How do NGO's influence asylum policies in Norway? : a case study on the White paper, "Children on the run"

Abstract

To which extent are NGO’s able to influence immigration and asylum policies in Norway? As important actors in Norway’s immigration and asylum politics, NGO’s had huge interests in a new white paper (white paper 27, “Children on the run”) that aimed to improve living situations of child asylum seekers in Norway, and thus used their resources intensively for lobbying politicians. This research paper employed a case study that analyzed NGO’s potential to influence governmental policies versus NGO’s actual influence on the contents of the white paper 27. Dür‘s (2008) four-category framework on NGO influence was used to analyze NGO’s potential for influence and according to it, the NGO‘s had a high potential to influence governmental policies. However, this thesis found that this potential was not fulfilled in the case of white paper 27. Through a document content analysis and interviews with key organizations, this thesis discovered that NGO‘s were only able to influence practices and regulations concerning child asylum seekers, but they were not able to influence actual asylum policies.