Migrant-serving organizations and urban citizenship-making in times of crisis: Copenhagen, Berlin and Tel Aviv compared

The role of civil society actors in urban citizenship had been recently examined by scholars. This article provides an investigation of how such actors interfaced with the local state during the pandemic to facilitate migrants’ urban citizenship, namely their place-based rights and resources. It focuses on migrant-serving organizations (MSOs), which are understood as key agents of migrant urban citizenship-making. Drawing on empirical research in Berlin, Copenhagen, and Tel Aviv, we argue that while the three cities were impacted by similar national responses to the pandemic, varied local governance contexts, in conjunction with national migrant regimes, resulted in different urban responses. These differences were characterized by the distinct mediation practices of MSOs: bricolaging, bridging and building. While our article brings a more nuanced understanding of how urban citizenship landscapes are (re)produced in times of crises, the act of identifying and describing the three modes of mediation practices contributes to the theorization of the ways in which civil society helps to shape urban citizenship.