Undermining, defending or expanding EU citizenship? CSOs’ positions on providing humanitarian assistance to EU citizens with limited rights to public welfare services in Norway

ABSTRACT

This article explores the positions of Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) on providing humanitarian assistance to European Union (EU) citizens with limited rights to public welfare services in Norway through 19 interviews with leaders of humanitarian services run by CSOs in Oslo. The article shows a contradictory picture. On one side, leaders expressed awareness and concern regarding risks associated with the provision of humanitarian services in a country with a comprehensive and ambitious welfare state. These include creating parallel welfare services based on charity rather than rights, and that such services may hide structural violence, or give it a humane façade, thus potentially contributing to the legitimacy and preservation of exclusionary welfare policies and practices. On the other side, service leaders were sceptical towards granting all EU citizens equal access to public welfare benefits and services and reported advocating for the expansion of humanitarian services rather than inclusionary rights for all EU citizens in Norway. We suggest that this may indicate an acceptance of the EU’s principle of conditionality of welfare support on employment history, and a limited willingness or capacity of CSOs to engage in advocacy that could contribute to alternative narratives about EU citizenship and challenge structural exclusion.

KEYWORDS:

• Civil society organizations
• humanitarianism
• advocacy
• EU citizenship
• migration to Norway

Introduction

Recent years have seen an upsurge in humanitarian provisions and services in many Western European welfare states, often run by civil society organizations (CSOs), intersecting with governments’ implementation of restrictive welfare policies to discourage ‘undesired’ migration (Bendixsen, 2018; Karlsen, 2018; Misje, 2021, 2022; Ticktin, 2011). This article is concerned with humanitarian services for European Union (EU) citizens in Norway who lack access to rights-based public welfare services – such as temporary accommodation, financial assistance and health provisions – other than in emergency situations (Misje, 2022). These EU citizens’ precarious welfare-legal position in Norway is due to them not meeting various mostly work-related requirements and thus not fitting neatly into the categories of the European Union (EU) citizenship framework (Schweyher, 2023; Synnes, 2021).

The provision of humanitarian services in countries with developed welfare systems is however controversial. Provision of humanitarian support can be interpreted as a ‘last-ditch measure’ (DeVerteuil, 2017, p. 1529) or a ‘critical layer of social protection’ (Evans, 2011), as it ameliorates the worst human suffering and prevents deaths. Conversely, such support may contribute to legitimizing the exclusion of particular groups from the ordinary welfare system. CSOs have been accused of doing the ‘dirty work’ of ‘managing unwanted and vulnerable populations’ (DeVerteuil, 2017, p. 1519). Despite alleviating suffering, CSOs may contribute to creating parallel, second-class welfare systems (Misje, 2021, 2022). This ultimately results in unequal treatment of people within a country’s borders, where some are left dependent solely on charity, rather than rights-based welfare support (Bendixsen, 2018; Karlsen, 2018; Ticktin, 2011). CSOs are thus confronted with dilemmas when navigating the conflicting demands for short-term interventions to ameliorate suffering and save lives and, conversely, long-term goals of formal inclusion and equal treatment. Prioritizing one or the other has important consequences for the social rights of those they seek to serve. It is therefore of significance to enquire how CSOs providing services for EU citizens with limited welfare rights position themselves regarding the existence of humanitarian services in a comprehensive and ambitious welfare state, such as the Norwegian one. Those interviewed for this article are all leaders of facilities and services accessible to EU citizens with restricted rights to public welfare in Oslo. As members of leadership teams in their respective organizations they influence on how humanitarian services are provided and the focus of advocacy efforts, thus potentially also impacting public discourse and policymakers.

Aiming to explore Norwegian CSOs’ positions on and approaches to humanitarian service provision within the country’s borders, this article investigates the following question: How do leaders of CSO-run social services directed at EU citizens position themselves regarding dilemmas associated with the provision of humanitarian aid in the context of a developed welfare state? A particular aim of our study is to explore what the reflections of these critical stakeholders may tell us about the development and realization of EU citizenship in the Norwegian context. Thus, we also ask: How do the leaders relate to the conditionality of welfare inclusion on previous work which lies at the core of EU citizenship, and do they suggest alternatives to ensure that EU citizens in Norway do not fall into destitution?

Investigating dilemmas associated with the provision of humanitarian aid is particularly interesting in the context of Norway, with its Social Democratic regime of welfare provision, where charity-based welfare support has traditionally been considered to contradict the ideals of the welfare state (Loga, 2018a).

We will first provide a discussion of our theoretical framework and an overview of the position of CSOs in the Norwegian context, followed by methodological and ethical reflections.

CSOs’ Role in Welfare States, Humanitarianism and EU Citizenship: A Theoretical Framework

This article combines insights from scholarship on CSOs’ roles in welfare states, critical theories on humanitarianism and the literature on EU citizenship to investigate how CSOs’ position themselves towards their own services and the wider system of humanitarian support for EU citizens with limited welfare rights in Oslo.

