Immigration in European cities and the determinants of social exclusion

European cities attract immigrants from all over the world in large number. This ongoing influx and spatial concentration diminish the exclusive explanatory power of national migration policies. Instead cities such as Amsterdam, Barcelona, Berlin or Milan become social laboratories where patterns of immigration and respective conflicts can be studied like under a burning glass. Based on a comparative study of 20 medium and large scale cities in ten European countries, this paper seeks out determinants of social inclusion and exclusion for immigrants in local welfare systems.

By evaluating socioeconomic data and social backgrounds of first and first and a half generation immigrants, a preliminary typology of urban migration effects in the fields of housing, childcare and employment across European cities will be developed. It will be shown that cities or, more precisely, certain districts and neighbourhoods within cities may be vibrant localities where immigrants’ become users and co-producers of social services and communities of de facto outsiders get strengthened. On the other hand, effects of segregation and culminated difficulties of immigration (e.g. linguistic, cultural and bureaucratic constraints) may turn whole districts into homogeneous but deprived zones in which inhabitants are treated as second class citizens who lack access to decent work, appropriate housing and childcare facilities. According to our empirical data, social inclusion of immigrants depends largely on productive contacts with fellow native citizens, trust-based relationships with local institutions, service providers and Third Sector Organizations (TSOs) and, additionally, immigrants’ overall competences to make use of these resources. In a nutshell, the paper describes cities as ambiguous places where immigrants can (more easily than in rural areas) become a part of a loosely integrated urban immigrant society but may also be imprisoned in an environment that accelerates a social downward mobility.