Advocacy Alliances for an Intersectional Anti-Racism: Open Society Foundations, Civil Society Organizations and the EU’s Anti-Discrimination Policy

Since the early 2000s, non-governmental actors—European advocacy organizations representing marginalized groups, think tanks, and foundations—have taken part in shaping European anti-discrimination policy. To access EU policy arenas, anti-racist organizations generally rely on the support or mediation of European umbrella organizations, which themselves depend on funding from both the European Commission and private foundations. Among these actors, one foundation has acquired a central role: George Soros’s Open Society Foundations (OSF) was instrumental in building and supporting European civil society (Alemanno 2023). While OSF’s influence in Central and Eastern Europe has been explored—particularly regarding Roma rights or gender equality—its structuring impact on anti-discrimination policy-making within the EU has not been addressed. This paper argues that OSF lies at the center of strategic alliances connecting grassroots organizations, European civil society organizations (CSOs), and EU institutional actors. These alliances aim to push onto the EU agenda issues that remain contentious in many member states, such as the collection of equality data disaggregated by ethnic origin or disability, ethnic profiling, systemic racism, Islamophobia, or intersectionality. In this field, OSF intervenes at two crucial levels. It is, first, a major funder enabling grassroots initiatives and CSOs to exist, operate, and professionalize. Second, it fosters a transnational “knowledge network” (Stone 2013) composed of activists, academics, consultants, Members of the European Parliament, and EU civil servants. Through this dual function, OSF initiates and sustains European-level advocacy alliances through joint funding mechanisms and partnerships that serve as exchange spaces for know-how, expertise, and strategy. The article examines how these partnerships simultaneously shape the normative discourses and strategies of CSOs and the forms of knowledge production mobilized by OSF for lobbying EU institutions. The paper further posits that OSF acts less as a primary producer of knowledge than as a “knowledge broker” structuring the anti-discrimination field. By providing substantial and continuous funding, OSF enables grassroots and European CSOs to generate, refine, and publicize their expert knowledge within EU policy-making arenas. OSF also promotes partnerships involving a strategic intermeshing of activist, scientific, and institutional forms of capital, thereby enhancing the credibility and legitimacy of contentious causes in EU debates. This brokerage function facilitates the emergence of advocacy configurations resembling the “velvet triangle” identified by Alison Woodward (2003) in the field of gender equality—connecting EU officials, expert communities, and organized civil society. OSF’s role is particularly crucial in bridging gaps between CSOs and institutional actors whose professional repertoires and normative references often diverge. The first part of the paper analyzes how CSO alliances are formed around intersectional causes—such as discrimination against Muslim women—with OSF acting as an intermediary within this advocacy triangle. The second part examines how the Black Lives Matter movement and intersectional expertise influenced the EU Anti-Racism Action Plan (2020), focusing on the coordinated lobbying efforts of OSF and two of its key grantees: the European Network Against Racism (ENAR) and the Centre for Intersectional Justice (CIJ).