Building on our previous work, we study the non-relative homology of quantum group convolution algebras. Our main result establishes the equivalence of amenability of a locally compact quantum group $\mathbb{G}$ and 1-injectivity of $L^{\infty}(\widehat{\mathbb{G}})$ as an operator $L^1(\widehat{\mathbb{G}})$-module. In particular, a locally compact group $G$ is amenable if and only if its group von Neumann algebra $VN(G)$ is 1-injective as an operator module over the Fourier algebra $A(G)$. As an application, we provide a decomposability result for completely bounded $L^1(\widehat{\mathbb{G}})$-module maps on $L^{\infty}(\widehat{\mathbb{G}})$, and give a simplified proof that amenable discrete quantum groups have co-amenable compact duals which avoids the use of modular theory and the Powers--Størmer inequality, suggesting that our homological techniques may yield a new approach to the open problem of duality between amenability and co-amenability.

Let $G$ be a locally compact group, and let $A_{\cb}(G)$ denote the closure of $A(G)$, the Fourier algebra of $G$, in the space of completely bounded multipliers of $A(G)$. If $G$ is a weakly amenable, discrete group such that $\cstar(G)$ is residually finite-dimensional, we show that $A_{\cb}(G)$ is operator amenable. In particular, $A_{\cb}(\free_2)$ is operator amenable even though $\free_2$, the free group in two generators, is not an amenable group. Moreover, we show that if $G$ is a discrete group such that $A_{\cb}(G)$ is operator amenable, a closed ideal of $A(G)$ is weakly completely complemented in $A(G)$ if and only if it has an approximate identity bounded in the $\cb$-multiplier norm.

Let $X$ be a locally finite, connected graph without vertices of degree $1$. Non-backtracking random walk moves at each step with equal probability to one of the ``forward'' neighbours of the actual state, \emph{i.e.,} it does not go back along the preceding edge to the preceding state. This is not a Markov chain, but can be turned into a Markov chain whose state space is the set of oriented edges of $X$. Thus we obtain for infinite $X$ that the $n$-step non-backtracking transition probabilities tend to zero, and we can also compute their limit when $X$ is finite. This provides a short proof of old results concerning cogrowth of groups, and makes the extension of that result to arbitrary regular graphs rigorous. Even when $X$ is non-regular, but \emph{small cycles are dense in} $X$, we show that the graph $X$ is non-amenable if and only if the non-backtracking $n$-step transition probabilities decay exponentially fast. This is a partial generalization of the cogrowth criterion for regular graphs which comprises the original cogrowth criterion for finitely generated groups of Grigorchuk and Cohen.

We introduce and study several notions of amenability for unitary corepresentations and $*$-representations of algebraic quantum groups, which may be used to characterize amenability and co-amenability for such quantum groups. As a background for this study, we investigate the associated tensor C$^{*}$-categories.