CSOs as Social Rights Intermediaries

CSOs can be understood as ‘social rights intermediaries’ (Bruzelius, 2020, p. 603) that play a part in addressing the needs and defending the rights of marginalized groups in welfare states. It is common to distinguish between their role as welfare producers and their political, democratic function (Loga, 2018a; Selle, 1998). As welfare producers CSOs provide statutory services contracted by the state as part of the so-called welfare mix. Furthermore, they can be a substitute, providing welfare services where needs are not met by public services. In their democratic role, CSOs act as political agents ‘influencing opinion, promoting and defending the interests of different social groups, and being a consultation body for the government’ (Loga, 2018a, p. 576). CSOs usually derive their purpose and mission from religious or humanistic values. Thus, many CSOs provide welfare services to marginalized groups because they affirm the idea that every person, based on their inherent human dignity and regardless of legal status, deserves support in a situation of need. In the Norwegian context CSOs are therefore often referred to as ‘idealistic actors’ (Loga, 2018b) and have been conceptualized as ‘value guardians’ in society and as ‘critics or watchdogs vis-à-vis the state’ (Angell, 2016, p. 147). Nevertheless, there are great differences between different CSOs’ approaches to political advocacy. While some strive to stay out of politics and want to remain politically neutral, others consider political advocacy an essential element of their work.

In their democratic function CSOs may engage in more limited forms of advocacy that aim at facilitating access to existing rights and services for particular groups or other more adversarial forms of advocacy that seek institutional and systemic changes (Milbourne, 2013). Ellison (2000) distinguishes between ‘proactive citizenship engagement’, which has the goal of expanding the reach of citizenship rights for a particular group and ‘defensive citizenship engagement’ which is about the preservation of existing rights. When CSOs engage in more limited or defensive advocacy, they function as a link or bridge between marginalized groups or individuals and the state, helping the former to claim the rights they have on paper but may be unable to claim in practice (Milbourne, 2013). When CSOs engage in adversarial or expansive advocacy they question the existing legal order and aim at the expansion of the rights of disadvantaged or excluded groups.

The wider research on the role of CSOs under neoliberalism suggests that neoliberal political and economic environments in Western democracies, such as increased competition for funding of welfare services are constraining the willingness and capacity of CSOs to engage in challenging campaigns and forms of advocacy and create ‘alternative narratives’ (Acheson, 2014), thus marginalizing CSOs independent role as social rights intermediaries in influencing public dialogue and policy (Milbourne, 2013; Onyx et al., 2010).

The Double-sidedness of Humanitarian Assistance

While widely considered crucial stakeholders in liberal democracies, one aspect of CSOs’ engagement in society is particularly contested: the provision of charitable or humanitarian welfare services outside the regular structures of the welfare state. Here, critical scholarship on humanitarianism, the exploration of intended and desirable – as well as unintended, often more violent – ‘effects of good intentions’ (Ticktin, 2014, p. 277), has been particularly influential.

The analytical lens of humanitarian exceptionalism is particularly useful here, referring to a ‘logic of exceptionalism’ (Ticktin, 2005, p. 350) underpinning parallel care systems aimed at migrants who lack access to the ordinary public welfare system (Bendixsen, 2018; Fassin, 2012; Karlsen, 2021; Ticktin, 2005, 2011). This logic, as well as the ambitions of the parallel services and provisions, constitutes an exception to how the Norwegian welfare state normally frames and deals with suffering (Karlsen, 2018). They primarily aim to alleviate precarious situations by covering immediate needs and are meted out through benevolence, charity and compassion (Bendixsen, 2018; Karlsen, 2018; Ticktin, 2011) rather than comprehensive, inclusive social rights. Humanitarian aid is seldom based on formal rights; thus, support is not guaranteed, and its provision is often arbitrary, unpredictable and unequal (Fassin, 2012; Karlsen, 2018; Misje, 2021).

We draw on these perspectives to highlight how the provision of humanitarian services to EU citizens with limited rights may hide structural violence, injustice and exclusion or give it a humane façade, potentially contributing to its legitimacy and preservation, and hindering structural change (Ticktin, 2011).

The Conditionality of EU Citizenship

We are particularly interested in the seemingly simultaneous inclusionary and exclusionary policies and practices directed at ‘undeserving’ EU citizens (Lafleur & Mescoli, 2018; Yıldız & De Genova, 2018); hence, the concept of EU citizenship is central to our study. Even though Norway is not a member of the EU, it participates in its Single Market under the European Economic Area (EEA) Agreement. Thus, EU citizens’ rights in Norway are comparable to those of EU citizens moving within the EU (Schweyher, 2023).

EU citizenship refers to the rights EU citizens enjoy regarding freedom of movement in the EU as defined in the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union and EU regulations such as EC 2004/38. At the core of EU citizenship is the principle of non-discrimination by nationality, meaning that an EU citizen residing in another member state must be treated equal to that state’s nationals. Based on this principle, EU citizens have wide-ranging rights including equal access to the labour market and welfare support in other member states (Barbulescu & Favell, 2020). However, and although EU citizens’ ‘access to social protection in destination countries was not always the controversial topic that it is today’ (Lafleur & Mescoli, 2018, p. 482), there has continually been friction between the ideals of free movement, equal treatment and transnational social protection on one hand and the interests of nationalized welfare states on the other. Rather than being a ‘fully fledged form of citizenship’ (Barbulescu & Favell, 2020, p. 151), EU citizenship has been limited and conditional on economic status. EU citizens must have been either employed or economically self-sufficient to have a right of residence in another member state, which is the precondition for the right to equal treatment and access to public welfare support (Dwyer et al., 2019; Pennings & Seeleib-Kaiser, 2018).

