 So, first of all, hello, everyone. Welcome to the second online edition of eBay's research seminars. Thank you all for coming. This version is, in fact, a collaborative lecture hosted by eBay and Gritim, the interdisciplinary research group on immigration at the Pompeo Fabra. My name is Charlie Roger. I'm an assistant professor at eBay and one of the hosts with Les Yann Daniels of eBay's research seminar series. It's my pleasure today to introduce you to Thomas Lecombe. Thomas is a CNRS research fellow in geography, an associate researcher at the International Migration Institute at Oxford University, and associate editor at Migration Studies. Needless to say, with a CV like that, he is an expert on international issues. He's done extensive work, especially on transnationalism in Northern Africa and has published a number of critical studies of migrant networks and diaspora communities in that region. Today, however, he's going to be speaking with us about new research that he's doing on city networks and migration governance. Thomas, we're very happy to have you here. And, of course, we are very happy to have all of you, our listeners here. Before we begin, a few notes on procedure. Thomas is going to be speaking for about 40 to 45 minutes, and while he's doing so, we've temporarily muted everyone, both microphone and video, to ensure that there's minimal disruptions. You should be able to write, I believe, in the text box to the right-hand side of your screens if there's any need for clarification, but I ask you to hold all substantive questions to the end of our talk. Now, once Thomas is done, we're going to open up the virtual floor for discussion, and at this point, the audience will be unmuted and you'll be able to ask whatever you like. To do so, you may again write in the text box to the right, and I'll be happy to read your question to everyone. Alternatively, you can use the button at the bottom of your screens that should appear at the bottom at the very least, which allows you to put your hand up, and when you're called upon, please unmute yourself and ask the question that you have. I think that's it from me for the moment. I'll be back again to moderate during the question period for now. Thank you, everyone, and thank you, Thomas, whenever you're ready. Yeah, thank you for Charlie. So, let me know how can I share with you the PowerPoint now. Oh, it's on screen. Okay, thank you very much. Right, seems to work. Okay, so for me, it's going to be the first online seminar for this lockdown era. So, obviously, I'm doing it from home. So, if you hear strange noise like my children fighting or the bell ringing or anything else, it's normal. We have to, I suppose, we have to get used to it. Right, so thank you very much for giving me this opportunity to present this for me. It's a new research. When I started this year and a half ago when I arrived here in Oxford as a fellow of the Meson Française of Oxford. So, indeed, as you mentioned, I'm also an associate researcher at Compass, not IMI, International Migration Institute, doesn't exist anymore. It's my former research institute here in Oxford. And so, I'm a former research fellow at Migranter in Poitiers. And so, as I mentioned, it's a new research and it's an ongoing research. It's not done yet. So, I'm going to present a work in progress. I might have some issues, some aspects which are a bit vague and you will see that it will be especially the case for the Spanish case. But I will go back to it. I'm more than happy to hear about what you have to say about your experience of the city mobilizations in Spain. Right. So, first of all, a bit of a bigger view of what I mean by city network and their recent rise around migration issues over the last two decades. Well, it's the process which started a bit earlier, let's say in the 90s. But from the 90s onward, these city networks, so it means by city networks, I mean group of organization of cities talking together and working together around migration, you have a range of city networks. It's a very diverse landscape, from very informal conversation to very institutionalized networks. So, it's very varied. But yeah, you get these former ones, the first ones created in Europe in the late 80s, early 90s. From this period onward, migration was pretty much where it was readily present in the activities. It was but it's accelerated in the early 2000s, at the time when the states, but also the European Union and other international organizations started to get interested in cities as a major player for the implementation of integration policies. That's what we call the local term of integration policies. And these local terms went along with the multiplication of city networks and most of them were supported by external funding like EU funding or the Council of Europe or other international organizations. But from the, let's say mid 2000s onward, it started a bit before, but early mid 2000s onward, you have a new generation of networks, city networks, which are much more militant, much more advocating for alternative forms of migration policies. And this mushrooming of such militant networks developed after the series of migration crisis or migration policy crisis, I would say between 2010 and 2015. And at a time when the migration became for cities in Europe and other parts of the world, a more pressing issue. Just to illustrate what I'm just, I'm saying, right. So this graph is based on an inventory of migration related city networks. I