Politics of adjustment: rural mayors and the accommodation of refugees

ABSTRACTThis article approaches the process of opening accommodation centres from the perspective of mayors in rural municipalities. Although the allocation and accommodation of refugees is a competence of the nation-state, it is in the realm of municipalities where reception policies transform into social practices. Mayors have to negotiate socio-political conflicts on the vertical and horizontal dimensions against the background of uneven decision-making structures stemming from multi-governance arrangements and conflicting claims of local citizens. Through qualitative interviews with mayors from rural municipalities in four European countries (Austria, France, Germany and Italy), we show that even though national asylum systems differ, mayors assume similar handling strategies to defuse conflicts and increase acceptance. We introduce the concept of ‘politics of adjustment’ to describe the simultaneous process of people adapting to a new situation as well as the alteration of implementation practices according to the needs of the municipality. Mayors modify the tight legal framework of reception policies to find a local consensus on accommodation, whilst steering the socio-political process of demarcation and othering that leaves imaginaries on rural whiteness and homogeneity unchallenged.