On Wednesday, March 18, the roundtable “Current Challenges in Migration Governance: The Role of the Local Level” was held, organized by IICSAL (FLACSO-CONICET) as part of the second meeting of the LAC-EU Doctoral Network in Buenos Aires.

The LAC-EU Doctoral Network is an initiative funded by the European Commission through its Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions, and its aim is to provide a better understanding of recent transformations in LAC, contributing to update and renovate bi-regional relations between the EU and LAC, and to confront current global challenges. In this context, the second meeting of the network was hosted by FLACSO Argentina and brought together researchers and doctoral candidates from more than 16 academic institutions across Latin America and Europe for three days of discussions, thematic workshops, and progress review sessions of the twelve fellows’ research projects.

The roundtable featured the participation of the Director of IICSAL (FLACSO-CONICET), Dr. Mercedes Botto; Dr. Harald Bauder, Professor in the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies and the Graduate Program in Immigration and Integration Studies at Toronto Metropolitan University; and Dr. Juan Carlos Triviño-Salazar, Assistant Professor of Public Policy in the Department of Political and Social Sciences at Universitat Pompeu Fabra. The session was moderated by Alice Blukacz, LAC-EU fellow and doctoral researcher at IICSAL and Universitat Pompeu Fabra.

In the context of contemporary challenges in migration governance, the discussion focused on the role of local governments and institutions in ensuring access to social and migration-related rights in cities in different contexts around the world. First, Dr. Mercedes Botto presented a comparative analysis of the experiences of the City of Buenos Aires and Santiago de Chile in responding to recent migration flows from Venezuela. Dr. Harald Bauder then introduced the Soli*City project, a research and public policy initiative aimed at researching and promoting the concept of solidarity cities worldwide. Finally, Dr. Juan Carlos Triviño-Salazar discussed the case of Barcelona as an example of local policies designed to strengthen the inclusion of migrants.

The presentations highlighted the importance of migration regularization processes in ensuring effective access to rights, as well as the central role played by local institutions and actors in the implementation of inclusive policies. The discussion also emphasized the need to strengthen the interaction between institutional frameworks, public policy design, and implementation mechanisms in order to promote the social integration of migrants at the local level.

This activity formed part of the academic exchange initiatives promoted by the LAC-EU network and reflects IICSAL (FLACSO-CONICET)’s commitment to fostering debate and knowledge production on the contemporary challenges of migration governance at the regional and global levels.