Abstract

This paper focuses on humanitarian organisations, such as the Red Cross and Caritas, that have been increasingly involved since 2015 in the reception of refugees in Luxembourg. Our research combines the literature on migration intermediaries with the literature on the neoliberalisation of refugee policies. We consider social workers, employed by the Red Cross and Caritas are in charge of the social management of reception facilities for refugees, as intermediaries. They play an intermediation role mainly between the State and the refugees. We show that social workers contribute to organising the daily lives of refugees, in addition to facilitating their access to accommodation. We conceptualise this role as one that aims at producing «good citizens», an aspect that has been overlooked in the literature on migration intermediaries. Indeed, humanitarian organisations often define themselves as being the promoters of the activation of refugees. As such, we argue that, to a certain extent, social workers act as agents of neoliberal policies that consist in supporting refugees to become self-governing. Our methodology is based on a 2- year fieldwork. Between 2019 and 2021, we conducted around 100 semi-structured interviews with stakeholders involved in the reception process in Luxembourg at different levels (reception facility, municipality, national level), as well as in-depth interviews with asylum seekers and refugees residing in reception facilities. Out of the total of 100 interviews conducted, nearly 30 of them were carried out with social workers.