could find around the world, I found 53 of them. And in blue, you get what I've called these co-opted networks, which have been more institutionalized, more supported by EU and other international organizations, and which are much more focused on integration issues, integration of long term residents. And in red, you get this new generation of much more militant networks, which I've called grassroots networks. And you can see that this is a generation, but forget about the one in the 80s and 90s, we can come back if you want, but it's another story. So in this modern time, the contemporary times, it's really started in the early 2000s. For example, with a network like the sanctuary cities movement in the UK, which started in 2004. And as you can see in the last part now, since the 2010, there are more militant networks which are being created than co-opted or institutionalized ones. And of course, the literature so far has been much more interested in this very institutionalized form of networks, like Euro cities, like Erbach. Well, I will present you a number of these EU led and city networks at a later stage. But so far, yes, the literature was much more focused on this kind of things. And the militant networks, which are more recent, probably the reasons why the scholarship has focused less on those later generations. So my question, I would like to address today as a following. So I just would like to give you another view of these militant networks and how they emerged. And one of the questions I would like to address is how do they manage to upscale the scope of their activism at the international level? And the question was the reason why I'm asking for that just very quickly. So I'm going to present my research based on the current fieldwork we are undertaking with a team of researchers on France, Italy and Spain. Spain is not on the map yet, because as I said to you, it's an ongoing research. So I haven't been able to really clearly map the current networks in Spain. But here you get two examples, the Envita in France, Association Nationale des villes et territoires accueillantes, and the RECOSOL network. So it's the network of solidary communes or municipalities in Italy. And as you say, you can see there are more national associations focusing around national issues. Whereas the core team networks are much more international, and I'm showing you three examples of them. And as you can see, there are pan-European networks. Like you get three of them here. You get the permanent representation of local authorities at the Council of Europe. But another network which has been supported by the Council of Europe, which is called Intercultural Cities, and I've added Urbax. Urbax is another initiative which has been funded by the European Union. Another major player I haven't shown on this map, but it's key. It's called Eurocities. The definition and the actual difference between co-opted and grassroots networks are sometimes very difficult to disentangle. Because, for example, Eurocities, which was a very spontaneous network, which was created in the late 80s in Europe, it was a network of what we call secondary cities. It is to say, cities which are not the capital of their states, but cities which are very large, cities of their respective countries, like Barcelona, Manchester, like Lyon in France, and Mannheim in Germany, for example. And these networks, which were initially very spontaneous, grassroots, meant to voice the interest, and we have voices as a point of view of cities in the building of the European Union. These networks became gradually incorporated into European institutions. To say that, things are often not as clear as that. Just to close this bracket on Eurocities, I'm not going to mention it anymore. I would like to focus on this new generation of migration-related militant networks around these three, for example, of France, Italy, and Spain. And at the later stage, I will present an ongoing project, an initiative which is supported by key mayors like Leo Lucca, Orlando in Palermo, or Ada Calau in Barcelona, but also major NGOs in the Mediterranean. And they want to build up a cross-Mediterranean network based on this activism, and this initiative is called the Palermo Charter Platform Process. And presenting this initiative will enable me to reflect upon the possibility of upscaling these grassroots initiatives. Okay, so just a brief overview, just to complicate a little bit more of this landscape of militant city networks. As I said, I'm going back, I've got two major categories, the co-opted network supported by external institutional organizations, and the grassroots militant networks, which are much more spontaneous. But within these certain categories, you've got two sub-categories, and you've got what I call the city diplomacy networks. I mentioned these euro-cities and its constellation. It's a very large subset of networks included in this, around this overarching euro-cities institution. We've got another example, which is a global parliament of mayors, which is a global organization around an agenda around the voicings. It's a voice of global cities, I would say. So very large cities, and they mobilize around the issues of commerce, of global capitalism, of environment, and migration is part of it as well. But there is this second particular sub-categories of militant networks, which are much more based around national issues, and they are much more militant also because they want to voice an agenda, which