Border as mess: Navigating contradictions and borderwork in civil society migrant assistance

A growing body of scholarly work addresses the involvement, in migration governance, of civil society actors. Much of this literature highlights–within the bottom-up initiatives of NGOs, charities, volunteers and activists–the central role of hospitality and solidarity. Civil society initiatives are often contrasted to restrictive state policies and assumed to favour democratic integration. In this article, I question this interpretation in favour of a more complex, messier account of reality. In civil society initiatives, bordering is as much the doing of institutions as it is of citizens who, through borderwork, construct and contest borders. Through an analysis of everyday practices of migrant support in Milan, Italy, I bring this messiness to the fore. I rely on ethnographic insight to highlight contradictions embedded in borderwork, in which seemingly opposed forces are present. I show that the space between such opposites is a space in which the meaning of borders is constantly negotiated. My data adds complexity to interpretations of civil-society initiatives, suggesting that, when ordinary citizens engaging in them enable mobility for some and hinder it for others, this is the very essence of borderwork.