Urban (In)Justice and Migrants with Precarious Legal Status. Between Sanctuary Practices and Internal Borders in the City

Studies on global justice have analyzed inequalities in the dynamics of international migration in different areas, such as border control, transit migration, or access to international protection. More recently, however, it has been emphasized that forms of injustice against migrants go beyond these spheres and also occur after settlement. The large presence of migrants in urban contexts has made the city a privileged enclave for the analysis of urban justice. Until recently, the state has been the dominant framework for the empirical and normative discussion of international migration. In the last two decades, however, this perspective has changed significantly with the so-called local turn and critiques of methodological nationalism, which have spurred interest in analyzing urban initiatives in migration governance. This chapter focuses on the inclusive and exclusionary policies towards migrants with partial and precarious legal status that have been articulated by cities in recent decades and their implications for different dimensions of urban (in)justice.