchers (Katz & Nowak, 2018). The new pattern is that, in the legally and politically constrained environment in which cities normally operate, most urban systems are increasing their governance capacities' claim through new narratives and practices, most often embracing human rights devices of Global urban justice (Oomen & Grigolo, 2016). This study is interested in exploring this sovereignty-building process through examining de-bordering strategies and under the particular frame of urban resilience. ...
... This multi-scalar application of the (de-)bordering processes has not yet reached the local level. The initial claim is that cities seek to ensure at the societal level a peaceful and cohesive environment of urban governance, by empowering migrants with the "right to have rights", at the individual level. 1 Both levels of application most frequently adopt human rights devices of global urban justice (Oomen & Grigolo, 2016). This means that stressors breaking routines at the local social system and then configuring a scenario of resilience, are directly related to these two levels of application (social and individual). ...
This article bridges the fields of urban politics, migration governance and border studies by exploring Barcelona as a case study. It raises a first critical question about what happens to so-called borderlands when "borders" move to other scales, such as cities that are not usually categorized as "border cities". Within this framing debate, this study explores two fundamental questions: (1) how border practices at the state level shape constrained relations between cities and migrants, and (2) how cities map de-bordering policies to resolve such constraints, which we conceptualise as an example of 'urban resilience'. The aim is to provide a focus that brings the analytical category of "urban resilience", recently proposed within the emerging debate on the "local turn" in migration studies, to bear on issues directly related to the social impacts of state bordering processes on urban systems. The article then argues that urban justice principles drive most cities to initiate resilient de-bordering policies, and can be seen as a distinctive normative factor underpinning urban resilience when applied to migration governance. After laying the groundwork for this theoretical framework and its application to the city of Barcelona, the final section briefly outlines the potential of this new and crucial critical area of migration research. This will provide yet another opportunity to highlight that we are likely to enter an era in which cities will increasingly become sovereign geopolitical entities within and beyond the traditional hierarchical reach of their own states.
... Empirical analyses in urban studies show that cities and their networks implement global agreements and support global institutions at the urban level, most prominently regarding the Sustainable Development Goals (Kosovac, Acuto, and Jones 2020, 1) or climate politics and the Paris Agreement (van der Heijden et al. 2019). Studies have also found the support of ICNs for global health initiatives (Acuto, Morissette, and Tsouros 2017; Jakobi and Loges 2022), human rights (Oomen, Davis, and Grigolo 2016;Nijman et al. 2022), international migration policies (Oomen and Baumgärtel 2018;Durmus and Oomen 2022) and particularly the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (Och 2018;Runyan and Sanders 2021). City networks that implement global norms often present themselves as leaders, thus emphasising their alignment with global norms and underlining their willingness to pioneer new solutions or their ability to implement policies quickly Leffel 2020, 1768;Ljungkvist 2014, 48;Rapoport, Acuto, and Grcheva 2019, 4). ...
This article systematically assesses international city networks (ICNs) and their contribution to global governance. Research in urban studies has frequently emphasised the growing number and activities of ICNs in global politics, particularly environmental politics. However, systematic and comparative assessments of their main characteristics and how they contribute to global governance in different issue areas remain rare. To advance our conceptual, empirical, and comparative understanding of these networks, we review existing approaches and analyse a sample of 30 ICNs concerning three categories, namely their structures, aims, and activities. The results show that ICNs assemble diverse actors, closely collaborate with international organisations, and are dedicated to the implementation, but also the change of global norms in several issue areas of global governance. At the same time, the results suggest that more empirical data and comparative analyses of ICNs are necessary to advance our conceptual understanding of ICNs and their relevance in global governance.
... Therefore, I turn to literature that more directly analyzes the dynamics of localized forms of human rights and gender equality activism, such as Human Rights Cities (HRC) and Cities for CEDAW. This literature follows the trend of urbanization of human rights struggles (Grigolo 2019;Oomen, Davis, and Grigolo 2016), which has gained momentum in the last two decades. It is infused by scholar-activist perspectives (Goodhart 2019;Koutsioumpas and MacNaughton 2020;Neubeck 2016) that are, on the one hand, strongly empirically focused and, on the other, in search of useful explanatory frames of analysis. ...
Because of the United States’ minimal domestic engagement with human rights, several subnational initiatives, including the Cities for CEDAW campaign, have formed to infuse human rights into local policy making. Analyzing Miami-Dade County as one locale within the Cities for CEDAW network, this article asks what happens to human rights when they are turned into urban policies. Drawing on literature theorizing the complexities of urban human rights activism and using an interpretivist framework of analysis, the article reconstructs local context features and practices promoting gender equality through the countywide CEDAW ordinance. It develops a narrative based on expert interviews and finds an unusual actor constellation in which a local officeholder led the way rather than community activists. The practices identified work within institutional constraints and highlight data collection to support informed gender policy making. The findings lead to the conclusion that both activists and scholars should think beyond the dynamics of policy formulation and more explicitly about the complexities of implementation.
Today, cities are under multiple pressures because they must provide responses to global migration challenges, but have limited governance capacity. This is placing chronic stress on physical infrastructures, basic resources, and urban planning, which most often cities must face alone. There is a rising awareness that doing nothing may increase instability and social conflict, giving rise to more segregation, and racism. Focusing on the crucial tension between what cities might do (sovereignty) and what they can do (constraints), this article seeks first to incorporate ‘urban resilience thinking’ into the current ‘local turn’ literature on migration governance. In order to achieve this theoretical advancement, a fourth‐pronged approach is followed. First, the article proposes that ‘urban resilience’ captures the emerging but dispersed patterns of pro‐active cities, and urges for an analysis of the development of migration governance capacities. Second, a transformative approach to urban migration governance resilience is proposed, and its conceptual consequences explored. Subsequently, the article's focus is on demonstrating the distinctive characteristics of urban resilience when applied to migration governance research, with a particular emphasis on the potential novel contributions that may arise. Finally, in light of the novelties of this research area, the main empirical environments of urban resilience are specified. The concluding remarks close the argumentation by returning to the place of urban resilience thinking within the local turn literature, while also pointing to its normative and methodological potentialities.
In this chapter Maurizio Ambrosini, Manlio Cinalli and David Jacobson lay down the main themes of the book. They start by engaging with the theoretical underpinnings of their approach to the fields of migration, borders and citizenship. In particular, they side against the more traditional dramatisation of political conflicts, which have been dividing insider power-holders from outsider challengers. The three co-editors show that their approach allows for a comprehensive analysis across the policy and public spheres.
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