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In the city of Milan, the pandemic generated by the spread of Covid-19 in 2020 led to increased inequality between different social groups. This paper reports the case of a neighbourhood community fund promoted by a group of non-profit organisations in one of the poorest areas of the city during the first lockdown (February-June 2020). While providing emergency aid to people who did not access institutional measures during the pandemic, this initiative has also boosted a process of reconfiguring the local network structure, supporting a collective redefinition of the practices and meanings of territorial networking for welfare provision. Referring to direct social action (DSA) theory, the article reflects on the role of community-based DSAs in innovating welfare policies and addressing social and territorial inequalities, looking at network-shaped forms of cooperation among third sector organisations.

The pandemic caused by Covid-19 has tested the resilience of public institutions, already burdened by a deep and complex crisis (political, economic, managerial). This crisis has revealed a discrepancy between the needs expressed by the community and the solutions adopted to satisfy them. This has been accompanied by a progressive worsening of decision-making efficiency and weak implementation capacity in a context of increasing environmental uncertainty. It is in local institutions, in particular, that the greatest problems are revealed, because of many endemic negative factors: political fragmentation, reduced economic resources, new forms of poverty. Against the background of this scenario, our study aims to analyze the reaction of local institutions to the pandemic crisis by looking at both welfare and communication services. The objective is to identify key features in understanding the resilience of municipalities. In other words, their ability to react and adapt to change, which is essential not only to deal with emergencies, such as the pandemic, but also to make the institution itself sustainable. Our interest is focused on a specific dimension of the resilience of the municipalities, related to collaboration with the third sector. The pandemic has shown that the continuous activism of non-profit organizations has allowed for the continuation of many so-called "ordinary" services, as well as the launch of several initiatives aimed at alleviating other social problems. The research has, first of all, an exploratory character that befits a new and still ongoing phenomenon. The basic questions concern the production of local welfare policies by municipalities. The data show different levels of "interventism" and different modes of communication. On this latter point, we observe the presence of significant attention-seeking among Mayors as community builders able, on the one hand, to reinforce the spirit of solidarity and, on the other, to uphold respect for the rules. On the services side, three main models of response to the pandemic emerge, two of which refer to the public-private relationship in local welfare policies. Findings suggest that these different reactions will have consequences in the immediate future for the management of the pandemic crisis (still ongoing). Specifically, the tendency is to employ a management of services based on partnership-model, which means that public-private collaboration is a pillar of local welfare. This seems to entail a greater legitimacy for individuals or associations to participate in the formulation and implementation of policies.

Since the early 2000s scholars have observed a tendency, within the third sector, to combine social values and market objectives in new hybrid configurations. This entrepreneurial turn of non-profit organisations (NPOs) has intersected another historical trajectory of change: their integration in the provision and governance of human and social services. The research contributes to the debate on the transformation of the third sector by addressing the relationship between these two trajectories of change. An interpretative tool is devised, drawing upon public policy research and new discursive institutionalism. To exemplify the interpretative approach, a case study of social entrepreneurship rooted in southern Italian local communities is explored. The research helps building an explanation of the transformation of the third sector centred on the evolving and interactive policy context in which NPOs are embedded, presently resembling an "ecosystem of entrepreneurialisation".

This paper deals with the recent episodes of stigmatization of solidarity in the context of the European migrant "crisis". Securitarian measures frame as illegal not only migrants but also volunteers supporting them. Starting from the debate about "zero tolerance" policies, considered as a form of depoliticization of traditional politics, the research shows how NGOs and volunteers are becoming distrusted and conflictual, even if they long framed themselves as neutral and apolitical. An analysis of the recent emergency decrees and the decrease of trust in the Third sector, along with volunteers' criminalization, reveals a changed picture for Third sector organizations. The Ventimiglia case study is representative of this changed context. The 11th June 2015 the French-Italian border has been closed; since then, civil society has been involved in supportive and conflictual actions about the migrants' presence, while local politics tried to avoid political confrontation. In this situation, depoliticized politics has indirectly extended the target of its norms, stigmatizing not only migrants but also their supporters. We now deal with NGOs and volunteers conflictual and distrusted. Changes in the Third sector are helpful to consider the fragmentation and the politicization of solidarity.

