In studying local policies for migrants, a wealth of research has documented the vertical interactions between different tiers of governments and the horizontal collaboration between public authorities and civil society organisations. Despite its large scope, this approach leaves in the dark the mobilisation of actors who, for different reasons, work outside any official collaborative framework with public institutions. From groups of individuals who spontaneously help or accommodate migrants to radical activists who refuse to be involved with any policy actor, this grey zone of pro-migrant mobilisation is filled with an array of heterogeneous actors.

Drawing on the cases of Paris and Barcelona, this paper examines the co-evolution between the institutional field of collaborators created by local policies and the canvas of actors operating in the interstices of public inaction. Complementing the perspective on multilevel governance, this paper proposes an approach to interstitial governance in which lower-tier actors take charge of what is left unaddressed by upper institutional levels.

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