Refugee Integration in Solidarity Cities in Latin America & the EU

This analysis approaches the failure of European consensus on asylum and integration policy through comparing local integration outputs with Latin American local integration efforts. Latin America functions as the comparative region since the states developed a common regional framework, which aims to support the international protection of refugees. This work presents a solution-oriented approach, characterizing the integration policy outputs and discussing the results in a local, national and the two regional contexts. The results reveal that predominantly positive integration policies can be attributed to the local level, in the Latin American as well as in the European region. However, the national level is of particular importance when looking at the rights of refugees, which is why a strong regional level can function as a support for the local level. Thereby, restrictive asylum policies imply crucial consequences with regard to refugee integration on the one hand. On the other hand, regional European networks seem to encourage local European integration policies.