Cities and Migration

Overview

The Zolberg Institute is engaged in work at the global, regional, national and local levels regarding cities and mobility. The Institute will support and produce research studies and policy papers, sponsor conferences, engage students in experiential learning, and offer a range of courses for undergraduate and graduate students. We will focus in particular on New York City and its immigrant communities.

---

International collaborations

Research Platform on Cities, Migration and Membership

The Research Platform brings together a global community of scholars to research and address pressing social, economic and governance challenges relating to mobility and citizenship in urban areas.

Organizing the international community to respond to environmental mobility

The project proposes that a multi-stakeholder platform, constituted by multilateral organizations, states, and civil society, be established to help meet the responsibilities of the international community for responding to environmental mobility. Prevention, response and solution would be conceived of as constituting a continuum addressed early and comprehensively, not as separate activities within the province of a particular agency or agencies with action triggered usually only at the crisis stage; and international action would supplement, not replace or pre-empt, the activities of regions, sub-regions and States.

Africa Climate Mobility Initiative

The Zolberg Institute is a stakeholder in the Africa Climate Mobility Initiative (ACMI), a joint effort of the African Union Commission, the World Bank, and the United Nations. The ACMI aims to generate political momentum, a common policy agenda, and partnerships for tackling the challenges and opportunities of climate mobility in Africa. Leading up to COP27 in Egypt, the ACMI is preparing a comprehensive Report entitled “Shaping the Future of Mobility in Africa: Addressing Climate-Forced Displacement & Migration” and an Agenda for Action that will distill priorities for the next decade. Zolberg is contributing expertise to the process of analysis and the development of policy recommendations underpinning the Report, and a partner to the ACMI’s effort to build a continent-wide Community of Practice in 2022 that connects change agents in the continent—including cities and knowledge institutions—with international partners to advance research, advocacy and action on climate adaptation and mobility.

Cities as Global Actors

The working thesis of this project, led by Dr. Colleen Thouez, is that local governance can strengthen global governance; local leadership can lead to more informed policy-making nationally and globally, and through more responsive governance, publics’ confidence in their elected officials can be reinvigorated.  Activities of the project include:  (1) providing strategic and analytical support to locally-driven policy dialogues that influence national and inter-regional policies and partnerships between Africa and Europe on human mobility; (2) providing strategic and analytical support to help advance cities as global actors; (3) producing empirical research and public policy guidance to French cities on migrant and refugee rights and empowerment, including through comparative research in the United States; and (4) supporting advocacy at the United Nations for greater participation of cities in UN processes, with a focus on progress reporting with regards to the Global Compact on Migration and Global Compact on Refugees.