Abstract
Introduction
In 2015 and 2016, European countries, including Norway, experienced what became known as the ‘refugee crisis’. In 2015, mostly in the second half of the year, Norway received an unprecedented 31,145 asylum claims, including 5500 from individuals crossing the Russian-Norwegian border. In Norway, as elsewhere in the Global North, before, during and after 2015, government and civil society actors employed the humanitarian crisis label, and frames of disorder and calamity to make sense of the increasing number of migrants. These people, often fleeing conflict and humanitarian crises elsewhere, were seen as the cause or ‘site’ of an unprecedented ‘crisis’ in Norway. In response to the increasing numbers arriving, and in support of a proposal suspending asylum claims from all non-conflict areas, the Norwegian Prime Minister, Erna Solberg, asserted, ‘It is a force majeure proposal which we will have in the event that it all breaks down, the influx continues, and everyone ends up in Norway because we are at the outer edge of Europe.’ ‘Norway is the last stop, isn't it?’ she added (The Local, 2016). Solberg’s statement demonstrates a perception that people fleeing their homes are agents of potential crisis and chaos, as well as an expectation of future ‘crisis and chaos’ (Mountz and Hiemstra, 2014). The fact that Norway was on the ‘outer edge’ of Europe was cited as an additional argument for seeing the migrant numbers as unmanageable and needing to be stopped. However, in the fourth quarter of 2015 and the first quarter of 2016, the number of applicants for asylum decreased by 95% (SSB, 2015; Norwegian Directorate of Immigration (UDI), 2016a). The influx resulted in zero fatalities. 1
How did this influx of refugees and migrants in a non-violent setting and high-income country become framed as a ‘humanitarian crisis’ and with what consequences? Taking Norway as a case study, we explore this question through two analytical prisms. The first is that of ‘chaos and crisis’ as conceptualized by Mountz and Hiemstra (2014). It reveals how global migration is discussed in alarmist terms (at both scholarly, policy and public discourse levels), and how this enables states to expand their sovereign powers: measures that ‘previously would have been considered extreme and unjust’ become justifiable (Mountz and Hiemstra, 2014: 386). Use of the crisis label is associated with the notion of ‘chaotic geographies’. Drawing on the earlier work of Hiemstra (2016) and (Mountz, 2010) , we understand ‘chaotic geographies’ as a way in which chaos is spatialized and temporalized. Once a situation has been framed as one of ‘crisis and chaos’, it can be securitized (Ybarra, 2019), developmentalized, turned into a political struggle (Hinger, 2016; Landau, 2019) or become a humanitarian crisis. Our second conceptual prism is that of the 'humanitarian arena', which centres on the constitutive nature of humanitarian action (Hilhorst and Jansen, 2010). In this view, the actions or actors considered ‘humanitarian’ are not predetermined and attention is drawn to the socially constructed nature of humanitarian action . In this article, we use the two lenses to shed light on the dynamics of the Norwegian situation. This theoretical juxtaposition allows us to expand the understanding that, as regards the refugee crisis, Norway was a geographic, economic and political outlier, which, we argue, in combination with the state’s response, created a ‘de-escalated chaotic geography’. Norway has until now been a rather marginal case in refugee studies: while topics relating to how the Norwegian state relates to migration, integration and belonging are well covered in works such as Erdal and Fangen (2021), Erdal and Midtbøen (2023); how Norway as a country has received refugees is relatively less covered in English-speaking literature (see, e.g. Thorshaug and Brun (2019) and Brekke et al. (2021)). This may also be because of its position as an outlier, as we will show. New forms of migration may change this, and we argue that the dynamics at stake here are important to understand: how did a relatively wealthy state on the outskirts of Europe, with political leaders concerned with not ‘becoming the last stop’, respond to the increased numbers of arrivals in the final months of 2015 and early 2016?
