Volunteers activists: new agents of local migration policies?
This paper highlights new relations between state and civil society in the case of French local migration policies towards, and more specifically social inclusion policies. It is based on a multi-site ethnographic fieldwork in three cities. It shows a progressive institutionalization of voluntary action in public policy. We studied “insertion devices” (services for integration and active labour market policies) enacted by the State and contracted out to associations, having precarious European migrants — labelled as “Rom” and living in inadequate housing —, as target groups. The article proposes a two-step analysis: a first step that goes back to the choice of state services to entrust third-party “operator” by setting up “inclusion service”, by defining the role of each stakeholder, particularly volunteer individuals or organizations; a second time that concerns the choices made by these operators in terms of recruitment and selection of volunteers according to different criteria. The hypothesis developed through the article concerns the fact that migration policies are partially built on strategies of channelling, distancing and institutionalizing a depoliticized non-profit intervention.