Anticipating Friction The role of human rights in urban debates on migration and diversity: The case of Amsterdam, Hong Kong and Buenos Aires

This research centres around the interaction between the city, and its actors, and human rights. In recent years, local governments more frequently collaborate with other actors, such as NGOs and international organisations, for the realisation of human rights; they apply and translate human rights norms directly in their local policies and legislation – in some cases independent of their national governments. The urban engagement with human rights, however, is not a linear process. It involves making choices on how to engage with human rights: which rights to focus on, how to understand human rights, what kind of activity to organise, for which target group and with whom to collaborate. Such choices are not made in a vacuum, because cities do not function as coherently operating actors, nor do the local governments ruling them. On the basis of fieldwork research on migration and diversity debates in three very dissimilar cities – Amsterdam, Hong Kong and Buenos Aires – this research assesses how the particularities of cities define what human rights can be.