is clearly to formulate an alternative migration policy. So that is a big difference with former co-opted networks. They are much more focused on the welcoming of new immigrants, asylum seekers, and also the formulation of alternative migration agenda, whereas the older more established networks are much more focused on integration agendas. And also more co-opted, of course, because of their nature, they are much more confrontational in their way of acting. We've got much less critical, we've got to state policies. All right, so among the... I caught in this slide a few examples of militant networks. So the Association Nationale des Villiers Territoires accueillant in France, I'm going to get back to it in a moment. The commune hospitalier in Belgium is another example. The sanctuary cities in the UK and the cities of sanctuary in the US, so very close names, but a big difference in their remit. And we've got the fearless cities in Europe, which is a rare example of militant networks with an international dimension. And you get also other networks. We'll get back to them in the conclusion. Okay, so let's start with my first example, the Association Nationale des Villiers Territoires accueillant. So we got to go back to 2016. So we are in the midst of this so-called migration crisis in France with the arrival of asylum seekers from the Middle East and Africa. And we are in the midst of the jungle issue, the crisis of the jungle of Calais. So the jungle of Calais has a long-standing history. It started in the late 90s. It's a semi-informal camp. You probably know a little bit about it as well. So it's a non-camp. It's a de facto camp which has been acknowledged by local authorities because they had no choice, no other choice. It was a place which was the Calais jungle left to associations to gather the migrants which were scattered in the cities. And they said, okay, you can put them, well, they tried to put them on the outskirts of the city of Calais. It was, yeah, it was a very damp area, very unwelcoming and with a lot of insularity. And right, so the idea was to gather the migrants in the same place in order to better control them and to get rid of them from the city center. That was the basic idea. And Damien Carême, who is the mayor of Grande Saint, is a city which is very close to Calais. It's near Dunkerque. So it's a few kilometers from Calais. And Damien Carême is the mayor from the Green Party, the party ecologist. And he said, he wanted to have a counter an anti-Calais and anti-jungle policy. And he decided to set up a camp in the city, but a camp which would adopt the HCR standards, which was a coup. It was a very, it's also, well, it attracted a lot of attention because the UNHCR camp in the mindset of the French people was designed for Africa, for countries in, for the third world. It was a third world camp. It was a camp for countries at war. It was associated with another, another landscape, another mindset. It was very foreign to all. So the fact of having an HCR camp on the territory of France was quite a shock for the public opinion. And at the same time, it was a response to the Calais mayor. And Damien Carême was surrounded by a series of mayor. There was a proto network, very local network of mayors supporting this kind of city, of, of, of, of initiative. So the camp itself didn't last for, for long, a year or a year and a half at most. And it was destroyed by a fire soon after its opening, because there was a fight in the camps. So it was, it was really rapidly destroyed. But still, the traction it produced in the public opinion, it managed to attract the attention of other mayors. And they started a conversation around how to promote an alternative way of welcoming these immigrants. So the second step was October 2016, when the Calais jungle was dismantled. And at best moments, the authorities, the national authorities, and it's important, it's, it was handled by national authorities, decided to scatter the population of Calais, of the jungle in all over the French territory, including its small villages in a, on a voluntary basis. So the mayors in the, the French mayor say, okay, I'm happy to receive a family or two, or a few people from the jungle, and, and opening a dedicated place to host them. So the dismantling of the Calais jungle triggered, was scattered and raised awareness of the welcoming of immigrants, including in municipalities which had never really hosted any of them. So it's, it has this, it had also this effect among mayors. All right, so December, 2017, you got another reaction. It was the coming of winter. And you had a lot of mayors with small immigrant population, small or large immigrant population to manage, but very few means to do so, very few resources. And the government was reluctant to, to leave to, to, to these two mayors, the possibility to have a resource to, to, to host them. So there was a petition, which was signed by mayors of large cities like Paris, Strasbourg, Lille, Lyon, Bordeaux, and, and Grand Saint, of course as well. And in September, the year after September, it says the key step when the Envita was created. And so it's Damien Caret, who is the leader of this association still now. And he surrounded around him 30 mayors, around the, the notion and the agenda they have tried to promote is the one of unconditional, so non conditional welcoming. So we, they state that they have to welcome anybody, whatever their, their immigrant status, whatever the gender race, and so