This project is concerned with the paradox of community based poor relief and cross-community mobility. Since the sixteenth century, the parish had been the responsible entity to provide assistance to the poor, but mobility and migration complicated this local phenomenon. If migrants became poor, where should they turn to? Criteria for migrants' access to poor relief varied througout time and space. The distinction between 'own' and 'strange' poor became an increasingly stringent issue for local, regional and central governments in France and Flanders. Different regulations followed each other swiftly, and local agreements existed alongside central legislation. This project focusses on a local regulation, the concordat of Ypres. The concordat was a transnational agreement between cities and rural districts in West Flanders and Northern France. It was signed on June 6, 1750 and lasted until the end of the Ancien Régime. The concordat stipulated that access to relief was located in the birthplace, thereby ensuring free movement within its boundaries and abolishing the obligation for migrants to present caution sums or warranty letters when they entered a new town. As a multilateral bottom-up policy, it forms an excellent case study to analyse poor relief and access to relief on the continent in detail, to delve deeper into local autonomy in an age of increasing centralisation and to contribute a historical perspective to the debates on welfare and mobility.