RESHAPING ALLIANCES AND REDRAWING BOUNDARIES: HOW INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION AFFECTED ITALIAN CIVIL SOCIETY^*

Many conflicts in Italian politics have focused on migration policy. After the national elections in 2018, this conflict cut across all societal spheres and levels of governance and administration. On the one hand, tightening migration policies and criminalizing pro-migrant civil-society actors created a conflict between the government and many civil-society actors. On the other hand, civil-society and public-sector actors formed new alliances and lines of conflict at the local and national levels. This article analyzes the development of Italian civil society around the migration issue from the 1970s to 2019 from a relational perspective using the strategic action field approach. This approach offers a conceptual framework and an analytical model for studying behaviors and relations among different types of collective actors, including civil-society actors and public authorities.