Between summer 2015 and early 2016, a wide variety of citizen volunteers, established humanitarian actors and European states negotiated how to frame the needs of refugees and other migrants and the appropriate responses to them, sometimes collaborating and sometimes struggling over infrastructure, capacity, discourse and approaches (Hilhorst et al., 2021; Dittmer and Lorenz, 2021). In Norway, the view initially taken might appear as a form of ‘chaotic geography’ 2 (Hiemstra, 2016), but we argue that the framing of the situation as a humanitarian crisis, and the rapid emergence of a humanitarian arena helped govern the refugee influx. This represented a reassertion of state power, but hardly an expansion of it. Other European countries have exercised migration control through deterrence, using military approaches of containment and violence, or providing reduced and sometimes very limited basic assistance, in the belief that assistance attracts more migrants (see, e.g. extensive literature on reception conditions in Calais or Lesvos, such as Keen (2021), Tyerman (2021), Gordon and Larsen (2021)). Norway, however, has been an exception. Through interventions that produced what we call a ‘de-escalated chaotic geography’, the state exercised control in a decidedly non-neoliberal manner: by ‘taking control’ of the situation a few weeks after the initial mobilization around an ‘imminent humanitarian crisis’ and by taking charge of organizing reception procedures, both in Oslo, and in the Arctic area of Storskog along the Russian border. State action left little room (or need) for spontaneous action by volunteers (Jumbert, 2020), which was thus in turn also governed through this response. This article contributes to the theoretical understanding of how European states act in the face of increased migration, through an in-depth qualitative study of a case dissimilar to other more well-studied cases in Southern Europe.
A significant but scattered and mostly Norwegian-language literature has tried to make sense of how the refugee crisis was experienced by various sectors and actors and in different parts of Norway (Bygnes, 2017; Fladmoe et al., 2016; Homane, 2016; Sætrang, 2016). Extensive parallel literatures exist elsewhere, including for Sweden (Frykman and Mäkelä, 2019; Johansson, 2018) and Germany (Braun, 2017; Kleres, 2018; Laubenthal, 2015). These literatures, which emphasize the citizen-humanitarian aspect (Jumbert and Pascucci, 2021), do not specifically use the humanitarian arena concept to analyse the dynamics of the refugee crisis or the use of the humanitarian crisis label. Through a detailed examination of the Norwegian response, including that in the Arctic area, this article brings conceptual and empirical knowledge together to shed light on what we see as a geographical and political exception and the part played by ‘humanitarian crisis’ and chaos narrative in it.
Methodologically, we adopt a tripartite approach that considers time, space, and levels of response to understand the specific type of chaotic geography involved in the Norwegian reception of refugees and other migrants in 2015. We first explore the roles of the past, present and projected future crisis (what roles do humanitarian ideals and humanitarian vernacular play?). Second, we consider the relationship between responses in urban areas and in borderlands/the periphery. Third, we examine the individual, institutional and governmental responses, and how each defined the crisis and determined who should respond. Drawing on interviews, events co-organized with humanitarian actors, grey literature, media analysis and a comprehensive literature review, we consider the responses of so-called ordinary citizen and volunteers, mainly those organized under the umbrella of Refugees Welcome Norway (RWN); of established actors, such as the Norwegian Red Cross (NORCROSS); and of local municipalities and state agencies. We begin by studying the individual responses under the RWN umbrella mainly in and around Oslo, and how institutional responses gradually replaced them. We then look at the responses by local municipalities, state actors and a regional branch of RWN, Refugees Welcome to The Arctic (RWTA) at Storskog on the northern border with Russia. The interviews were conducted between 2016 and 2019, mainly with volunteers who work or have worked with RWN or the Red Cross. 3
The next section of this article sets out the analytical conceptualization of the humanitarian arena as it emerged from a perceived emergency of ‘crisis and chaos’. The section ‘Historical context: State intervention and ‘Norway as humanitarian superpower’ provides a Norwegian historical context for the 2015 ‘refugee crisis’ and the response it elicited. This is important, as several of our interviewees spoke of this historical background, and of the way Norway had dealt with past influxes of migrants, when there had been conflict and societal violence, emphasizing the importance of this for understanding the response to the 2015 refugees. The section ‘Norway as humanitarian arena’ presents our related but geographically disparate findings, which we describe in three subsections. The final ‘Analysis’ section provides an analytical reflection on the use of the humanitarian label.
Crisis and chaos in the Norwegian humanitarian arena
As
Over the last decade, the mass movement of populations fleeing war, violence and poverty has engendered a new conceptualization of crisis. Following the ‘refugee crisis’, recent academic discussion about the constitution of ‘humanitarian borders’ (De Lauri, 2019; Gross-Wyrtzen, 2020; Pallister-Wilkins, 2018; Walters, 2011) has drawn attention to how the term ‘humanitarian’ is also used to justify (government) efforts to manage and control migration (e.g. Bendixsen, 2019). Papada et al. show how migration management resembles practices also employed by humanitarians or security actors, in using structures designed to be short term and infrastructure meant to tackle the ‘immediate’ crisis. This form of security governance does not suspend normal governance, but legitimates itself by claiming to fill a temporal and spatial gap (Papada et al., 2020: 7).
