Abstract This article explores the role of NGOs in the EU's external migration management, focusing on a major EU‐funded development project in Libya under the European Union Emergency Trust Fund for Africa. Whilst much scholarship has explored EU‐level strategies and partnerships with international organisations, this article centres on the perspectives of small Libyan and Italian NGOs operating on the ground in so‐called transit countries. Drawing on interviews with NGO staff, it investigates how these actors reconcile their humanitarian and developmental mandates with participation in politically charged EU migration projects. Building on scholarship that conceptualises external migration governance as a contested and multi‐actor field, the article introduces a conceptual spectrum, from ‘pragmatic developmentalism’ to ‘principled humanitarianism’, to analyse how NGOs make sense of their roles within EU‐funded initiatives whilst seeking to preserve organisational autonomy and ethical commitments. Rather than simply implementing EU norms and policies, NGOs actively mediate and reinterpret these aims, reshaping external migration governance in ways that reflect their own priorities and constraints. By centring NGO perspectives and practices, the article contributes to efforts to decentre EU external migration policy analysis. It foregrounds agency from below and explores how NGOs perceive themselves as critical actors at the intersection of development, humanitarianism and border externalisation, who can shape how external migration governance unfolds in practice. At the same time, by contributing to EU externalisation efforts, NGOs may de facto advance the integration of the European migration agenda into development policy.
Agnese Pacciardi (Sun,) studied this question.