The making of urban care industry: institutionalization of migrant-serving organizations in Copenhagen and Tel Aviv during COVID-19

This article extends the existing understandings of non-profit actors within literature on migration industries by examining how such actors transform into more solidified, industry-like ensembles. Focusing on migrant-serving organizations (MSOs) that provide care to vulnerable migrants in Copenhagen and Tel Aviv, we analyze how these providers mobilized and became increasingly relied upon by municipal authorities during the pandemic to secure rights and services for precarious migrants. This process led to their incipient institutionalization as a recognized, collectively impactful care industry marked by tacit knowledge and particular expertise. We contend that this process of institutionalization allows these actors to be understood as an urban care industry, insofar as they exhibit key features of “industry-ness” found in other migration-mediating sectors. Attending to the spatial embeddedness of this process, we illustrate how this initial institutionalization unfolded differently in the two cases due to distinct migration incorporation regimes, local political contexts, and pre-pandemic conditions.