Another response to the logic of ‘humanitarian’ crisis comes from grassroots movements, which see chaos geographies as political opportunities and the measures taken or not taken by the state as moral imperatives for citizen action. Citizens mobilize to provide basic assistance to refugees and other migrants, while contesting state practices and ‘calling for action’ to provide better protection. This ‘citizen humanitarianism’ can be seen in the initiatives of so-called ordinary citizens who provide humanitarian aid to refugees (Jumbert and Pascucci, 2021). Such initiatives are also described as grassroots or everyday humanitarianism (Fechter and Schwittay, 2020). Central to these activities are varying assessments of the intersection between professional emergency response and volunteer-based assistance, as well as of the fault lines between political action and ‘mere’ help (whether provided by citizens who ‘just’ want to help, without taking a political stance, or a humanitarian form of neutrality).
This article is interested in how ad hoc humanitarian actors, practices and structures suddenly emerged across Norway to respond to an exceptional situation in which the state and other established actors were initially seen as absent, and sometimes unwilling to help. The result was a chaotic geography, until the state stepped up its efforts and helped de-escalate the situation. To explore this, we study different levels of response to the arrival of refugees, employing the humanitarian arena concept. The Norwegian refugee crisis becomes an arena—or a series of geographically interlinked arenas—wherein various actors, who self-define as humanitarians or performers of humanitarian acts of assistance, meet, interact and combine to define what ‘humanitarianism’ is, as well as to decide the outcomes of aid (Hilhorst and Jansen, 2010). The notion of the humanitarian arena was developed as a critical response to the normative concept of humanitarian space, which centres on the moral and legal rights of humanitarian actors to provide aid and protection (Dijkzeul and Sandvik, 2019). Essentially, the humanitarian arena is where actors reacting to a (potential) ‘humanitarian crisis’ meet and shape responses to it. The spatial dimension (still) matters, as these actors meet and interact within different geographies. We argue that, across these different sites, events in Norwegian domestic history have a bearing on the interpretive frames within which need, aid, agency—and humanity—are constituted.
This broadens the scope of what can be studied as humanitarian, expanding it beyond what is considered a crisis per se. We propose now to look at how the language of humanitarianism is used to justify practices that can suddenly be adopted in response to what is understood to be extreme emergency ‘crisis’ events and to the chaos there might be, if the proper humanitarian practices are not set in motion (Mountz and Hiemstra, 2014).
Historical context: State intervention and ‘Norway as humanitarian superpower’
The history of Norwegian humanitarianism makes it clear that not only does the state have a habit of intervening, constructing itself as a humanitarian actor, but also that the population expects it to assume this role. Interviewees repeatedly referred to key historical events and critical points in Norwegian migration history, either to explain individual motivations to ‘do something’ or to underscore Norway’s particular responsibility to do good and protect those in need. We suggest that this historical legacy formed part of the script for how the Norwegian ‘refugee crisis’ unfolded in 2015, shaping how it was perceived in different ways with respect to the nature of the problem, what needed to be done and by whom.
Norway is a social democratic welfare state with a relatively short history of independence. In the past it was a poor country and lost a considerable part of its population to out-migration, with only Ireland sending a greater percentage of its people to the United States between 1820 and 1920. Norway is home to five national minorities and for many years, the state aggressively sought to force indigenous populations to assimilate. During the Second World War, under German occupation and the Quisling regime, a large share of Norway’s Jewish citizens were exterminated. At the end of the war, the retreating German forces—trying to impede the progress of the advancing Russians—employed a scorched earth policy in the northern part of the country, thus creating a large population of internally displaced people.
