Pro-Migrant Civil Society Organisations and the Law: Patterns of Legal Mobilisation at EU Borders

Legal mobilisation, including its use within the pro-migrant movement, has been addressed by scholars from different disciplines. However, its deployment in the socio-spatial dimension of borderlands has received limited attention, despite the increasing use of legal strategies in the real world and the specificity of borderlands as unique sites of contention. This article contributes to filling this gap through empirical research, prompting a dialogue between socio-legal, contentious politics, migration and border studies. In particular, I present and discuss the findings of a study on the legal mobilisation of pro-migrant civil society organisations at the Southern European borders. These findings, based on surveys, quantitative media analysis and other documentary sources provide a first overview of the use of the law by civil society organisations in border areas. By discussing findings against the main theories of collective action, this contribution makes it possible to highlight some trends and suggest relevant hypotheses related to the use of law as an everyday form of pro-migrant activism. As such, this article contributes to the international migration scholarship and policy community, in that it helps to develop the study of political contention around migration, with an innovative focus on the use of the law in border areas.