Few studies consider the role of immigrants as political actors. Despite the blindness of researchers and politicians, Portugal and Italy have witnessed the presence of immigrants organisations in their public sphere. In this research, we found out that the type of civil society in host countries has an infuential role in the position of immigrant actors in social movements and political mobilization tissues. In fact, civil society is not an homogeneous field and immigrant organisations have to fit into different types of discourses and repertoires of action in order to channel their political claims. With a cross-national comparison, we present the results of this line of reasoning.