Contesting sanctuary: Urban citizenship and multilevel migration governance in Barcelona

Abstract

This article examines the emergence and contentious politics of urban sanctuary in Barcelona under a progressive ‘new municipalist’ government. Through document analysis, key informant interviews, participant observation, and media and archival research conducted between 2015 and 2023, it analyses the City of Refuge programme and other local migration policies as sites of multilevel migration governance and political struggle. The article conceptualises sanctuary not as a stable policy field but as a dynamic, contentious process shaped by the interplay between legality, discourse, identity formation, and scalar negotiation. It draws on theoretical insights from scholarship on urban citizenship and multilevel governance, tracing how municipal actors and civil society mobilised symbolic and material resources to include undocumented residents and contest exclusionary national and supranational frameworks. Empirically, it shows how local movements challenged the state’s distinctions between refugees and undocumented people, mobilising refugee crisis discourse to expand inclusion and prevent further marginalisation of precarious undocumented citizens. Attention is given to administrative inclusion practices, targeted social programmes, and confrontations over policy competence. The findings reveal both the transformative potential and structural limitations of municipal sanctuary initiatives, highlighting the tensions between symbolic commitments to inclusion and the constrained capacities of local governments within hierarchical systems of governance. Barcelona thus offers a revealing case for understanding how cities reconfigure (and are constrained by) the scalar politics of migration governance, with its progressive leadership rooted in local social movements making underlying tensions especially visible.