Advocating Without Confronting? Discreet Political Influence and Organisational Boundary-Making Among Migrant-Support Organisations in France

Civil society- and migrant organisations play a key role in “multi-level governance” through advocacy for inclusion, expertise and policy feedback (Dimitriadis et al., 2021). Yet, the context of democratic backsliding and restrictive migration and welfare policies often coincides for non state actors with constraints such as funding cuts, delegitimization, administrative control mechanisms and moral imperatives regarding “citizenship agendas” (Balazard et al., 2025; De Koning et al., 2015), such as promoting national values in France. Under these conditions, organisations are facing rising tensions between political access, commitments to social justice and migrants’ rights, institutional conformity and organisational survival. This contribution asks how migrant-support organisations use and define “advocacy” to adapt their roles, strategies and repertoires: often presented as a core function of civil society actors, “advocacy” tends to be perceived as risky, or even dangerous, raising critical questions about remaining room for manoeuvre in shaping policy agendas and public narratives under pressure. Drawing on an ongoing action-research project conducted within a collaborative PhD on local boundary work (Lamont & Molnár, 2002), this contribution is based on ethnographic fieldwork (participant observations in focus groups, workshops, semi-directive interviews with migrants and professionals) in grassroots and organisations accompanying (former) migrant workers in their access to social rights across three French cities. It seeks to map their “action regimes” (Dodier, 1993) as part of a “local meaning-making” process (Vo et al., 2016, p. 266), to analyse how these actors assess risks, legitimacy and acceptable forms of engagement. To move beyond the dichotomy of resistance and depoliticization, this paper examines how migrant organisations engage in “discreet” forms of advocacy (Ollion, 2015), reframing contentious action into technical expertise, partnerships and backstage negotiations with authorities. Operating as an all-encompassing category, to what extent do these “advocacy” practices enable political influence while masking deeper tensions in shrinking civic spaces? Balazard, H., Cottin-Marx, S., Gonthier, A., Kirszbaum, T., & Talpin, J. (2025). Démocratie d’interpellation : Les contre-pouvoirs au service de la République. Mouvements, 121(3), 5 11. https://doi.org/10.3917/mouv.121.0005 De Koning, A., Jaffe, R., & Koster, M. (2015). Citizenship agendas in and beyond the nation state : (En)countering framings of the good citizen. Citizenship Studies, 19(2), 121 127. https://doi.org/10.1080/13621025.2015.1005940 Dimitriadis, I., Hajer, M. H. J., Fontanari, E., & Ambrosini, M. (2021). Local “battlegrounds”. Relocating multi-level and multi-actor governance of immigration. Revue européenne des migrations internationales, 37(1), 251 275. https://doi.org/10.4000/remi.18552 Dodier, N. (1993). Les appuis conventionnels de l’action. Eléments de pragmatique sociologique. Réseaux. Communication - Technologie - Société, 11(62), 63 85. https://doi.org/10.3406/reso.1993.2574 Lamont, M., & Molnár, V. (2002). The Study of Boundaries in the Social Sciences. Annual Review of Sociology, 28(1), 167 195. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.soc.28.110601.141107 Ollion, É. (2015). Des mobilisations discrètes : Sur le plaidoyer et quelques transformations de l’action collective contemporaine. Critique internationale, 67(2), 17 31. https://doi.org/10.3917/crii.067.0017 Vo, L.-C., Culié, J.-D., & Mounoud, E. (2016). Microfoundations of decoupling : From a coping theory perspective. M@n@gement, 19(4), 248 276. https://doi.org/10.3917/mana.194.0248