In the postwar period, Norway became deeply engaged in multilateralism through the United Nations and was involved in peace processes around the world, with varying degrees of success. Norway’s postwar experience of receiving refugees began in 1956, when, at the request of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), it took in 1500 Hungarian refugees fleeing Soviet repression (Cellini, 2017: 8). Later in the Cold War, Norway received approximately 5500 Chileans fleeing the dictatorship of Pinochet, who came to power after the 1973 coup. Under the auspices of UNHCR, about 10,000 Vietnamese boat people were settled in Norway towards the end of the 1970s (Lie, 2004). In the 1980s, Norway began to liberalize its economy, gradually allowing increasing oil revenues to fund a new foreign policy focused on the ‘soft power’ objective of becoming a ‘peace nation’. The country also began to brand itself as a ‘humanitarian superpower’. In support of this, it pointed to its post-Second World War engagements, and to its previous history, in particular the legacy of the explorer and national hero Fridtjof Nansen and his efforts on behalf of refugees and stateless people (creating the Nansen Passports, which were internationally recognized travel documents for refugees in the 1920s and 1930s.)
In the early 1990s, the conflict in the Balkans brought what was the greatest number ever of refugees arriving at one time in Norway, although by European standards, 14,000 was not an unusually large number of Bosnians to admit. This period also saw the successful promulgation of the ‘Norwegian model’, which described the high degree of cooperation between the Norwegian State and humanitarian NGOs (such as the NORCROSS, the Norwegian People’s Aid, Norwegian Church Aid, the Norwegian Refugee Council and Save the Children Norway). Developing and improving the model became a stated goal of the government. Since the 1990s, the idea of the ‘Norwegian model’ has appeared in policy documents and is understood as originating from the country’s long tradition of including civil society engagement in its internal governance (Borchgrevink and Sandvik, 2022).
By the early 2000s, multicultural Norway was a reality few could deny. As elsewhere in Europe, discontent with immigration and integration policies was on the rise, but the events of 22 July 2011—when a violent right-wing extremist bombed a government building and then slaughtered young members of the Labour party at their annual island gathering—shattered Norway’s sense of self and the illusion that Norwegian right-wing racism had declined. After this national tragedy, a concerted effort was made to recreate consensus on Norwegian values of tolerance, non-violence and inclusion. At the same time, there was widespread bewilderment at the lack of preparedness shown by the police and national intelligence service, and the devastating results of racism and xenophobia in Norway.
Despite this, our interviewees repeatedly referred to the idea of Norway being a ‘humanitarian superpower’ possessing a uniquely effective ‘Norwegian model’ built on a collective memory (whether justified or not) of the country’s successful handling of previous migration challenges, through several levels of state and NGO actors coming together to manage crises, both in the centre (police stations in the capital city) and on the periphery (the Storskog border with Russia).
Norway as humanitarian arena
Norway’s geographic location makes it less likely than other European countries to be affected by global migration. The threshold for migration-related events to become ‘exceptional’ is therefore low. Norwegians initially viewed the ‘refugee crisis’ created by the influx into Europe of refugees and other migrants from North Africa and Asia Minor as something occurring a long way away from them. The main catalyst for it was the worsening of the civil war in Syria. In 2011, Syria’s neighbours were absorbing most of those fleeing the conflict. Turkey took in approximately three million and Lebanon and Jordan around one million each (Crawley, 2016). At the same time, significant numbers were seeking to escape long-standing conflicts or deep societal problems in other countries, such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Eritrea and Nigeria (Fargues, 2017).
Greece and Italy were the initial points of entry for the refugees, which exacerbated tensions and unresolved issues within and among EU Member States (Crawley, 2016). On 2 September 2015, the body of Alan Kurdi, a three-year-old Syrian, was washed up on a Turkish beach, and this led to calls for a more humane approach to the refugees (Prøitz, 2017). In the autumn of 2015, the EU failed to reach agreement on burden-sharing, and countries adopted widely differing approaches to refugees. In 2016 and 2017, following the EU–Turkey Joint Statement in March 2016, and the Valletta Memorandum between Libya and Italy in 2017, there was a fall in the number of migrants crossing the stretches of the Mediterranean in question (see notably Palm, 2018).
In the first six months of 2015, few asylum seekers arrived in Norway (Fladmoe et al., 2016). However, major shipwrecks in the Mediterranean in April 2015 and reports of the worsening situation in Syria meant that the Norwegian authorities and civil society became more aware of what was happening. As more asylum seekers began to arrive in Norway in summer 2015, citizen initiatives began to develop. By August, the growing numbers of migrants led to a feeling that ‘now the crisis is here’. Resources and various actors—first-time and experienced volunteers and professional agencies—mobilized around the shared idea that an exceptional situation was unfolding and required cross-national humanitarian responses. The public’s familiarity with the emergency imaginary, and its cultural power, led to grassroots frustration with the central government and established humanitarian actors, who were seen as not doing enough. The public’s understanding of what an ‘appropriate’ response would be led to a rapid rise in the number of citizen actors intent on producing a ‘proper humanitarian response’.
