Civil Society and Migration Governance across European Borderlands

This Special Issue considers the role of civil society, including non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and civil society organizations (CSOs), in contemporary migration and border governance, with a particular focus on its relationship to states and on its involvement in the control of migration. While civil society is usually opposed to states and markets, the contributions to this special issue show how NGOs and CSOs play a more complex and nuanced role. They document their different activities and attitudes, which range from resistance to (in)direct support to migration/border control, and stress the diversity of NGOs/CSOs, from professionalized international NGOs to local grassroots organizations, and from human rights to humanitarian organizations. Contributions challenge the standard divide between sending and receiving regions, as they examine civil society in different geographical spaces throughout European borderlands, in destination countries like Italy or Germany, in so-called transit states (Ukraine and Libya), and in transnational in-between spaces, such as hotspots in Southern Europe or international waters in the Mediterranean Sea. In so doing, this special issue also highlights the multiple borders/boundaries that shape migrants’ journeys as well as their socio-economic and political status from traditional state borders to legal categories: whether it rescues migrants at sea or provides welfare provision to refugees, civil society is indeed present at all the places where foreigners are included or excluded from the societies in which they find themselves. The role of civil society in migration governance is not only a research issue, but also a sensitive policy concern, not least because borders are key sovereign institutions over which states claim full control. In this context, the 2018 Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration (hereafter Global Compact), a non-binding but ambitious UN-sponsored statement on migration policy, puts forward what it calls a ‘whole-of-society approach’, according to which migration governance should rely on ‘multi-stakeholder partnerships’ that would include not only governments, but also non-state actors like migrant diasporas, local communities, civil society, the private sector, or trade unions (United Nations 2019).