on and so forth. And, and give them, well, good conditions to, to, to live, provide them with services and so on and so forth. In more recently, in October 2019, the Envita organized its key events, which in partnership with OCU, which is the organization for a university, the organization for a university, universal citizenship, which promotes also freedom of circulation and, and the universal passport as well. And this event, it re-embedded Envita in a more broader international landscape because they invited the representative from the city of New York, the city of, of Wagadugu in Africa and other key mayors like that in the, from all around the world. Right, so now here we go. It's not, it hasn't been very active for the moment because just as soon after that, the, the, more recently you had the, the, the elections, the municipal elections. We had the, the first turn just before the lockdown. And so far, the, the Envita is like all of us, it's in lockdown. Right. So I'm moving on to Italy. Italy has a very rich history of, of city mobilization. It started in the very early 90s, against the background of the Balkan war and especially the coming of people from Albania. And up until 1990, the Italy, you have to say, no, that up to that date, the, of course, the, the Italy was a country which signed the, the convent, the Geneva convention with regard to, to, to refugees and asylum. But he had, it had a restricted, restricted close. We, so he would acknowledge, there's country would acknowledge refugees only from the European continent, up until 1990. So it was a, there was a geographical restrictions to the implementation of this convention. In 1990, the country canceled, removed this restriction and to open up the possibility to, to, to manage asylum and refugees from all over the world. So they have to put up very quickly a system to, to manage the refugee populations coming from the Balkans. And, and very early since 1992, they engage with the municipalities, the local authorities where the pivotal level at which this, the welcoming of refugees would be managed. So they set up a network which was, which is called the SPAR, SPRAR, which is a kind of institution organizing and managing the, the activities and the initiatives of cities. We regard to the, the hosting of refugee population. Right. So, yeah, so the SPRAR itself was created, if I remember, I'm sorry, but it's part of my, the reason why it's an ongoing research. Sometimes these elements escape me. So, yeah, the, I think it was finalized in 2002, so 10 years after the, it was really formalized in 2002. In 2003, in parallel, you have the creation of an association of, of cities, which was called RECOSOL. So it's interesting this, the network of Solidaries Commune, the Commune Solidaire. They, this network was created not so much for immigration and so on, but more for decentralized cooperation with cities in the south. So for implementing, twinning partnerships and development partnerships with cities in the south. But in the context of the the evolution of the migration policy of Italy, they became more and also in the context of the, the so-called, well, migration crisis, migration policy crisis, I would call them, in 2008 and in 2011, you had the, the, the Marinostrum crisis in Italy. So against these backgrounds, the RECOSOL became more and more involved on migration issues and much more vocal on migration issues as well. It also had a partnership with AGSI, which is a very quite important pro-immigrant association in Italy. And right, so in this, in this background, there was a shift from a decentralized collaboration to migration issues within the RECOSOL. In, so the following, so the, all right, I get to check something, just, sorry about that. Yeah, so, yeah, as I said, so the, the, the formalization of the SPRA, it's 2002 and 2003. Right, so yeah, so because during this period between 2008 and 2015, you had a transformation of the, the, the asylum system and the SPRA was less and less supported by national authorities. They, they underwent major cut in their funding and in parallel, the funding was re-arranted to our security, security measures, and also a privatization of the asylum management. Possibly you, you, you might have heard about a scandal which in Rome where people discovered that the, the, the centers for hosting immigrants was managed by the mafia organization. So the, the more and more the, the management of asylum population and asylum seekers was delegated to private companies, to hotels, to, well, mafia, pseudo mafia groups and so on and so forth. And also you had a proliferation of, of what they call the CARA, closed detention centers, so much more security-oriented detention centers. So in these backgrounds, again these backgrounds as SPRA was, was, became a kind of a secondary institution for the, from the point of view of the, of the, of the state. Right, so in, in 2015, you, you got the, so the mayor of Palermo, Leo Luca Orlando, published the, the Palermo Charter. So I don't know if you had the occasion to have a look at the Palermo Charter. It's a very militant text, very progressive and he, it promotes the idea that circulation should be a human rights. It should be conceived as a human rights. And again these backgrounds, the, the visa system should be canceled and the, the, the, the system of universal passports should be promoted. And Orlando Leo Luca Orlando is a very influential mayor and he also, yeah, he, he's got, he, this kind of, of