To help understand the development of the Norwegian humanitarian arena, we discuss the practices and approaches of three actors: volunteers and ordinary citizens engaged in RWN; a professional emergency actor, the Norwegian Red Cross (NORCROSS), which acts as an auxiliary to the state in exceptional situations and, in this case, to the local government in the Arctic area; and the state, which gradually took over (and excluded) the spontaneous assistance organized by volunteers, thus de-escalating and transforming a chaotic humanitarian geography into a bordered, sovereign space.
Volunteers and ordinary citizens: Refugees Welcome Norway
Volunteers who mobilized and created RWN in the late summer of 2015 framed the refugee situation as a humanitarian crisis. At the outset, in July, a small group of artists began meeting at the police registration unit (the ‘PU’) in the Tøyen neighbourhood of Oslo, where all refugees had to register on arrival. They brought hot food and clothes for those waiting in line. After the Norwegian daily
According to interviewees, the political discourse at the time, which focused on how more migrants could be prevented from coming to Norway, created frustration and initial feelings of disempowerment among those who later chose to mobilize as volunteers. Many became involved spontaneously, without having much—or any previous experience, having heard that friends were going to Tøyen to help and offer food and other necessities. Many of those we interviewed described initially feeling at a loss as to how to help (Interview 5). The structure created by RWN relieved this anxiety by providing easy, immediate ways to help. The volunteers describe this early period as a time when it was possible for ‘anyone to do something, provided they had some time to spare (Jumbert, 2020). As a result, there were more clothes and helping hands than could be made use of. By early September, the storage space borrowed by RWN was completely full. The volunteers queueing up to deliver clothes were asked to go home. Approximately 50 volunteers were then working full-time to sort and manage clothes and other items (Riaz, 2015).
Many volunteers had definite ideas about the kind of organization they wanted to build. At the outset, the founders of RWN defined the initiative as non-political and set out to enable people to come together to ensure a ‘proper welcome’ for newly arrived refugees. As events unfolded and more people participated, this intention changed. Some of the original participants, together with volunteers who had joined later, emphasized the need to engage politically to pressure policymakers to try harder to create a better—and more comprehensive—reception structure (Interview 4).
Some volunteers we interviewed said they felt that the police at the Tøyen registration centre were overwhelmed, because the situation there was completely outside their experience. Eventually, police allowed volunteers to deliver one hot meal a day to the refugees and migrants. One of the early volunteers, a well-known restaurant owner, mobilized fellow restaurateurs to donate food (Sund and Auestad, 2015). The volunteers also began questioning the lack of involvement of more established humanitarian actors, and in particular, the Red Cross. The perception among volunteers was ‘If we don’t do this, they won’t get anything.’ The established, state-led reception system, which involved civil society actors such as the Red Cross and Norwegian People’s Aid, was seen as simply not working (Interviews 5 and 6). In September, news media were reporting, At night, it’s pitch dark in front of the offices of the Police Immigration Unit. There are no stools or chairs to sit on. The asylum seekers just sit on the concrete. Their clothes are thin and they are reliant on volunteers to provide blankets, food, hot drinks and cuddly toys. (Jonhsrud, 2015b)
Professional emergency actors: The Red Cross
By early autumn 2015, the situation ‘at home’ as well as that on the Greek islands and mainland, and along the Balkan route was generally being described by the media and humanitarian actors as a ‘crisis’. Concern that ‘Now, the crisis is coming here’ (both to Europe, and to far away Norway) seems to have developed through a process of appropriation: Norwegians saw images of refugees crowded into train stations and enduring harsh treatment from border police further south and imagined that a similar situation would develop in Norway when more people arrived. In reply to the Prime Minister’s rhetorical question, ‘Norway is the last stop, isn’t it?’ several of Norway’s biggest humanitarian organizations sounded the alarm. The Secretary General of Norwegian People’s Aid said it was unacceptable that a refugee camp should be developing in the centre of Oslo: These individuals have been on the road for a long time. We have to receive them in a different manner. It’s the government’s responsibility to provide food, clothes and a bed for the night. This is not a volunteer responsibility. (Johnsrud, 2015)
In early September, the UDI asked the Red Cross to help host about 60 newly arrived refugees, mainly from Syria, in its facilities in Oslo (ABC Nyheter, 2015). Camp beds were set up in the main conference room and hot meals offered in the canteen before the refugees returned the next day to complete their registration. In mid-October, the UDI opened a new reception and registration centre in Råde, outside Oslo. The local Civil Defence unit set up the reception facilities and handled day-to-day operations during this phase (Johnsrud et al., 2015); the unit was also put in charge of setting up a reception centre in Finnmark in northern Norway (Øberg, 2015). Local health services were given responsibility for performing regular health checks and responding to emergencies.
