Between Advocacy and Adherence : Norway and the EU's Return Directive

Abstract

This thesis explores how Norwegian actors navigate the EU’s Schengen institutional structures and how they choose to transpose EU immigration policy. The EU’s area of Justice and Home Affairs is an institutional setting where more and more internationally binding decisions regarding immigration and border control are taken. Norway, albeit not a member, has the opportunity to participate in EU policy making in this area but is faced with a dynamic institutional environment. The neo-institutional approach presented in this paper claims that by studying the logic of behaviour activated in different settings, including the domestic one, we can understand more of the underlying dynamics in multilevel policy making. Taking the EU’s Return Directive as a case, this study shows that Norwegian actors and interests are heard, but restricted by rules of appropriateness. In transposition, EU Schengen immigration related policy is implemented according to prevalent rules, a fact that is attributed to general governmental interests and congruence of legal provisions, but also a lack of timely public domestic debate on controversial EU issues like the Return Directive.