European welfare states usually offer a combination of contribution-based and needs-based welfare support to their citizens, thus ensuring that residents have a minimum to survive, even if they have no work history. EU citizenship makes access to needs-based elements of welfare provision for EU citizens residing in other member states conditional on work, thus in practice removing the last safety net for those who are unable to meet work-related conditions. As a consequence, EU citizens may find themselves in circumstances where they have a right to be physically present in another member state and are legally protected from deportation but are without rights to welfare support. In such situations, EU citizens risk extreme poverty, homelessness and destitution in the host member state. Scholars argue that EU citizenship is currently ‘deeply stratified according to socio-economic class’ and ‘inadequate to deliver principles of social justice’ (O'Brien, 2017, p. 1), producing a new underclass in Europe whose suffering is explicitly tolerated by member states (Heindlmaier & Blauberger, 2017).

CSOs in the Social Democratic Context of Norway

The Norwegian welfare state has been described as a Social Democratic regime (Esping-Andersen, 1990) characterized by three fundamental norms: universality, the equal treatment of all members of society; solidarity, the redistributive orientation of the welfare state; and public responsibility, the state’s extensive role in providing welfare services (Cox, 2004; Kildal & Kuhnle, 2007). Charitable welfare provision has been limited since it contradicts these ideals (Selle et al., 2018; Selle & Wollebæk, 2010; Sivesind, 2015). In 2013 approximately 8% of welfare services in Norway were run by CSOs (Sivesind, 2016). Social service provision through CSOs is mostly tax funded and fully integrated in state and municipal policy plans. It is considered part of, or a supplement to, public welfare, rather than an alternative or substitute, and based on a ‘close and consensus-based cooperation between the state and the organizations’, which is considered a ‘hallmark [ . . .] of the Nordic membership model’ (Loga, 2018a, p. 575).

The rise of neoliberalism has influenced the Norwegian welfare system. While scholars consider the consensus regarding the welfare state’s basic norms and values to still be strong in Norway and the restructuring of the welfare state less extensive than in other European countries (Cox, 2004; Vike, 2015), there are clear signs of reorganization, including increased outsourcing of service provision to for-profit providers (Sivesind, 2016), a turn to activation policies that make access to welfare support highly conditional on claimants’ efforts to return to the labour market (Alseth, 2018) and the states’ retreat from providing support to the least privileged (Kamali & Jönsson, 2018). However, it has not been investigated whether and how these changes might have affected Norwegian CSOs’ advocacy strategies and goals.

Humanitarian Services for EU Citizens in Oslo

Following the EU expansions of 2004 and 2007, fears over welfare abuse and overburdening of the welfare systems became more pronounced, and governments have tried to deter poor, ‘undesired’ EU citizens from coming to Norway by limiting their access to public welfare services (Misje, 2022). This and the overall conditionality of EU citizens’ social rights on well-paid, continuous and well-documented work has left many EU citizens without access to public welfare support, often living in extreme poverty and destitution and lacking access to basic amenities, including shelter, sanitary facilities and health care (Bymisjon, 2016).

Since 2013, there has been an upsurge in humanitarian social services aimed at EU citizens with limited rights to public welfare services in Oslo. These services are provided by CSOs and receive some public funding, primarily through a grant scheme ‘for humanitarian aid to migrating EEA-citizens who come to Norway to make a living by begging’. The scheme was introduced in 2013, and its stated aim is the betterment of the humanitarian situation of these EU citizens (Engebrigtsen & Haug, 2018). The municipality of Oslo introduced a similar grant scheme aimed at NGOs assisting ‘visiting homeless EEA citizens’ in 2017.

At the time of the research for this article, CSOs provided a wide variety of humanitarian services to EU citizens with limited welfare rights, including basic health care, food, shelter and sanitary facilities. Many immediate-needs services were established specifically for EU citizens who begged in the streets and were without official residence and a history of participation in the formal labour market in Norway, thus lacking social rights (Engebrigtsen & Haug, 2018; Misje, 2021, 2022). However, these services have been increasingly used by EU citizens who have lived in Norway for many years and have a history of labour market participation and potentially have social rights but struggle to claim them due to various barriers (Schweyher, 2023; Synnes, 2022). Recently, CSOs in Oslo have established dedicated information, advice and support services for this group. CSOs have also cooperated with lawyers who offer free legal support to EU citizens who have become victims of work exploitation, which often has consequences for their social rights (Schweyher, 2023).

Research Context, Methods and Ethical Considerations

The empirical data for this article draws from ethnographic fieldwork. Both authors conducted participant observation at humanitarian services run by CSOs in Oslo and accessible to EU citizens with limited welfare rights: Author A from March to November 2019 and Author B from August 2017 to June 2018. We also accompanied EU citizens as they navigated these and public welfare services, such as the social welfare administration and the healthcare system. During or following the participant observations, we carried out 63 qualitative interviews with EU citizens (12 by Author A and 15 by Author B) and CSO staff (13 by Author A and 23 by Author B). While the present analysis is informed by the total material, it primarily draws on the interviews with the leaders of the humanitarian services (11 carried out by Author A and 8 conducted by Author B).

