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Abstract

European cities are increasingly being recognised for the role they play in devisingand implementing their own migration, integration and diversity policies. Yet verylittle is known about the local dimension of immigrant policymaking in crisiscontexts. This introductory piece offers a rationale for analysing city-level immigrantpolicies in times of crisis and the salience of using crisis as a metaphor for the stateof things, and outlines key scholarly works, debates, concepts and theories. Itprovides a range of historical and contemporary examples and considerations, andintroduces an empirical city case study that is published as part of this mini-symposium. It argues that a crisis lens leads to a systematic understanding of local-level immigrant policymaking in recent and contemporary Western Europe. Themini-symposium’s focus and findings should be relevant to both on-going academicand policy debates.