Volume 16, Issue 2 - Special Issue on “Nonprofits, Public Policy and Migration Crises,” guest edited by Shawn Flanigan, Tania Haddad and Anna Domaradzka

This article introduces the special issue of Nonprofit Policy Forum exploring the relationship between nonprofit organizations, (conceptualized broadly to include NGOs, civil society actors, and other third sector actors), public policy actors, and migration crises. We have three overarching goals with our introductory article. One is to conceptualize migration crises vis-a-vis the third sector, better illuminating how the nonprofit sector intervenes in and interacts with migration crises. We consider this at the individual/family, community, and regional/national levels, and also attempt to distinguish between real (empirical) crises and manufactured (e.g. solely politically useful) “crises”. Our second goal is to present a framework categorizing third sector-state relationships in contexts of migration, with an eye toward broadening the field’s focus beyond the interactions we commonly observe in the global North. We do this by categorizing types of government-nonprofit relationships based on where they fall among two intersecting continua of state capacity and relationship quality. Finally, we present a framework of four ideal types of state-third sector interactions in migration crises, providing a case-based application in each category. Our hope is that scholars can move toward using this framework for assessing state capacity and third-sector relationships in migration crises. We illustrate our concepts and framework with examples from the articles in this special issue of Nonprofit Policy Forum as well as other extant research and practical examples. We tie each of our concepts and frameworks to real world scenarios, and ultimately hope to work toward practical applications that may be of use to future researchers, practitioners, and at some endpoint benefit the lives of migrants themselves.

U.S. federal policy has created, at best, a gap and, at worst, a hostile environment for nonprofits serving refugees. We rely on frameworks of nonprofit-government relationships (institutional voids, structural holes, instrumental/expressive support) to explore government-nonprofit interactions in the refugee domain, and their impact on 34 refugee-serving nonprofits in the U.S. Findings indicate limited expressive and instrumental support for nonprofits and suggest nonprofits must navigate complex, multilevel, environments. Contributions include the suggestion of “intentional” rather than institutional voids, and a new typology of forms (zero, unclaimed, symbolic, or comprehensive) of government support for nonprofits in a problem domain based on whether government’s instrumental and expressive support for nonprofits is high or low.

Although third sector organizations (TSOs) played a vital role in supporting public authorities during the European migration crisis, their involvement in governance structures remains underexplored. This paper examines the evolving relationships between TSOs and public authorities in this sector, focussing on the governance shifts triggered by the crisis. By comparing Italy and France – two countries with distinct roles and responses – the study reveals a convergence in their crisis management strategies and the resulting impact on TSOs. Despite initial differences, both nations experienced a marketization of relations, transforming service provision and governance models. This paper analyzes the mechanisms regulating the crisis and their effects on the roles and interactions of key actors. The comparative analysis underscores a broader trend toward the normalization of crisis response systems, providing critical insights into the future of governance models in migration management.

In this article, we explore the question: how do local nonprofits respond to migration crises? We focus on the migration context across Colombia and Venezuela, two countries situated in the Andean region of South America with histories of migratory patterns, and geographies where public goods and services by government are limited, leaving nonprofits often as primary service providers. We explore our research question through the case study of the nonprofit organization Fundación Huellas. The Fundación Huellas case study outlines a local, community-based nonprofit responding to a migration crisis in Medellín, Colombia. While micro-territorial in scope, we posit that the case helps to understand the role(s) of nonprofit organizations in migration crises and demonstrates an important dimension to localization in the provision of public goods and services in such contexts. We find that localization should be explored and understood in Latin America as including the dimension of “acompañamiento” (or accompaniment in English), which can manifest in daily nonprofit practice. We use our case study data to introduce and explain the dimension of “acompañamiento” in localization and migration crises and to call on the field and funders to better recognize and support this orientation in local nonprofit responses.

The threat of deportation is a common experience shared by migrants around the world. Migrant-serving nonprofit organizations must also contend with these threats. While there is considerable research on how nonprofits serve migrants, there is a lack of research that explores what mass deportation threats may mean for nonprofits actors and their work. In order to address this gap, this study explores the case of the Dominican Republic where there was widespread fear that mass removals would occur after the closing of the National Regularization Plan for Foreigners on June 17, 2015. Using semi-structured interviews with 20 nonprofit actors from Haitian-migrant serving organizations, a qualitative content analysis reveals three main themes that capture how nonprofits perceived and pursued opportunities from the threat of deportation. They include the opportunity to grow, the opportunity to advocate, and the opportunity to learn and educate. This research is important for shedding light on the organizational resilience of migrant-serving nonprofits in the Dominican Republic and offers insight into how policies might be developed to support nonprofits as they address migration policies in their work.