We conducted our fieldwork independently of each other. After realizing that we had investigated similar themes, we combined our empirical material for an article. Author A developed an initial research question and concept. We each conducted a preliminary analysis of our own empirical material before combining preselected material for in-depth analysis, which was carried out jointly, relying on thematic coding. We both wrote segments of the article, which were assembled into a draft article by Author A and subsequently revised.

Since humanitarian services in Oslo are limited, several facilities were visited and some leaders were interviewed by both authors, although at different times. For confidentiality, we chose to not reveal our informants’ names to each other; therefore, leaders who were interviewed by both authors appear as two different participants in the article. To ensure anonymity, we used codes for our participants (P1–19) that do not indicate gender, age, the organization the leaders worked for, or who conducted the interview.

We were guided by the principle of ‘doing no harm’ (Hugman et al., 2011). This is significant in a situation where mobility across borders is heavily politicized. When researching and critically scrutinizing the humanitarian aid provision to EU citizens with limited access, one risks undermining the very modest services that are available. We strive to present analyses in ways that cannot be ‘misused’ by policymakers or other actors, acknowledging that how research is used is not something researchers may fully control yet asserting the importance of examining what is ‘at stake’ in such provisions, especially if they are ‘complicit in furthering structural inequalities’ (Karlsen, 2021, p. 4). We endeavour to avoid simplistic portrayals of the professionals and CSOs involved in humanitarian service provision. Rather, we attempt to provide insights into our research participants’ ‘convictions and doubts […], their prejudices and their reflexivity’ and ‘the complexity of the issues’ (Fassin, 2012, p. 13) while not losing sight of CSOs’ significant role as value guardians, social rights intermediaries and stakeholders in EU citizenship.¹

Rights or Charity? Discussing Humanitarianism with Service Leaders in Norway

The following analysis centres on our participants’ perspectives of their own services and the wider system of humanitarian support for EU citizens with limited rights. First, we explore what drawbacks and dilemmas the leaders saw regarding the provision of humanitarian services for EU citizens with limited rights. Second, we present leaders’ reflections on why CSOs provide humanitarian support despite these dilemmas. Finally, we examine the focus of leaders’ advocacy efforts as well as their suggestions for addressing or preventing destitution among EU citizens in Norway in the long term. The latter provides an entry point from which to explore these critical stakeholders’ understandings of EU citizenship.

• 1. ‘We are just saving them a little’: Dilemmas of providing humanitarian assistance

Leaders generally voiced concerns that the humanitarian services currently provided by CSOs to EU citizens in precarious situations were insufficient to meet the group’s basic needs. A salient example discussed by many was that CSOs were unable to provide sufficient beds in the two emergency shelters accessible to EU citizens lacking welfare rights, forcing them to hold lotteries when demand exceeded the number of available beds – and ultimately to turn people away. Similarly, medical support and facilities for recovery after a health crisis were considered unacceptably limited. One leader summarized the overall dissatisfaction regarding the limitedness of humanitarian services:

There are charities like ours, but we are very limited in our mandate – what we can offer. […] It is so hard to get them [EU citizens with limited rights] help. […] We try to do what we can as a charity […] but it's so limited what we can offer. We can basically offer emergency help, first aid, the sanitary needs, the showers, the food – and that is it. (P8)

Thus, our participants reflected on limitations in the availability of services and in their content. A profound dilemma raised by many was the kind of living conditions the CSOs were contributing to upholding through their limited support:

We are saving people from dying. But we are just saving them a little. And then we send them out again. […] You can get really depressed by this, that you are just sending them out again, and you know they might actually die. (P3)

Several leaders raised concerns about creating a parallel system to public welfare services, which could possibly ‘trap’ people in precarious situations (Misje, 2021). One participant reflected on the situation of an EU citizen living in destitution and frequently using various humanitarian services:

There are a lot of things which are not expedient. Like keeping her in this completely parallel system […] it creates a system for her on the ‘outside’. And when we do these things outside the ordinary system, which we can only do partly well . . . well, I don’t know what is best. […] What are we contributing to when we are establishing these parallel systems? (P5)

While the services alleviated immediate, precarious situations, they did not address underlying structural causes of suffering and exclusion and therefore did not contribute to real, lasting change in EU citizens’ lives or to prevention of such precarity. Several participants believed this conflicted with their CSOs’ explicit aims and mandates to not only ameliorate suffering but also address systemic causes of suffering:

[Our organization’s] mandate is to both help people in precarious situations and to uncover systemic deficiencies and to advocate for change […] to not only provide food and beds but to render visible that the [existing] structures do not function and get people to do something about it. […] It is important to not just provide Band-Aids or comfort but to actually try to change things. (P6)

Leaders also discussed quandaries of potentially ‘covering up’ for the state: if CSOs provide humanitarian services to EU citizens with limited rights, it is ameliorating the visible suffering, which may be interpreted by politicians as ‘problem solved’ and make it easier for them to keep these EU citizens excluded from public services (DeVerteuil, 2017):

It’s always a dilemma, when we take care of people – they don’t have to, the politicians […], because we take care of people in a way, so we solve the issue, the problem and discussions. In Norwegian, we have this expression: ‘useful idiot’. […] Something is wrong. I find myself saying that we should end this position of being the gatekeeper for their not-good-enough policy. (P4)

Some participants criticized the lack of regulation and coordination of humanitarian services, which starkly contrasts the high regulation of ordinary welfare services:

