Going south, going local. Social and spatial inclusion of immigrants in the cities of south

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Migrations to the global south are nearly half of the total amount of international migrations. If we take into account demographic trends and projections, together with the rapid economic growth in emerging countries and recession in western 'developed' nations, the number of people moving to the south is likely to increase in the next decades.

Since immigration impacts mainly on social, spatial and political structures in cities, the response to such a global issue is mainly local.

This phenomenon raises the issue of the “Right to the city”, which has been recently incorporated into international organisation guidelines fostering the development of inclusive cities and the reduction of the 'urban divide' in global south cities. Furthermore civil society movements aim to provide a framework for greater inclusiveness, empowering urban dwellers to affect local governments, perhaps even offering the first step in the development of a transnational form of multicultural municipal citizenship.

International migrants move to cities where they lack national citizenship and are thus often alienated from means of democratic participation, particularly in global south cities. This disjuncture between the conventional forms and spaces of citizenship and being a citizen in daily life has led to a political devolution of citizenship claims-making from national to urban space. Many local governments in global south cities are improving the participatory system within decision-making, however they still do not always include migrant citizen rights in democratic participation. Social and spatial inclusiveness policies must address all city residents, bypassing conventional regimes of national citizenship.  The once taken for granted correspondence between citizenship and nationality has been called into question as new forms of transnational and sub-national belonging are shaping up within the global city due to global migration. 'Inhabitance' has become a status allowing participation in policy-making.