Migration scholars are increasingly realising the importance of immigrant organisations. Such organisations are not only important for the immigrants themselves, but also for their participation and integration into the host society. Immigrants set up organisations to create, express and maintain a collective identity. By studying organisations we gather valuable information about the settlement process of immigrants. We can thus see what differences were made important by whom, for whom, and for how long. The information gathered in this way can only be assessed if we know what factors influence the founding and continuation of organisations, and how this influence works. The articles in this issue focus on how and why immigrant organisations originate, and how they manage to survive and change over time. We argue that the characteristics of the immigrant community and the political opportunity structure are important in explaining immigrants' organisational activity, but that the nature of the relationships is bell-shaped rather than linear. Too much and too little competition (from governments and others) leads to reduced organisational activity. Too small and too large communities experience problems in maintaining organisations.

IMISCOE is a European Commission-funded Network of Excellence of more than 350 scientists from various research institutes that specialise in migration and integration issues in Europe. These researchers, who come from all branches of the economic and social sciences, the humanities and law, implement an integrated, multidisciplinary and internationally comparative research programme that focuses on Europe's migration and integration challenges.Within the programme, existing research is integrated and new research lines are developed that involve issues crucial to European-level policy-making and provide a theory-based design to implement new research.The publication program of IMISCOE is based on five distinct publication profiles, designed to make its research and results available to scientists, policy makers and the public at large. High quality manuscripts written by IMISCOE members, or in cooperation with IMISCOE

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Although social organizations are considered a vital aspect of life in neighborhoods, research seldom examines how neighborhood context influences organizational vitality. This article considers how organizational and neighborhood characteristics influence organizational survival over time via a case study of immigrant organizations in Amsterdam. Using multilevel analysis, we investigate which features give organizations an advantage in uncertain environments and which neighborhood characteristics influence organizations' ability to remain active sponsors of immigrant interests. We conclude that neighborhood context has little substantial influence on the failure rates of immigrant organizations in Amsterdam. We take this as provisional evidence that the residential environment on the neighborhood level may not be a relevant source of institutional material or resources for community-based organizations. Rather, what appears to be more crucial are organizational characteristics that enhance the embeddedness and legitimacy of immigrant organizations among the immigrant constituency and external actors in the urban context.

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