It's really a problem that there is no regulation […] The official authorities do not take responsibility for the frames of all the work; […] there's no one in position for coordinating. (P4)

Our participants expressed strong critical awareness regarding the limitedness and unsustainability of a charity-based approach to addressing the suffering of EU citizens with limited rights. They were mindful of CSOs’ limited capacity to comprehensively address needs on their own, critical towards an approach focused on immediate needs rather than underlying structural causes of exclusion and uneasy about the unregulated and therefore arbitrary and unequal provision of services – criticisms that have also been raised in the literature about humanitarianism (Barnett, 2013; Fassin, 2005, 2012; Ticktin, 2011, 2014). The dilemmas of keeping people only ‘barely alive’ and creating a ‘parallel system’ point to unintended and potentially negative side effects of humanitarian aid, or humanitarian exceptionalism (Bendixsen, 2018; Karlsen, 2018, 2021; Ticktin, 2005).

One of our participants brought up the term ‘useful idiot’, which is also widely used in the English language as a reference to actors unwittingly or naively supporting a political cause without fully comprehending its goals and implications (Nissen, 2016). The term has been discussed with regards to the power relationships between CSOs and local and state governments as well as for profit service providers (Callinicos, 2001; Eder, 2009; Ozerdem & Jacoby, 2006). Acheson (2014) explores whether CSOs who cooperate with governments and provide welfare services within neoliberal policy frameworks risk becoming ‘useful idiots’ to these governments, as they may unwittingly support or enable the implementation of radical neoliberal reform of public services. Our participant used the term with reference to CSOs who, by ameliorating suffering through the provision of humanitarian services, may take the pressure off the government to act on the situation of EU citizens experiencing homelessness and destitution and find a more sustainable solution, thus unwittingly aiding the government to continue enforcing an exclusionary welfare regime within Norway’s borders. This resonates strongly with the critical literature on humanitarianism warning that humanitarian services may hide structural violence, or give it a humane façade, and thus potentially contribute to the legitimacy and preservation of exclusionary welfare policies and practices and hinder structural change (Ticktin, 2011).

Many participants were also concerned about what they perceived as the government’s refusal to accept responsibility; several felt left alone by the state and that they were doing something that, in a country with a developed welfare state, should be taken care of by the public sector:

CSOs were the ones who opened the shelter, who opened a free breakfast service in a well-functioning welfare state. But in my view, this should have been done by the public sector; the system should have caught [provided for] those who did not get a bed. It should not be that we have […] a lottery for beds. And then some have to sleep outdoors, without anyone taking responsibility for them. […] In my view, the public system is responsible for making sure that those who are freezing in this town get a bed. (P1)

Our participants described a lack of public funding as the main issue preventing improvement and expansion of humanitarian services. Even though many participants were keen to point out that the funding situation had improved over the years, with local and national authorities offering grants, many considered these changes slow, insufficient and only a result of constant pressuring.

Overall, our participants agreed that CSOs should not be solely responsible for providing welfare support and that the state should generously support these activities. The expectation for responsibility sharing and financial support makes sense in the Social Democratic context, where welfare services provided by CSOs are usually fully financed by the state and no strong culture of raising funds through private donations exists (Loga, 2018a).

• 2. ‘Sometimes you just have an ethical obligation to act’: Reasonings for humanitarian engagement

Having explored the dilemmas associated with the provision of humanitarian services to EU citizens living in destitution, we now present the leaders’ reflections on why CSOs were nevertheless providing such services and whether they had considered not establishing parallel welfare structures and instead pursuing alternative strategies such as political advocacy.

Only one participant mentioned an example where a CSO had decided to not provide humanitarian assistance and instead pursued a strategy of advocating for the inclusion of EU citizens with limited rights into existing public welfare services:

When it comes to people with drug problems […], we are challenging the government all the time. […] We know that there are some […] people who are developing really big problems, and we say: ‘We will not start special treatment for them, and you have a lot of capacity; just open it up for them. That’s a much better solution.’ (P4)

Otherwise, our participants discussed why providing humanitarian services was necessary despite the controversial consequences. Several considered it unethical to let ‘people in front of you’ suffer for the greater cause of a more sustainable solution and structural change:

Sometimes, in the real world, we just have to choose the second-best solution, which is not the ideal. […] And that means that we choose to use our own funds and establish some services which we would have wanted others to take the responsibility for. But out of pure human compassion […], we cannot just close the door and say that this is the responsibility of the public system; we won’t touch it out of fear of covering something up. No, then it is about encounters with individuals and their situations, which in a way gives us a right of exemption; it is an exceptional demand on us to act. […] We cannot let people die on the streets to achieve a [more sustainable] solution. […] So, for me, these kinds of discussions become too theoretical. […] Sometimes you just have an ethical obligation to act, irrespective of the consequences. (P1)

This participant argued that meeting a person in an extreme situation gave CSOs an ‘exceptional’ duty to respond and help, despite the risk of covering up for the state (DeVerteuil, 2017), resonating also with the logic of humanitarian exceptionalism (Bendixsen, 2018; Ticktin, 2005).

