Resilience as Community-Making: Migrant Receptivity in Declining Towns

In many parts of Europe, small towns and regional centers are facing a quiet, long-term struggle. For decades, these places have seen their populations shrink as young people leave for bigger cities, and their local economies have struggled to adapt to global changes. This process, known as decline, means fewer people to support local shops, schools, and public services, leaving behind a landscape of empty buildings and reduced resources. At the same time, these same towns are becoming destinations for migrants—people arriving from other countries seeking work, safety, or a new life. This creates a complex situation where communities that are already stretched thin must figure out how to welcome newcomers. The central question for researchers is not just whether these towns can survive, but how they change when they try to do so together. To understand this, we need to look at two ideas: how a community adapts to keep going, and how it opens its doors to new members. When a town tries to hold itself together while taking in new people, it is not just a matter of filling empty houses or hiring workers; it is a deep social process of deciding who belongs, who helps, and what kind of place they are building for the future.

A team of researchers set out to understand exactly how this happens in four different towns across Germany, Ireland, and Spain. They chose these specific locations because they all share the same story of loss and economic hardship, yet they vary in size and history. The team spent years talking to hundreds of people, including migrants, long-time residents, local officials, and business owners. They listened to stories in community centers, watched how people interacted in parks and shops, and observed how local groups organized support. Their goal was to see how these towns managed the arrival of new people without the usual safety nets of rich resources or strong government funding. What they found was that towns do not simply "welcome" or "reject" migrants in a uniform way. Instead, they develop two distinct patterns of organizing their community life, which the researchers call functional resilience and relational resilience. These patterns describe how a town decides who is responsible for helping newcomers and what kind of role the newcomers are allowed to play in the community.

In the first pattern, which the researchers found dominant in a small Spanish town and a medium-sized German town, the community organizes itself around strict rules and basic administrative tasks. Here, the focus is on keeping essential services running and managing the immediate needs of arrivals. In this mode, migrants are often seen primarily as workers or as cases to be processed. Their value is tied to their ability to work and follow the existing rules of the town. If a migrant can get a job and learn the language, they are considered to be integrating, but their deeper role in shaping the community is often overlooked. The support they receive is usually limited to emergency aid or bureaucratic help, such as finding housing or navigating paperwork. This approach creates a conditional form of belonging: a person is accepted only if they fit into the pre-existing mold. The researchers observed that in these towns, the lack of resources meant that the burden of integration fell heavily on the migrants themselves. They had to navigate a system that expected them to adapt without much help, often relying on informal, one-on-one relationships with individual locals to get by. While this system keeps the town functioning, it leaves migrants on the margins, feeling that their place in the community is fragile and dependent on their economic utility.

In contrast, the other two towns studied—one in Ireland and one in western Germany—showed a different pattern, which the researchers call relational resilience. In these places, the community organizes itself through a wider web of social connections, volunteer groups, and everyday interactions. Here, the focus is less on managing a crisis and more on building a shared life over the long term. Migrants are recognized not just as workers, but as neighbors and active participants in community life. In these towns, local residents and civil society groups work together to create spaces where people can meet, share stories, and solve problems together. For example, volunteers might run language cafes, community gardens, or cultural events that bring different groups together. The researchers found that in these settings, migrants often feel more at home because they are invited to contribute to the community in many ways, not just through their labor. They might start a business, join a sports club, or help organize local festivals. This approach creates a more inclusive sense of belonging, where the community is seen as something that grows and changes with the arrival of new people.

However, the researchers were careful to note that neither of these patterns is perfect, and neither exists in isolation. Even in the towns with the most welcoming, relational approach, the underlying reality of decline still creates significant challenges. The scarcity of resources—such as affordable housing, reliable public transport, and stable funding for social programs—affects everyone. In the towns with relational resilience, the researchers found that the success of these community efforts often depends on the tireless work of a small number of dedicated volunteers. When these volunteers become exhausted or when the local government fails to provide support, the system can strain. Furthermore, even in the most inclusive towns, the researchers observed that not all migrants are treated the same. Some groups, such as refugees from certain countries, might receive more attention and support than others, depending on how the local community perceives their "deservingness." This means that while relational resilience offers a more hopeful path, it is still vulnerable to the same structural problems that affect the whole town.

The study also challenged a common idea that declining towns are simply passive backdrops waiting to be saved by migrants. The researchers argued that these towns are active places where the future is being negotiated every day. The way a town handles migration is not just a reaction to a sudden crisis, but a reflection of long-term choices about how to share resources and responsibilities. In the towns where the focus was on strict rules and administration, the community tended to view migrants as a problem to be managed. In the towns where the focus was on relationships and shared responsibility, the community tended to view migrants as partners in rebuilding. But in both cases, the researchers found that the ultimate limit to how well a town can welcome newcomers is the same: the lack of resources caused by long-term economic decline. No amount of local goodwill can fully overcome the shortage of housing or the collapse of public services.

Ultimately, the research suggests that the story of migration in declining towns is not about whether a town can "integrate" migrants into a fixed system. Instead, it is about how the community itself is remade through the process of welcoming new people. The researchers found that when a town treats migrants as active partners in community life, it creates a stronger, more adaptable society. But this only works if the community is willing to share the responsibility and if the broader political and economic systems provide enough support to make that sharing possible. Without that support, even the most well-meaning communities struggle to sustain their efforts. The findings highlight that true resilience is not just about surviving a shock, but about building a community where everyone has a place to belong, even when resources are scarce. It is a reminder that the health of a town depends not just on its economy, but on the quality of the relationships between its people.