Civil society actors have always been crucial players in the development of welfare systems. Far before the appearance of the welfare state, the provision of services to those in need was the domain of charities and guilds, and later on of the mutual aid organizations related to the labour movement. To-gether with providing services, civil society actors have exerted political pressure on the state, demanding an enlargement of social rights or challenging the principles of public intervention. Such a relevant role became even more pivotal after the '70s, when the welfare mix model paved the way for the entrance of third sector organizations into public service provision and governance processes. Within this scenario, this article aims to develop a historically-based conceptual framework, through which the huge heterogeneity of civil society actors and functions can be analyzed. The possibility of performing several roles represents an opportunity for civil society actors, but at the same times engenders contradictions and trade-offs for social movements and the third sector.

The Paper investigates the challenges of the Italian Third Sector through the lens of their in-volvement in the management of community assets, such as when real estate and public spaces are re-generated on the purpose of activities of social interest, for instance confiscated properties to organized criminality, state-owned, religious corporations, and companies. Adopting the methodology of 'nested analysis', the paper explores quantitative data obtained from the ISTAT Census of non profit institutions, and qualitative data obtained from more than 50 case studies dealt with in recent scientific publications. Subsequently, the study further deepens the evidence emerged through the presentation and discussion of two case studies carried out by the authors: the Ex-Asilo Filangieri in Naples and Forte Marghera in Ven-ice. The Paper highlighted that actions of the Third Sector in the field of regeneration of community assets for social aims have not to be treated as nonprofit "industry", in which general trends towards publicness and entrepreneurship are very noticeable. On the contrary, it looks like a field in which new forms of the Third Sector are emerging, and we can sort them as "enterprising community".

Social policy has undergone a major process of de-politicization all over Europe in the last twenty years, that was fostered by the paradigm shift towards the so-called Social Investment Welfare State. Though similar processes are taking place in many policy areas, social policy can be considered one of the most promising fields of observation of de-politicization. The downgrading of the political character of decision making, indeed, is in sharp contrast with the relevance of the debate about values and justice and with the conflicts that accompanied the establishment of welfare systems. The paper argues that de-politicization is the result of the interaction between three different mechanisms: the shift of emphasis from justice to effectiveness and the model of "governance by numbers"; the process of individualization of social intervention that marginalized collective responsibilities; the inclusive model of governance that co-opt civil society organizations reducing their role as conflicting actors. The three mechanisms give way to a model of de-politicization distinguished by the narrowing of the political debate about solutions, models of intervention and principles, based on inclusion rather than delegation and in which political ac-tors do not disappear. The process of de-politicization is relatively independent from the trend of re-trenchment that begins with the political success of neoliberalism. However, as we will see, it is essential to the survival of its principles.

A variety of theoretical and conceptual perspectives have been applied to studying collective citizen initiatives arising in response to hard economic times, such as solidarity-based exchanges and networks, cooperative structures, barter clubs, credit unions, ethical banks, time banks, alternative social currency, citizens' self-help groups, neighbourhood assemblies and social enterprises. Since the global financial crisis of 2008, scholarly attention on novel, alternative, resilient structures has increased, especially in regions that have been most affected. A comprehensive literature review is therefore needed on these initiatives which usually aim to meet basic needs such as food, shelter, health and education at the community level, or build and envision autonomous communities. This paper has four aims. First, it proposes a new, all-encompassing conceptual framework, alternative forms of resilience, to embrace all issues and groups related to such initiatives, during the new millennium and its economic and political challenges, while taking into account the impact of the 2008 crisis. Secondly, it offers a comprehensive literature review on collective citizen initiatives studied through different theoretical, methodological and conceptual understandings. Thirdly, it provides a new typology of several approaches on novel, collective and solidarity-oriented critical resilience initiatives which take into account political issues, be they policy or social-movement related. Finally, it points to future research areas which would aim to systematically address the political and non-political features of citizen-collective responses.