Another point raised by several participants was that CSOs have traditionally been pioneers in welfare provision, creating services that were, once the need for them was socially accepted, taken over by the state and transformed into statutory services (Loga, 2018a). Several participants suggested that this might also happen to humanitarian services for EU citizens with limited rights:

Who started the home-care nursing? Christian charitable organizations. Who started many of the nursing homes? Christian charitable organizations. So sometimes I think one just has to roll up one’s sleeves and get to work. […] And very often we have seen that the public system has followed, right? (P1)

Many participants argued that humanitarian aid should be combined with advocacy or awareness raising among politicians and the wider public and considered the recent increase of public financial support for humanitarian services in Oslo a sign that the state was getting involved:

I sometimes choose to be a naive optimist. I believe that we, as an organization, by pointing out some needs, can open some doors. […] Now this grant scheme from the ministry of justice exists. […] Just three, four years ago, it was unthinkable that the municipality would provide some funds. […] Now it’s thinkable. Various grants have been made available. Just during this short period of time, we have seen a shift in perception. And this shift would not have occurred had it not been for us. (P1)

One participant pointed out, that CSOs were working towards making services redundant:

The health centre [for undocumented migrants] […] is working hard to be closed down. […] They want the [public] health system to care for everyone, regardless of where they are from. They have this statement: ‘We will stay open as long as we have to, but we hope to close’. But we cannot close before the public system has taken responsibility for everyone. (P6)

Some participants highlighted the potential of humanitarian projects to gather information that could demonstrate unmet needs to the public and to develop practices for addressing such needs:

We have a jurist […] in the team […], and the jurist is working with the advocacy part. […] By working with some individual cases, we are going to identify some [systemic] gaps and some failures, which will allow us to work on a higher level. (P10)

Participants highlighted that humanitarian services and advocacy depend on and reinforce each other and that their practical engagement in the field makes CSOs’ work more credible. Running emergency services for several years had given CSOs credibility that could be used as leverage in political engagement. It would be hard for politicians to withdraw funding from established services that had become appreciated by the wider public – therefore, an organization could make bolder demands.

However, several participants did not view the humanitarian approach as inherently problematic and pointed to what they considered positive aspects of a division of labour between CSOs and the Norwegian state regarding the provision of welfare, including cost-effectiveness and strong worker motivation:

I actually think that this is a good way of doing it. […] It is very important that the idealistic organizations are contributing in this area. This has always been a tradition within Norwegian society. We understood that it is not just the state or municipality that should do the work. […] It activates idealism, own effort; it saves money […] more people [are] getting involved, which is more transparent. […] Even though I am very glad that the public system has a lot of responsibility, it is really important to do this together. (P12)

Another participant questioned the desirability of a state that takes care of all societal problems, arguing that there was a specific place for CSOs:

There will always be people who fall between two chairs, and sometimes it will be impossible to close the gap. […] And there you need civil society. […] For us, it's not important which rights you have. […] The government always has to draw the line somewhere. […] You can't make a perfect system where everything just works for everyone. You need both people and organizations to have a social responsibility […] and sometimes just solve problems. And therefore, there are some things where you should do advocacy work and try to change the policies, but there are also some areas where you can just say: ‘Here the political level has to continue to support non-governmental organizations, because […] we don't want a totalitarian state, where the government solves all problems at any given time’. (P2)

These arguments resemble the rhetoric of liberal and conservative parties that oppose the dominance of the state as the primary welfare provider and advocate for outsourcing welfare service provision to CSOs and for-profit enterprises (Loga, 2018a).

All participants considered humanitarian aid, despite associated controversy, justified and necessary under particular circumstances. However, most described it as an explicitly exceptional solution in a welfare state – justified only as a temporary solution that should ultimately be replaced by rights-based public services. Humanitarian aid should therefore be combined with political advocacy. A few participants, however, considered the current form of provisioning generally positive, pointing to the advantages of CSO-provided services.

• 3. ‘It is not possible for everyone to have a right to the full package’: A contradictory picture

We now examine the focus of CSOs’ advocacy efforts as described by our research participants as well as their suggestions for addressing or preventing destitution among EU citizens in Norway in the long term. We aim to shed light on how our participants related to the conditionality of welfare inclusion on previous work which lies at the core of EU citizenship, whether they suggested alternatives to humanitarian aid for ensuring that EU citizens in Norway do not fall into destitution, what they meant when they said the state should take more responsibility and how far they thought the state’s responsibility should extend.

Most participants did not think EU citizens should automatically be given equal access to the public welfare system in the sense that the pre-condition of economic activity should be removed. Many expressed an understanding of the state’s restrictive approach:

I acknowledge that this is a challenging question – who should have the right to what. We have the possibility of free movement across borders, but at the same time, we have so different systems and especially welfare systems. Of course, I understand that it is not possible for everyone to have a right to the full package. […] I understand that. (P5)

While many participants recognized that freedom of movement in the EU came with a responsibility to care also for those who struggled, they generally advocated for an immediate-needs approach instead of less conditional access to welfare benefits:

In Norway, we have to acknowledge that we are a part of the EEA and Schengen – this collaboration. And we benefit from it in many ways. Freedom of movement […]and financial opportunities. […] We have a responsibility as a result of that, also for people who will struggle here. […] people should get their basic needs covered, like a roof over their head, food, basic health services, the possibility to shower and use toilets. (P5)

