A research project that explores and explicates the relevance of international human rights, as law, praxis and discourse, to how local governments in Europe welcome and integrate refugees.

Over the past years, academics and policymakers have increasingly pointed towards the key role of local authorities in the reception and integration of forced migrants and the localisation of human rights. Such attention runs the danger of glossing over the complex and highly contextualized character of the processes by which forced migrants arrive, find and are granted a place in a given local context, and the role of human rights in these processes.

At the end of a five-year research project on ‘Cities of Refuge’, the researchers involved invited academics and policymakers for an in-depth discussion that moved beyond generalizations and easy conclusions, and explicitly focused on the complexities at hand.

During this two-day conference, selected academics and policymakers were invited to discuss some of the key themes and findings that emerged from research into local reception policies in Europe.