Giacomo Solano

This article develops an innovative quantitative analysis of the drivers of state–NGO relations in the field of human rights, specifically focusing on their political drivers. Drawing on cross-national survey data from 2,000+ reported interactions between NGOs, national and EU governmental actors in 26 EU Member States, we examine how national governments’ political orientation, the level of politicisation of human rights issues, and multilevel governance dynamics shape the frequency and nature of state-NGO and EU-NGO interactions. Our multilevel regression models show that NGOs’ relations with conservative governments are less collaborative, though not less frequent, than with progressive ones. For highly politicised human rights issues, interactions between governmental actors and NGOs are less frequent and less collaborative. NGOs facing conservative governments report more frequent and more collaborative interactions with EU institutions, consistent with multilevel ‘venue-shopping’ strategies. These findings highlight the role of political context in shaping European human rights governance.

This thematic issue interrogates the relationship between digitalization and the social inclusion or exclusion of migrants in destination countries. Drawing on thirteen articles employing a breadth of methodological approaches across eight national contexts around the globe, it investigates whether digitalization phenomena simply reconfigure pre‐existing socioeconomic inequalities or demonstrate unprecedented, emergent dynamics. Three cross‐cutting themes structure the issue. First, authors provide timely evidence on migrant agency and digital practices, demonstrating how migrants navigate and reappropriate digital technologies. In doing so, they challenge exclusionary infrastructures and offline inequalities. Second, articles analyze the role of intermediary organizations, highlighting contrasting dynamics: On the one hand, state digitalization initiatives produce intentional or unintended exclusionary consequences; on the other, NGOs can leverage these technologies to support migrants in the face of old or technologically intertwined challenges. Finally, the issue zooms into a digital intermediary—the platform economy. Platformization creates new layers of precarity for migrant workers in food delivery and care sectors, and can be prevailed upon in migrant strategies to overcome exclusion. Ultimately, the query as to whether technologies and spaces of digitalization reinforce pre‐existing inclusion or exclusion or create new ones is answered in a nuanced, context‐specific manner that demands even further research: to some extent the embedded power relations in digitalization processes and practices do entail reproduction of the same, but new facets also emerge, and technologies can also be leveraged to challenge inequalities via migrant agency.

Numerous studies highlight the direct impact of digital technologies on migrants, shaping their decisions to migrate, their migration trajectories, and their experiences in their destination countries. This article contributes to this emerging literature by exploring the influence of digital technologies on the inclusion of migrants, specifically by examining how non‐governmental organizations (NGOs) use information and communication technologies (ICTs) to support refugees—an area that has received limited attention in the existing literature. In particular, the article focuses on NGOs in Türkiye and the Netherlands. We conducted interviews with representatives of 23 NGOs across the two countries to understand how and why they use digital technologies. The findings show that NGOs in both countries use ICTs extensively for (direct and indirect) communication, advocacy, and service provision, with clear benefits but also challenges. ICTs enhance visibility and reach, support multilingual and remote service delivery, and help NGOs raise funds and build an institutional identity. Challenges include unequal access to digital tools and insufficient digital literacy by both NGO staff and their clients, lower engagement in online formats, and the risk of losing personal connection due to standardized digital processes.

Research on migrant entrepreneurship has extensively focused on the ethnic dimension of these economic activities, especially entrepreneurs’ use of ethnic resources. Many scholars have tended to reify ethnicity and overlook migrant entrepreneurs’ ability to define and use ethnic resources. Adopting a dynamic perspective that acknowledges in-group diversity and entrepreneurs’ agency in utilizing these ethnic resources, we examine how Italian migrant entrepreneurs in Brussels conceive their relationship with the Italian community and leverage their ethnicity (Italianness/Italianità, i.e., the fact of being Italian). We find in-group variation, challenging reifying and deterministic analyses of “ethnic” entrepreneurship. Instead, ethnicity emerges as a resource that entrepreneurs mobilize to distinguish themselves socially and entrepreneurially from other Italians.

Refugee integration in small localities poses complex challenges that must be faced through “horizontal” cooperation between local governments, nonpublic and private actors. This article investigates how frequent and how collaborative/conflictual these horizontal governance relations are and whether, and how, they are influenced by political party control of local executives and the local strength of radical right parties (RRPs). Methodologically, we combine quantitative analysis—using a unique dataset of governance interactions across 36 localities, derived from a survey filled in by 185 representatives of nonpublic actors involved in refugee integration governance—and qualitative content analysis of semi-structured interviews conducted with the same interviewees and 68 local policymakers. We show that horizontal governance relations on refugee integration are largely collaborative, but their frequency and quality vary depending on interplays between the type of nonpublic actor involved, local executives’ political affiliation and RRPs’ strength within the municipal legislative body.

This article analyses the social networks of rural–urban migrant entrepreneurs in Uganda. While social contacts are often an important asset to access resources for migrants, they are often expected to financially support the members of their social networks. These claims for support are here labelled ‘negative social capital’, following Portes' seminal work. This paper focuses on the kinds of networks that are more likely to produce negative social capital, operationalized here as requests for financial resources, and links this to the discourse on bridging and bonding social capital. By means of a regression analysis, this article provides evidence of dense networks with a higher share of migrants (bonding social capital) being associated with negative social capital. In addition, both a higher share of contacts met before migration, which is related to bonding social capital, and a higher share of contacts living in the city, which is related to bridging social capital, are negatively associated with requests for resources. These findings suggest that migrants can instrumentally keep some contacts from before migration and acquire new key contacts in the urban area.

Migrants’ integration process and their labour market inclusion occur within distinct local contexts. However, the existing literature has paid little attention to the role of the local context and its relationship with national-level policy outcomes on migrant integration. This study addresses this gap by using new regional (NUTS-2) data from Eurostat and integration policy data from MIPEX, coupled with multivariate analyses. We investigate how national-level integration policies are related to the employment rate gap between migrants and country nationals, and how this relationship varies depending on the local context. Results show that migrant integration policies exhibit no association with this gap in low-competitive, culturally homogeneous and rural regions. Conversely, integration policies are associated with a larger gap in high-competitive and diverse urban regions. Notably, consistent with previous national-level literature, inclusive integration policies are associated with negative outcomes for migrants compared to country nationals. However, a shift toward more inclusive policies is found to reduce this gap, suggesting that inclusive policies may be a response to a widening divide between country nationals and migrants. This study offers valuable insights into the role of regional configurations and the impact of national-level integration policies on migrants' labor market outcomes, providing a local perspective that enhances our understanding of migrant integration processes.