These statements appear to contradict our participants’ critical positions towards humanitarian provisioning. Some leaders personally favoured full inclusion of all EU citizens in the public welfare system but would not advocate for such an approach publicly in their organization’s name, worrying it could backfire and undermine the political and societal support for the existing humanitarian services. Several were also convinced that less conditional access for EU citizens to public welfare provisioning could overburden the Norwegian welfare system or require higher taxes and Norwegians’ willingness to reduce their living standards:

In a completely open Europe, which has huge areas of severe poverty, if people were to come here and immediately have a right to […] get financial support, it would put real pressure on our welfare state. Which could mean unrest. I don’t think it would be politically feasible. If people from Spain and Romania were to get the same rights as Norwegians, I think it would be challenging […] both in practice and in that there would be no political support. […] I think we would then also lose popular support for the humanitarian approach we now have at least some acceptance for. (P1)

Again, such a position seems to contradict other statements in which participants deemed humanitarian provisioning acceptable only if combined with advocacy for structural change. Some participants suggested that immediate-needs services for EU citizens should be of a ‘simple standard’, implicitly accepting unequal treatment:

In my view, to be able to offer a place, a safe place to sleep, at least during the winter, […] to have a roof over your head […], and here I think simple standard is fair enough. I don’t think it needs to be a [high standard], but that it is dry and safe. (P7)

This points to an implicit acceptance of a parallel welfare system (Misje, 2021), as most participants did not call for the inclusion of EU citizens with limited rights in the ordinary welfare system or for the transformation of the humanitarian services into rights-based services. Instead, calls for the government to assume responsibility seemed to primarily concern funding for humanitarian services. Many participants described efforts to pressure the government or public authorities to make more funding available so they could improve the quality or quantity of their humanitarian services. For example, several participants prioritized securing funding to expand emergency shelters’ capacity. The focus of advocacy was seemingly on finding practical solutions rather than on establishing new rights for EU citizens with limited access to public welfare.

Several participants also reported advocacy activities which aimed for better enforcement of existing rights. Some strove to raise awareness among public institutions regarding work exploitation among EU citizens and the consequences for their welfare. Others were challenging various practices of the Norwegian welfare administration that were seen as overly restrictive, discriminatory and not in line with the law: Participants accompanied EU citizens to welfare offices, sent complainants to appeal courts and organized workshops or high-level meetings with public authorities. One CSO was cooperating with lawyers to challenge practices regarding expulsions and deportations, which they considered discriminatory and in violation of EU citizens’ rights. This kind of advocacy pressured public institutions to better fulfil their duties and responsibilities and ensure authorities met their legal obligations towards EU citizens. The point was not to change the law but to make sure existing law was applied correctly, thus being examples of defensive or more limited forms of advocacy (Ellison, 2000; Milbourne, 2013).

Notable exceptions were the health centre for undocumented migrants, mentioned above, which was working towards inclusion of all migrants into the public welfare system, and the CSO that had refused to set up addiction therapy services and was instead pressuring the government to open existing public services to EU citizens with limited rights. Furthermore, leaders from one CSO advocated for a right to free Norwegian language and society courses for EU citizens, which they considered important to be successful on the labour market, and to avoid exploitation and destitution.

Overall however, our participants mostly argued for coverage of immediate needs via humanitarian services while rejecting the idea of full inclusion into the public welfare system including equal access to welfare benefits as politically and practically unrealistic. Most tended to favour a solution in which CSOs provide services with strong and committed financial backing of the state and did not challenge the current legal order of EU citizenship, which allows for the exclusion of EU citizens lacking required work histories from public welfare services.

However, it should also be mentioned that many of the participants, when asked about their thoughts and suggestions on how to address or prevent destitution among EU citizens in Norway in the long term, were hesitant and said they did not really have an answer or solution. Several underscored that they were not familiar with the details of EU-legislation and therefore considered it difficult to suggest concrete changes. Furthermore, our participants worked for CSOs with vastly different approaches to political engagement and advocacy. Some CSOs followed a strict policy of neutrality on political questions while others had made it their official mission to not only ameliorate suffering but also address systemic causes of suffering, advocate for social justice and play an active role in public and political discourse. These differences were also reflected in the leader’s views on the provision of humanitarian services, the importance of political advocacy and what topics a CSO focused on in its advocacy. Lastly, during the time when the data was collected, intense internal discussions and reorientation were happening in many of the CSOs regarding the balance between the provision of humanitarian services and advocacy for EU citizens. One CSO employed a jurist to enhance their capacity to work specifically with advocacy for EU citizens’ rights during the time the fieldwork for this research was carried out and other CSOs were working with political campaigns to raise awareness for the challenges EU citizens encountered in Norway. In the years since the data was collected these efforts have intensified, as evidenced by a recent report by one of the CSOs that includes a thorough analysis of the legal frameworks that lead to homelessness and destitution among EU citizens in Norway and a detailed list of suggestions for changes in policy and practice (Seilskjær, 2023). There have been also notable success stories such as the commitment of Oslo Municipality to assume responsibility for health services to migrants who lack access to the public welfare system (NRK, 2022).

CSOs, Humanitarianism and Conditional EU Citizenship: A Concluding Discussion

In the beginning of this article, we conceptualized CSOs as ‘social rights intermediaries’ (Bruzelius, 2020). We argued that CSOs, in their roles as service providers and in their democratic functions as ‘value guardians’ in society and ‘critics or watchdogs vis-à-vis the state’ (Angell, 2016, p. 147), are critical for social rights, especially of marginalized groups and are thus important stakeholders of EU citizenship. We also argued that leaders of services accessible to EU citizens with restricted rights to public welfare in Norway inform the strategic choices of CSOs such as advocacy priorities and how humanitarian services are provided, choices which can affect how EU citizenship develops locally over time.

