Celia Bensiali-Hadaud (she/her) is a PhD candidate in Political Science at Concordia University and a member of the Institute for Research on Migration and Society (IRMS). Her doctoral research examines how global cities in Canada and Europe sustain inclusive urban policies toward migrant populations amid increasingly restrictive national and international migration regimes.
Celia’s research is grounded in extensive experience at the intersection of academia and public administration. Prior to beginning her PhD, she worked at the City of Montreal’s Service for Diversity and Social Inclusion, contributing to policy initiatives addressing housing insecurity and the inclusion of marginalized and unhoused populations. She has also served as a researcher and coordinator within the international research partnership TRYSPACES, leading interdisciplinary teams on youth and migrant participation in urban public life across multiple global cities.
As a francophone immigrant woman scholar committed to public service, Celia brings an intersectional and justice-oriented perspective to her work. She bridges scholarly inquiry and policy practice to advance democratic inclusion and social justice in urban governance. Her doctoral research is supported by the SSHRC Doctoral Fellowship and the Bridging Divides Fellowship.
Reconfiguring Urban Citizenship: Municipal ID Cards and Multilevel Governance in Montréal, Barcelona and Copenhagen
My thesis focuses on municipal identity card initiatives that were created to enable residents without status or migrants with precarious status — asylum seekers, rejected asylum seekers, holders of limited temporary permits, international students excluded from many services, people whose visas have expired — to access essential municipal services. These measures, which were introduced in American cities in the late 2000s, have gained momentum over the past decade, in a context of tightening national immigration policies (Fogelman 2024). Their growth is based partly on regional and international municipal networks, mobilized by cities to refine their strategies and strengthen their political weight.
The literature has focused on the effects of these networks on European integration policies (Gebhardt and Güntner 2022; Caponio 2021, 2022; Lacroix 2021). However, few studies examine their role in local projects that directly or indirectly challenge national policies, such as municipal identity cards. My research fills this gap by comparing Montréal, Barcelona and Copenhagen: three cities connected to the same networks but rooted in institutional configurations marked by very different power relations.
The aim is not only to analyze how regional and international networks influence the setting of priorities, design and maintenance of these measures, but also to evaluate whether these measures have tangible effects on migration governance: improved access to rights, redistribution of skills, ability to modify national balances.
The research is structured around three themes: 1) analyzing the impact of networks on municipal strategies; 2) comparing the trajectories of cities that are members of the same networks but subject to different national constraints; 3) examining how these measures can reconfigure power relations between municipalities and states.
There are two overarching questions: How do cities negotiate their local ambitions in restrictive national and regional environments? Does participation in networks strengthen their ability to adopt, maintain or refine these measures? According to the exploratory hypothesis proposed by me, the effect of the cards depends on the multilevel configuration specific to each country and on the relationships that the cities activate within the networks.