positioning also for, for local reasons. He wants to promote the idea of Palermo as an open city, as very prone to, to defend human rights in order to move away from the image of a mafia city. So he's coming, he's very sensitive to, very close to, to, to, to civil society organizations, but also very well embedded into the networks of city diplomacy around the world. He has strong connections in particular, in particular with, with Germany or Spain, like with people like Ada Colau, Colau in, in, in Barcelona, for example. But, but Orlando, Leo Luca Orlando is not the only personality mayor informed in the, on migration issues. And you also, we can also mention, you probably heard about the mayor of, of Riacce, Loc Lucano in the, in the, in the south of, of Italy. Lucano, who promoted a system of free house for immigrants who would like to come and settle in his village for, with his family. And Riacce, in Riacce, Lucano is also a mayor who comes from the civil society organizations. He was an activist in human rights organizations. Another mayor who was very famous was, uh, Nicolini in Lampedusa, also embedded in different initiatives, a pro-immigrant initiative in around the world. And another mayor who was, more known at the national, the international level, but still Mr. Catiari in, in Venice. Venice, who declared Venice as a city of refuge. He was a forerunner in this, in this area. In the, in the, I think it started in the nineties in Venice. Right. So the, and then we arrived at 2018, which is a turning point, of course, as you can imagine, 2018. And the arrival and the, the, the, the government who was led by the five star movement. And the government included Matteo Salvini as the ministry of interior of Italy. So coming from the far right, Italian far right. And, uh, of course, Matteo Salvini, very early on, uh, implemented a very security oriented and restricted, uh, uh, program. And one of the first thing he did was to almost, um, close the SPRA system. Uh, he changed the name, it became the, the SPROIMI system. And he limited the, the activities of local authorities and the initiative he could take to statutory refugees. So he excluded the population of asylum seekers from, uh, these, uh, from the remit of the, uh, of the local authorities. And, um, and also in 2018, he had the parliament to adopt the decree, a decree which was called the Salvini decree, uh, which cancels basically the, the most important, uh, measure including the division decree is to cancel, to remove the possibility for asylum seekers to register in their host, uh, municipality. They would not be entitled anymore to register at the, uh, in their host municipality, municipality, which means, I think it's the same thing that you will confirm in Spain. But if you're not registered in your host municipality, it means that it de facto excludes you from the municipal services, uh, the support the, the, the, the municipality could, could provide, uh, for, to immigrants and their, and their children from schools, etc. Um, you, we had example in the press of children of immigrants, which could not go to, um, to the, to, to the, uh, to school meals. They, they were not allowed anymore to go to the, the, the cantina of the, of the school. Right. Um, so of course this decree, uh, and it's this, the two dimension of the Salvini policy, uh, attacking both the, the system, the, the, the role of local authorities in the management of migrant population and attacking the rights of immigrants. It, uh, triggered a movement of mobilization of, of cities around all over, all over Italy. Um, right. With my colleague, uh, Cristina Del Gaggio from Grenovo, uh, we tried to map this mobilization, all the cities, several hundreds of cities, uh, in, in Italy, who declared that they would not implement the Salvini decree. So, uh, well, there is a range of mobilization from a pure statement to an active opposition, of course. So not every city is reacted the same. But what's, it is important, uh, to, to note here is that, um, first this movement, uh, is not specifically, uh, left movement of left cities. So it's, it's, it's also included a lot of right-wing cities because, uh, they regard, consider that, uh, the, the, um, removing immigrants from the registries, the city registration would, would be a huge problem for them, for the management of the population. And also, even including for their control, they, because they would not know anymore where this immigrant population would be. Uh, they would be scattered in informal squads. It would be very difficult for them to, to manage. But the second, the second thing I would like to underline here is that a large part of these cities, uh, involved in the Salvini decree movement, are cities which were part of both the SPRA movements by the SPRA and the recosal, uh, associations and the, uh, the network of solidarity. So there is all this, actually in Italy, there, there is a whole sedimentation of, um, oh, I'm sorry. I think I, yeah, right. