Local Responses to Migrants with Precarious Status Frames, Strategies and Evolving

Our fieldwork will look at the barriers and the varying conflicting and coinciding interests of the many different actors involved in the provision of services to migrants with precarious status, ranging from migrants themselves, to CSOs, municipal administrations and policy makers in different sectors. [...] They range from the establishment of various forms of firewalls that prevent the transfer of personal data to immigration authorities, to the provision of funding to service providers regardless of the individual eligibility under national law of their clients, or allocating a budget to cover for the services of people who are not entitled to national welfare support or insurance. [...] 16 The Centre on Migration, Policy & Society (COMPAS) While Delvino and Spencer (2019) emphasise the importance of firewalls to enable migrants with irregular status to access basic social services, the authors argue that the simplest way, however “to ensure access to a service is to remove a requirement that the immigration status of the individual is identified to the service provider” (ibid.: 2. [...] in Ghent) or to address a particular issue (as in Zurich in 2017 under the Mayor’s department), to review and report on the situation relating to healthcare, education, access to justice, and provision of legal advice and 23 The Centre on Migration, Policy & Society (COMPAS) information to migrants with precarious status or to inform its policy development (Delvino and Spencer 2019: 17). [...] What is widely missing is an analysis of the connection and disconnect between a city’s overall approach and branding, the various frames and practises of different service providers within a municipality in relation to migrants with precarious status, and the pathways to services that are actually created for migrants 33 The Centre on Migration, Policy & Society (COMPAS) with precarious status.