Much of public administration and nonprofit research centers on issues of race and gender, but citizenship remains underdeveloped for a variety of reasons, especially due to a lack of data on the undocumented community. The first research aim of this study is to identify how immigration enforcement affects undocumented student performance. The second contribution is to understand the effect of how legal service provision by immigrant-serving nonprofits comes into play. Theoretically, these services work toward helping buffer the negative implications of community arrests and deportations on student performance. We test our theoretical arguments using a unique dataset comprised of student-level performance metrics of 2 million Latino students – including nearly 225,000 undocumented students – in Texas public schools. These data are merged with county and district-level data that reflect the level of immigrant deportations and the presence of immigrant-serving nonprofits (ISOs) in their communities. This research finds that immigration enforcement negatively impacts undocumented student performance. Furthermore, ISOs can help limit these effects and improve educational performance.

The article explores issues of the Polish refugee reception policy from the perspective of frontline workers: officials, citizen volunteers, and NGO workers at reception centers. It presents conclusions from the research of two Warsaw reception points established by the Voivode of Mazowsze in the beginning of the Ukraine war crisis in 2022. Looking at reception policy from the perspective of frontline workers and examining institutional frameworks (policy goals, regulations and norms) as entry conditions for various actors to collaborate, the article concludes that actions taken by the state authorities in the first weeks of crisis were an example of the responsibilization practices. Insights from the research can be helpful for the Multilevel Governance scholars to better understand the impact of top-down policy on the process of service delivery and problems of collaboration between actors at the local level of policy implementation.

In our policy brief, we would like to focus on two key aspects that have received little attention in the literature and in the real policy: the role of NGOs in the transition from crisis management to mainstream governance from an NGO perspective and the role of cultural barriers in proximate cultures.

Refugee and immigrant nonprofit organizations rely on their volunteers to carry out services that are critical for supporting their mission. The primary aim of this paper is to explore the types of volunteers who support refugee and immigrant nonprofits. We report findings from two independent, but complementary studies. Study 1 examined the individuals who formally volunteered before and during the COVID-19 pandemic at refugee and immigrant nonprofit organizations. In our analysis, we employed a logistic regression to understand to what extent volunteering at refugee and immigrant organizations is associated with demographic characteristics, religiosity, political views, and civic engagement. We compare volunteers assisting refugees and immigrants to volunteers serving other causes and all individuals who volunteer in the US. In Study 2, we aimed to know individuals volunteering for refugees and immigrants more deeply and conducted 15 in-depth semi-structured interviews with volunteers who supported Afghan evacuees between August 2021 and August 2022 through a refugee resettlement organization or a community sponsorship group. Findings from Study 1 indicate that volunteers supporting refugees and immigrants are more likely to be part-time workers, born outside of the US, are more liberal in their political views, and are more likely to be religious than volunteers who serve other organizations. Results from Study 2 show that volunteers were not new to volunteering for refugee and immigrant causes, were often motivated by personal or family experiences with migration or displacement and were affiliated with a congregation or synagogue. Volunteers showed that they went beyond traditional resettlement support that focused on providing immediate needs and were also active in political advocacy for refugees and immigrants. We conclude by providing exploratory insight into the individuals that support refugee and immigrant nonprofits and we offer practice implications relating to sustaining this unique group of volunteers.

Studies at the nexus of immigration, organizations, and migrant mobilizations find that the strategies that immigrant-serving nonprofit organizations (INOs) employ differ in cities with disparate levels of immigrant inclusion. Yet studies yield mixed results abound other shortcomings in the literature. This study draws from disparate literatures and theoretical frameworks to assemble an understanding on the interrelations between local context and strategies. I investigate the following questions: how does the level of citizenry inclusion impact the strategies employed by INOs, and do more inclusive cities facilitate or constrain contentious advocacy? I draw from a national sample of INOs to test the empirical relationship. The results have implications for political opportunity theory and future lines of research drawing from this framework. Research, nonprofit practice, and policy implications are discussed.