As noted already, the volunteers had been particularly critical of the Red Cross’s lack of involvement, given the important domestic role of the organization. To understand this criticism, the history of the Red Cross needs to be understood, as well as the organization’s view of the refugee situation. We spoke with Red Cross employees just after the 2015–2016 refugee crisis, when their organization was grappling with the political and symbolic fallout of the sudden transformation of the Norwegian humanitarian sector into a de facto site for delivering aid and negotiating protection.
The NORCROSS was founded in 1865 by the Prime Minister Fredrik Stang, two years after Henry Dunant and Gustave Moynier founded the International Committee Red Cross. Historically, the Red Cross has been a conservative organization for the well-off: the royal family has been a key patron and heading it has been a springboard for ambitious politicians (Interview 2). Its role as a government auxiliary in war and peace was codified into Norwegian law in 1907 and again in 2009 (Røde Kors, 2016). This peculiar role, and its long history contributed significantly to the organization’s self-identification as special and unique vis-à-vis other actors in the Norwegian humanitarian sector (Mageli, 2014).
In the second half of 2015, the Red Cross suddenly found itself involved in managing a displacement crisis in Oslo (Interview 3). An employee who had been central to the organization’s response during these months said, ‘Personally, I think we are too arrogant, just because we have a history, and that there is [the idea of] a humanitarian exceptionalism.’ The experiences of the refugees in Tøyen, along with the creation of the temporary reception centre for asylum seekers in autumn 2015 came as a ‘shock to the system’ (the ‘system’ in question being the long-standing cooperation between the Red Cross and state authorities). For an organization that had long been favoured by the ruling political elite, the situation now facing it was very different. As one employee put it, ‘The current conservative government, it’s a shock for us … We were literally caught off guard last autumn (2015) when they did not listen to us.’ She said, ‘We have a special mandate from the Geneva conventions but nobody [in the government] knew about it,’ (Interview 1). Her colleague explained that being designated an auxiliary meant that the Red Cross is the preferred aid actor on Norwegian soil during wartime. Whether this applies in peacetime is unclear, as the events in Tøyen illustrate. She said, ‘We were the only organization that was permitted to access the waiting rooms, the only one let in by UDI, but we feel that this was not understood or appreciated,’ (Interview 3). Then came the breaking point, when conditions in Tøyen became so precarious that the Red Cross felt compelled to go public: I mean, we were very lucky that no one died in there! We talked a lot about it, and how we were going to deal with it. We could go to meetings and say it would be something if we gave people enough air to breathe and food, but this was ignored. And then we went public and got less access as a result. They [the state] were just…offended. Our communications director called
Professional emergency actors and the grassroots: Local governments and rural communities in the Arctic
To turn from the framing of the humanitarian crisis, we will now consider the
A complex mix of local and national government actors was responsible for handling the influx at Storskog. It included the Directorate for Security and Preparedness, the UDI, the Police Directorate (POD), the National Police Immigration Service (PU), the county governor, the county of Finnmark, the police district of East-Finnmark, the municipality of Sør-Varanger and the city of Kirkenes. One representative of the municipality of Sør-Varanger was critical of the UDI, which is based in Oslo, saying, ‘The different leaders did not contribute to a better handling of the situation in Sør-Varanger, and I said so. As a result, local cooperation was fragmented and didn’t work in an optimal way. There were too many leaders involved’ (Yttervoll, 2016). According to UDI, however, the problem was not that northern Norway’s capacity was overloaded but that the bureaucratic system and municipal processes for setting up shelters was too time-consuming (Sørgård et al., 2015). The Finnmark county governor also referred to the slow processes as well as to the inadequate support given by the UDI, saying that human resources arrived too late and that the UDI’s contact with the county governor and the municipalities was suboptimal. The Mayor of Kirkenes, said he repeatedly asked central government for help, but the administration was too busy with the influx in the south of the country to respond. ‘We assumed responsibility - we could have said no, but that would have been catastrophic for the nation’ (Abelsen and Flyum, 2017). 4
