Networks of Solidarity During the Great Recession

Social-solidarity economy (SSE) groups have been a crucial resource for those sectors of the population which have been among the most hit during the 2008 economic crisis, including migrants and unemployed. Furthermore, in a context of declining resources and increasing competition, like during crises, networks among these groups are of utmost importance in the effort to build solidarities, protect and integrate vulnerable groups. However, the ways groups interact in establishing broad alliances to better face the crisis, the specific network structures established, and the degree to which they can sustain collective efforts and actions to face the crisis are all context dependent. In this framework, this paper aims to examine networks among social-solidarity economy (SSE) organizations in three European cities. In particular, it aims to investigate networks of SSE organizations targeting refugees, migrants, and the unemployed native-born within local communities and into labour markets, as well as their organizational activities and their political relevance. The research question is then: how do SSE organizational networks established in different European cities, with different policy environments, lead to different levels and type of engagement in collective actions aimed to face the crisis? Which is the better political environment for networks to support vulnerable sectors of the population to promptly face the crisis? The empirical study uses data from organizational surveys undertaken in three localities: Geneva (Switzerland), Bergamo (Italy), and Heraklion (Greece). These cities were selected because they provide enough cross-national variation in the political context and different political opportunity structures (POS) towards migrants and unemployed. Therefore, these cities enable us to assess how networks developed in different contexts may impact differently on organizational collective actions. We contend that the political context and the specific POS moderate the role that different types of networks have on mobilization. In particular, we expect that in a context with a closed POS, SSE organizational networks may be sources compensating for the lack of contextual opportunities, thus fostering the presence of a variety of collective actions by organizations to face the crisis. However, we may also expect that closed POS can favour the creation of political subcultures among SSE organizations, marginalizing SSE organizations from mainstream organizations. Finally, we expect that different network structures are likely to foster migrant organizations’ collective actions in diverse ways whereby networks developed in the most open contexts are expected to sustain organizational engagement in a more varied number of activities, than networks operating in closed POS. We draw on a comparative dataset on organizations. Throughout 2019 we mapped and interviewed the whole population of SSE organizations targeting refugees, migrants, and the unemployed native-born, operating in three cities: our sample eventually comprises 58 organizations in Bergamo, 38 in Heraklion, 63 in Geneva. The organizational data include both organizational characteristics as well as information on their networks. The data will be examined by testing how, in the three cities, specific network properties, namely measures of network centrality, affect various types of collective actions by organizations, including social and charity, and more contentious politics.