In part one of our findings, we showed that our participants were mostly aware and highly critical of the dilemmas associated with the provision of humanitarian aid. In part two, we analysed how most of our participants also expressed critical views on humanitarian aid when they justified their engagement. Nevertheless, as discussed in part three, many participants, when asked about the focus of their advocacy efforts and their thoughts on how to address or prevent destitution among EU citizens in the long term were, with the notable exception of some health rights, not calling for replacing humanitarian services with rights-based provision. Instead, many seemed to favour a continuation and expansion of humanitarian services. Even though many reported advocacy for better enforcement of existing laws regarding EU citizens’ access to welfare and protection from work exploitation and deportation, we did not find any explicit critique of the conditionality of welfare rights on employment status which lies at the core of EU citizenship as it is currently practiced, and allows Norwegian authorities to deny some EU citizens even the most basic welfare support including access to health services, public emergency housing and financial social assistance (Misje, 2021, 2022).

The absence of a vision or call for a rights-based approach to address destitution among EU citizens appears inconsistent and contradictory to the participants’ critical discourse regarding humanitarian services. It indicates that the leaders do not imagine EU citizenship as a ‘fully fledged form of citizenship’ (Barbulescu & Favell, 2020, p. 151) that confers equal rights including needs-based welfare benefits. Even though our participants invoked a moral obligation to care for people who come under the EU’s freedom of movement to Norway, they generally limited this duty to providing immediate-needs services such as shelter, food and basic health care while explicitly excluding an automatic ‘right to the full package’. By doing so, they affirmed, or at least did not challenge, the inherent conditionality of welfare rights on work of EU citizenship. This is an important finding, as it reveals how fragile EU citizenship has become (Burrell & Schweyher, 2021; Lafleur & Mescoli, 2018; Yıldız & De Genova, 2018).

The fact that most of our participants viewed a continuation of humanitarian services as the only realistic alternative to address the needs of EU citizens who under the current framework have limited rights to public welfare support, and that they did not call for less conditional access to welfare support for these EU citizens, offers also important insights into the role of CSOs as rights intermediaries in a contemporary neoliberal transnational context. EU citizenship is an example of conditionality of welfare rights taken to the extreme, and the consequences for those not able to meet requirements are particularly drastic. It explicitly tolerates the suffering of those who are not able to secure the required employment and thus contradicts principles of common human worth and dignity. Given that service leaders work for organizations that base themselves explicitly on these principles, the lack of criticism of the framework surprized us. We acknowledge that service leaders might have very limited influence on how the Norwegian state interprets and practices EU citizenship and that they have to carefully craft their advocacy to not undermine the consensus for the modest support currently available to EU citizens with limited rights to public welfare support. Nevertheless, we question the lack of, at times explicit support for the conditionality of EU citizenship. This may indicate an acceptance or powerlessness (or both) of service leaders vis a vis neoliberal developments that privilege the principle of conditionality over need and human dignity. Our findings therefore seem to substantiate arguments in the international literature on the changing role of CSOs under neoliberalism, which suggests that neoliberal political and economic environments in Western democracies are constraining the willingness and capacity of CSOs to engage in adversarial or expansive advocacy which questions the existing legal order and creates ‘alternative narratives’ (Acheson, 2014), thus marginalizing CSOs’ independent role as social rights intermediaries in influencing public dialogue and policy (Milbourne, 2013; Onyx et al., 2010).

Furthermore, the literature suggests that CSOs, when filling the gaps left by a retreating welfare state with humanitarian services, risk becoming complicit in the neoliberal restructuring of the welfare state if they don’t balance their humanitarian engagement with an explicit critique of the state’s abandonment of particular groups (Acheson, 2014; Leerkes, 2016; Milbourne, 2013; Onyx et al., 2010; Salonen, 2016). Similarly, we, drawing on the notion of humanitarian exceptionalism, propose that CSOs in Oslo, by providing humanitarian assistance without simultaneously criticizing the inherent conditionality of EU citizenship and advocating for a more rights-based approach to address and prevent destitution, risk giving the government’s effort to exclude poor, ‘undesired’ EU citizens from access to public welfare provisioning a humane façade, potentially contributing to its legitimacy and preservation (Ticktin, 2011). Despite good intentions, they can become complicit in enforcing an exclusionary welfare regime within Norway’s borders.

The recent developments accounted for above, nevertheless indicate an increased willingness amongst CSOs to address systemic causes of suffering and to advocate for social justice. This suggests the need for further investigation into the relationship between CSOs and the welfare state in the context of social service provision to EU citizens, including the realization of EU citizenship.

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to all the individuals who participated in our research. We wish to thank our supervisors and our colleagues in the Migration Religion and Intercultural Relations (MIGREL) research group and Aleksandra Czech-Havnerås from the Salvation Army’s Migration Centre for their careful reading and feedback on drafts of this article.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The article is based on data collected in two research projects that have been approved by the Norwegian Centre for Research Data with the reference numbers 652219 and 54536.