On 25 November 2015, the Norwegian government issued a new regulation forbidding anyone to cross the border without a valid Schengen visa. Many people were sent back to Russia without any consideration of their asylum applications. From 30 November 2015, the police began checking passports at the border, and Russia was deemed a safe third country for return by the Norwegian authorities (Vaage and Voll, 2017). Civil society actors strongly condemned these developments. A legal advisor working with NOAS, the Norwegian organization for asylum seekers, criticized the Norwegian government for having, in cooperation with the Russians, ‘in practice abolished the asylum system on the Schengen external border in the North’ (Trellevik et al., 2019). The POD officials were extremely critical of this policy, arguing that it was shaped by the Directorate’s political leadership in the Ministry of Justice and Public Security, and their interest in being ‘visible’ (Abelsen and Flyum, 2017). Another consequence of the crisis in terms of infrastructure was the building of a new border wall, 200 metres long, 3.5 metres high and extending 100 metres from each side of the border station at Storskog. This wall has been criticized for ‘sitting poorly with Norway’s self-image as a humanitarian superpower’ at a time when Europe is being crisscrossed by border walls (NTB, 2016).
The differences between the rural and urban humanitarian arenas reflect tension not just between central and local government actors but also between Oslo-based and rural volunteers. As the numbers of refugees arriving in Oslo fell, RWN’s efforts at the Tøyen police registration office were no longer needed. The organization then turned from emergency responses to providing support at reception centres across the country and building the organization regionally (Interview 5). Although it evolved out of the RWN initiative in Oslo, RWTA was based on long-standing activism contesting Norwegian migration policy. In particular, RWTA took a stand against the return of refugees to Russia in January 2016. Started for the specific purpose of political action, RWTA’s work diverged from the standard humanitarian activities carried out by RWN (which focused on food and clothing distribution and activities for refugees). RWTA engaged in legal work, demonstrations and political action—both legal and illegal—to ‘do the right thing’ for the refugees by allowing them to apply for asylum rather than being automatically returned to Russia. Three people were detained for assisting Syrian refugees to escape the police. Two of those arrested accepted fines as punishment, but the third refused to pay a fine as a matter of principle, declaring he ‘would rather go to jail for his humanitarian work’. This activist was put on trial in the East Finnmark District Court and was acquitted. Eventually, the Attorney General dismissed the fines against the other two (Furunes et al., 2018; Nordvåg et al., 2017).
Analysis
So far, we have explored the framing of the refugee crisis in terms of the political and geographical factors in Norway’s status as an outlier. We have discussed the responses of volunteers, professional humanitarians and the state in Oslo, and in the Arctic, and how a seemingly chaotic situation was eventually brought ‘under control’ by the authorities. Taken together, the framing of and responses to the refugee crisis form a ‘de-escalated chaotic geography’. We will now return to our initial question: How did the increasing numbers of refugees and migrants arriving in a non-violent setting, in a high-income country like Norway, come to be framed as a ‘humanitarian crisis’ and with what consequences? We offer the following analysis.
First, the humanitarian arena is shaped by time, space and the actors who come together in it. Norway’s history of emigration and immigration, its present-day multicultural, post-terror reality and its dominant self-image as an important humanitarian actor 5 all helped determine responses to the arrival of a large number of refugees and other migrants in 2015. Narratives about what was at stake in this humanitarian arena varied between places (from Oslo in the south to the far northern border with Russia), and between levels of response (government actors, humanitarian organizations and volunteers). In Oslo, there was a feeling that the kind of humanitarian suffering usually heard about in distant places was coming ‘here’. Allusions to ‘refugee camps in the middle of Oslo’ spurred talk among volunteers and humanitarian organizations about the obligation to respond. In northern Norway, the feeling of being ignored by the Oslo-based authorities added other dimensions. In both places, the state was perceived as absent and slow to respond; when it did become engaged, it assumed control of the reception facilities and the actual border crossing in the North. An additional issue for the Norwegian authorities on the Russia border was that of security—they were concerned not just about unauthorized migrants crossing the border, but also about the possible role of Russia in facilitating this influx. 6
The differing levels of response correspond to different experiences of the situation. The RWN volunteers acted out of a (perception) of a crisis of reception. They mobilized because ‘no one else was doing so’. They succeeded in mobilizing others who had never engaged before. The dynamics of what was also a (perceived) crisis of mobilization are notable: whereas new volunteers asked where established actors such as the Red Cross were, that organization found itself squeezed between the grassroots, from which it normally recruited volunteers, and the state, which it has a mandate to support in times of crisis.