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I forgot to, to, to show you the map in question. Right. It's better now. Okay. So the, as I was saying, there was a whole sedimentation in the history of city mobilization of Italy since the early 90s. And, and it's not, it's not coming from nowhere. It's a, it's a very long story. And, and now through this anti-Salvini movement, all the, these sedimentary layers, they, they come together and they, uh, they coalesced into this movement. Right. Um, okay. Now, Spain, I'm going to bear very, very brief because I don't have that much information about Spain. Um, also because I'm working closely with a doctoral student on the case of Spain, which because of the lockdown has not been, she has not been able to do the fieldwork. So she will come and probably she, I hope she will see you, uh, in, uh, in, in, in September when she starts her field study in, in Barcelona. But, uh, we can discuss, we'd be very happy to, to have a conversation about that with you. But as far as I know, what characterizes the Spanish situation is first and foremost, the specific role of Barcelona, uh, which is the most when I, in my, in my inventory of, uh, city-related, uh, migration-related networks, I found out that Barcelona is the city which is the, the, with the, the largest amount of connections. Uh, it's, it is, I think it, it is part of 12 different networks, but also the, the city is the host of the United Cities and local government, which is a representative body for local authorities at the UN level. Um, so it, it has, and it has maintained a long-standing policy with regard, and also a long-standing diplomacy, city diplomacy. It, it has developed its own international agenda for a long time. And I suppose it has, it is connected with the specific, uh, uh, policy situation in Spain, with, uh, Catalonia, uh, uh, willing to, to develop a policy and a position in the world, which is differs from the one of Madrid and the, and the central government. And, but what's interesting is that there seems to be, uh, you will tell me, uh, but there seems to be a competition between Barcelona and Madrid, because Madrid, I found, is also one of the top, uh, connected cities, uh, in the world, right? It's part of the, the, the top five of the, the cities, which is the largest amount of connection with, with, uh, with, um, city networks. Um, so there must be a kind of competition and I don't know if competition or emulation or whatever you call it, but we can see about that. Right. So, um, what I've, we have found out is the existence of two major network, uh, one which has been launched by Barcelona itself in 2015 or once again, in the background of the migration crisis and so on and so forth is a resettlement of, of, uh, refugees from, uh, hotspots and Greece. And, uh, so 2015, the Barcelona launched this Ciudades Refugeo, sorry for my accent, and which includes 25 cities in, including, uh, Pamplona, uh, I don't remember, uh, which ones. Um, and, and the second one is, well, is the, uh, Red de Milipios, the Acolita de Refugados, which has been sponsored by the FEMP, which is a national, uh, official association of municipalities in Spain. So you get the Ciudades Refugeo on the one hand, there is a red, uh, the Acolita on the other hand. There seems to be once again a kind of competition between them, uh, because I read in the press that, um, members of the Ciudades Refugeo were criticizing the FEMP for being inactive on, on, on, uh, on the migration issues. And they criticized the FEMP for being passive with regard to money, uh, to, to migration issues. And it seems to me that's not sure, right? Maybe I'm wrong. That is the red, the Red de Milipios, the Acolita, uh, has been built up in your reaction to the Ciudades Refugeo. So it's a, uh, it's a position that I must confirm, but I'm not sure. Uh, and part of the, this red, I don't know what is the link exactly. Uh, it's not clear to me yet, but, uh, you get one regional specific, uh, red network, sorry, which is the one in, in the province of Valencia, which is, we will see extremely important. It played a major role in the, uh, the crisis of the Aquarius in, uh, more recently, uh, the Aquarius bot, uh, in 2018, uh, we'll talk about that. So Spain, um, more, well, also a strong activism with regard to, to, to migration and cities. Uh, and which way, uh, which is rotating around the, the issue of, uh, and there's a place of Barcelona, uh, and in its place in the diplomacy of cities. Right. And finally, I would like to have a word that present briefly, uh, what's going on at the international level. So trying to link up, uh, the two forms of mobilization in Spain, in Italy, and possibly they're trying to try to, trying to expand it to France as well. The implementation of the Palermo Charter platform process. So it has a, it has also a history which is connected to the search and rescue operation. So the search and rescue operation in which operate, uh, large, uh, NGOs in the Mediterranean with their boats, including the, uh, the Aquarius, the Aquarius, which is the boat managed by SOS Mediterranean and, uh, uh, doctors without borders and, but also a lot of, uh, uh, different, uh, organizations. And so initially this search and rescue operation was, uh, was coordinated by a European authorities and especially the Italian coast guards. But from May 2017, the EU and Italy under the pressure of Italy started to, to, to transfer the, the, the coordination of the operation to Libyan authorities and especially to Libyan coast guards. So if a boat, uh, rescued, uh, uh, immigrants, they would have to refer to Libyan coast guards instead of to Italian coast guards in order to, to, to know where they could, um, they could, uh, dock and, uh, and, and release these immigrants. Right. So of course the, uh, the, the NGOs were very happy about that. And that's one of the reasons why it triggered the Aquarius, uh, event, since there's a boat Aquarius, uh, which, uh, wanted to, to