Provision of welfare to 'irregular migrants'

The project had its closing conference in November 2015, but the project periode was extended to allow the PhDs to complete their thesis work. 11 December 2011 Karlsen defended her thesis «Precarious inclusion. Irregular migration, practices of care and state b/ordering in Norway».The study builds on fieldwork in Bergen and Oslo between October 2011 and October 2013. The thesis explores what governs states? relationships with migrants in areas such as care and welfare while their presence is deemed illegal by the state. Norway, with its specific combination of a comprehensive and ambitious welfare state, humanitarian image, and strict immigration policies, provides a particularly interesting context for examining the interplay between care and immigration control. In the study, Karlsen argues that irregularised migrants should be understood as precariously included in the welfare state, rather than simply excluded. One reason for introducing the notion of precarious inclusion is the observation that while irregular migrants are formally excluded from the nation-state, they are not necessarily equally excluded from the welfare state. In Norway, as this thesis shows, irregular migrants are accorded certain rights and access to services caring for their bodily survival (healthcare, shelter, food). This does not mean, though, that the care offered is unproblematic, as it tends to be of a subordinate, arbitrary, and unstable kind. The notion of precarious inclusion is an attempt to capture what Karlsen sees as a complex and contradictory interplay between irregular migrants' formal exclusion from the nation-state and (limited) access to basic care services. She understands precarious inclusion for instance to occur when exceptions are built into the system to relieve some of the tension between border enforcement and humanitarian concerns. Being precariously included, irregular migrants are neither fully excluded nor fully recognised, but nevertheless governed. Thus, through the concept of precarious inclusion Karlsen highlights how sovereignty as a practice in everyday situations can involve simultaneous and contradictory processes of inclusion and exclusion. Project web-page: http://uni.no/nb/uni-rokkansenteret/medborgerskap-migrasjon-og-helse/provision-of-welfare-to-irregular-migrants-nfr-207201h20/

An increasing number of 'irregular migrants' poses major challenges for welfare states. While they are defined as outside of society, human rights ideologies still require that certain measures be taken by authorities to secure a minimum standard of livin g. The project will investigate the Norwegian welfare system's assessment of irregular migrant's rights and their actual social and health situation from a combined legal and social science approach, examining the complex relationship between law, institu tional practice, and migrants' lived experience. Senior researchers and research recruits from law, sociology, social anthropology and political science, will collaborate in this interdisciplinary project. Methods include law analysis, ethnographic fieldw ork and qualitative interviews (Oslo and Bergen). The theoretical framework is defined by traditional and critical legal perspectives and by anthropological theories of law and of the body. The project consists of two separate, yet interwoven parts: 1) A legal study of national and international rules applying to welfare provisions to irregular migrants 2) A social scientific study of irregular migrant's access to, use and trust of social welfare institutions and how they experience being in an irregular situation. Focus will be on welfare provisions in the areas of health and school/education and on how irregularity affects the lives of children. The component projects relate to the overarching research questions as stated in the primary and secondary o bjectives, working on a) international and national legal norms b) institutional practices and attitudes c) informal social networks d) migrants' experiences, agency and embodiment e) children's particular situation. Overall, the project's investigation o f how 'irregularity' is legally, institutionally, socially, and culturally constructed and experienced will offer much needed research-based knowledge of the consequences of present welfare policies and practices.