Governing the City Through Human Rights: the Case of Religious Freedom in Barcelona

An increasing number of cities and their local governments are using the language of human rights to inform urban policy. Many scholars underline the potential of these engagements to contribute to justice at a level, the city, which appears strategic towards the realisation of human rights. This paper approaches the nexus between human rights and cities from a more critical perspective. Drawing on the works of Bourdieu and Foucault and using the case of religious freedom in Barcelona, it emphasises and explores the instrumental dimension of city engagements with human rights and the ambiguous ways in which human rights operate in the city and for its government. In this vein, the paper shows how a focus on the (human) right to religious freedom developed in Barcelona in response to the needs of ‘new’ religious communities also works towards controlling their diffusion in the city. In particular, the focus is on the city Office for Religious Affairs, which was established in the early 2000s out of a previous initiative to promote inter-religious dialogue and has since then incorporated itself into the broader Spanish governance of religious freedom. The Office works closely to the communities to find a place of worship in the city, towards ‘accompanying’ the communities to realise their right to religious freedom. It does so in the perspective of ‘empowering’ the communities and ‘normalising’ their presence in the city. At the same time, the same Office works with other areas of the local administration to ensure that any tensions and conflicts generated by the communities in their search for space is maintained within proper institutional channels, in ways however that may well prioritise the complaints of the city neighbours at the expense of the rights of the communities.