Migration governance and the role of the third sector in small-sized towns in Italy

The paper makes an innovative contribution to studies on the local governance of migration by considering the role played by Third Sector actors in three small municipalities in northern Italy: a mountain village, a rural village, and a town located at the edge of the great Milanese conurbation. The cases shed light on the implications that a small size can have for understanding the policy outputs and challenges of migration governance at the local level. Building on comparative qualitative data, the paper describes common features that can be observed in the local policy arena of small municipalities, such as the reduced number and limited heterogeneity of Third Sector actors, ease of access to local decision-makers, and blurred boundaries between politics and administration. It shows that such features can be associated with specific inclusionary and/or exclusionary policies that can be explained by local associational ecologies and local governments’ political orientation, despite the (often) limited human and economic resources available, but also by the activation of policy entrepreneurs and supra-local networks.