dock in, uh, in CCE and it was refused its, its landing. And, uh, and, uh, for, for several days or weeks, they, uh, they remained and show where to go. And, and the city of Valencia backed up on the network of, of cities I mentioned, uh, uh, in the previous slide. So the Valencia network of, of, of, uh, reception of immigrants, they, uh, they say, okay, we are, we are happy to, to, to have you and to have you on board. And, uh, so they, they managed you to solve the, uh, situation like that. But the, for, for the, um, for the NGOs, it was, uh, an alarm, uh, an alarm call also because in 2018, you had Matteo Salvini who, who, um, who came to power. So it was a very difficult situation for them. And the, they started the criminalization of the mobilization of NGOs. So the, um, the, the NGOs were afraid of losing the capacity to, to, to handle, uh, their, their, their own activity and also to be forced to, to bring back the, uh, the, the refugees to Libya. So they decided to launch a conversation. They contacted the first people, the person they contacted was Orlando in Palermo and say, okay, how can we deal with this situation? We cannot talk with, uh, European authorities anymore. We cannot talk to national authorities and Italian, uh, uh, authorities in particular anymore. So let's, let's try to have a conversation with cities. And so that's a big, very beginning of the, uh, the, uh, this process. And Orlando, with its, based on its network, contacted, uh, mayors in Germany, uh, in Berlin in particular, he contacted Adakola in, in, uh, Barcelona. And Adakola, uh, came to Rome in February 2018. She had to meet the Pope and she said to, to Orlando and other Italian mayors, uh, to say, okay, I'm coming to, to, to Rome. So what about having a, a meeting together? And so that's when they decided to launch the Palermo platform process. And including now in this, uh, uh, process, you got a consortium of NGOs, like so I have got a list of them here. European alternative emergency homebolts, vanilla governance platform, but you also, the, the major ones actually are open arms, of course, uh, in Germany. And also, um, uh, what's your, uh, medal arm. You got to, yeah. So these are the key players. And on the city side, you got Berlin, Valencia, Sao Paulo, uh, Syracuse, Milan, Naples, Barcelona and Bologna, uh, you, and they are trying to expand to other cities, including French cities. They are, uh, move, uh, movements. Uh, they trying to, they're trying to approach and beta. So for other moments, I don't, do not have, uh, a lot of information because they want to keep it secret. They don't want really to disclose what's going on, which is understandable because, uh, it's really, uh, it's a tentative process. I mean, it's, um, they, they, they don't want to disclose any information that would be invalidated in the, in the few, uh, in the days to come. So it's, uh, so that's why we, where we are. But, uh, at some point, they want to organize, they were supposed to organize in June, this year, a large conference in, um, in Italy. Uh, but, uh, it will take place more in, uh, after, after the lockdown, so after this summer. Um, and so the idea, the basic idea of this, uh, initiative is to secure for these, the NGOs, uh, safe harbors places where they could land, they were, they could dock and, uh, and release immigrants. Uh, so it's how to secure the, the sea to land, uh, transfers of immigrants and not in Libya, uh, avoiding Libya, of course. Right. So that's in what is tracing. So finally in a few words, I would like to conclude, uh, few elements that we learned through these three four case studies, uh, about these militant networks. So first they were created at national level, uh, in the, um, around issues of, uh, national political issues. So the college angle in France, the Salvini decree in, uh, in, um, in Italy, and, uh, so the, uh, the specifics, uh, place of, uh, uh, Barcelona in, uh, in the Spanish context, probably the Aquarius, the Aquarius crisis in, uh, so it's a Mediterranean crisis in, um, in Spain as well. Right. So it's, it's per by national issues, but behind these national issues, you have, you, you always see the pivotal role of key mayors like Damien Carem in Constant, Leo Luca, Orlando in Palermo, Ada Colau in Barcelona, and other people. But what is interesting is that these mayors are never mayors from the capital, uh, of, of the states, of their respective states. It's always other cities. And the three third elements I would like to, to highlight, uh, in my talk is the role of civil society organizations. Uh, they are just a bit less in France where it's, uh, the, the, the OCU movement, so the, the organization of also university, university citizenship, it came a bit later. Uh, but for the other, um, the other countries, the civil society's actors are always present. And, um, the, uh, so open arms in, uh, in, uh, in Spain, you got, uh, the AGSI I mentioned in Italy, uh, you got the, uh, so, yes, they are, they are, they always play a very influential role. And it's, it's particularly the case when it comes to upscaling these militant, uh, movements. Uh, through the Mediterranean example, we have seen that these search and rescue NGOs are the key players for, uh, behind the upscaling of the, uh, Mediterranean mobilization of cities around migration. Right. Uh, so I will, my, my, my, I will stop here. Uh, thank you very much for listening. And now I'm very looking forward to our, uh, conversation and your questions. Thank you.