Multiscalar and In/Formal: Infrastructuring Refugee Arrival in Disempowered Cities

This article explores how refugee arrival is infrastructured in declining cities in the US, France, and Germany, examining whether urban shrinkage affects local practices of facilitating the arrival and emplacement of newcomers. In doing so, it reveals how refugee arrival is infrastructured across scales and by a bricolage of actors operating on a spectrum of in/formality. While a great deal of arrival infrastructuring takes place locally, the municipalities themselves were found to be notably absent from many processes. As a result of long-term decline and limited municipal budgets, local non-governmental actors, including refugees themselves, have been found to play important roles alongside regional and national foundations in shaping arrival in the cities under investigation. While bottom-up action was found to have considerable impact through various interventions, its influence was constrained as its institutionalization was contingent upon funding from external entities such as foundations. The article introduces the concept of multiscalar arrival infrastructuring to showcase these complex interdependencies and to question the power imbalances and competing interests among actors shaping arrival infrastructures for newcomers in downscaled and disempowered places.