Second, the frame of humanitarian crisis shapes responses and is thus ultimately political. It is a label that generates resources for those who make up this humanitarian arena, even if they disagree about the nature of the crisis and what should be done in response to it. As increasing numbers arrived in Oslo, and later came across the border at Storskog in the North, the crisis narrative and the idea that Norway ‘was the last stop’ became important political drivers. The crisis—and rhetoric about the prospect of future chaos—mobilized people and resources. But they also generated resistance, from calls to reinforce border control and refocus aid on helping refugees ‘there’, before they came to Norway, to objections to the extraordinary financial expenditure required to meet the needs of the situation (Reklev and Jumbert, 2018). In the current situation, the crisis label has become a driver of political and popular mobilization. As the state more and more assumed responsibility for the immediate reception efforts, the local humanitarian arenas in places such as Tøyen disappeared and were replaced by more permanent official structures. The return or reaffirmation of the state led to the withdrawal of citizen and regional actors. Because such humanitarian arenas are unconnected to structural factors such as poverty, fragile governments, armed violence or natural disasters, they dissolve quite quickly when the state becomes involved. Analytically, this demonstrates the importance of unpacking the mobilizing dynamics around situations that are broadly construed as humanitarian emergencies but are also contexts in which the humanitarian crisis label facilitates the unlocking of resources.
Ultimately, a higher percentage of applicants than usual was granted asylum; it rose as high as 75%, compared with 58% in 2012. 7 However, more stringent border control, the systematic return of asylum seekers to Russia, and the introduction of further legal restrictions on family reunification soon engendered a sharp decrease in the numbers arriving in 2016 and thereafter. The reception centre that was eventually set up in Råde, south of Oslo, has become permanent and can accommodate up to 1000 people. Until the arrival of Afghans in August 2021, it had been little used. When considerable numbers of Ukrainians began to arrive in February 2022, it became clear that this infrastructure is no longer a pop-up space but an established part of the migration governance structure.
Third, as this article has illustrated, how we define what constitutes a humanitarian crisis matters and has normative and moral implications. The rhetoric of humanitarianism not only relates to tackling causes of humanitarian suffering but also applies strategically and symbolically to the arrival of those seeking protection and fleeing suffering, whose presence is labelled a ‘humanitarian crisis’. In some areas of Europe, the situation eventually evolved into a crisis-like situation, as was the case in Greece, which was already beset by challenges caused by a financial crisis. The situation there was arguably quite different from that in Norway, which nonetheless, was framed as a crisis—both by those who saw it as a
Conclusion
Using the increased numbers of refugees and migrants arriving in a non-violent location in a high-income country like Norway as a case study to explore how a situation became framed as a ‘humanitarian crisis’, we have argued that historical, cultural and political national contexts affected both how the label was appropriated and adapted, and the nature of the response. We suggest that domestic models for international aid shape popular expectations of crisis response at home. In Norway, the humanitarian vernacular is familiar and a powerful driver of political resource mobilization—and for the exercise of soft power internationally. In a time of crisis, the public expects the state to assume responsibility for providing care for those who need it and views such action as the right thing to do.
This article fills a knowledge gap by expanding understanding of the forces in play in the humanitarian arena and the ‘crisis and chaos’ narrative that emerged in Norway in the late summer and early autumn of 2015. We have reviewed Norway’s experiences of immigration as well as its history of humanitarian aid giving abroad, to situate the events of 2015–2016 within a broader spatial and temporal dimension. We have shown how Norway’s position as an outlier serves as a useful lens to better understand how it responded, and from this qualitative approach we also show that such contextual understandings are important also in critically examining other states’ responses to migration and refugee reception. This is not meant to imply a particular sort of Norwegian national exceptionalism, but rather to serve as a reminder that each state has its own history, self-image, and geographical position that helps determine how it will
Footnotes
Declaration of conflicting interests
Funding
ORCID iD
