| dc.description.abstract | During the last decades, the number of immigrants and refugees has increased worldwide. Simultaneously, immigration policy has become one of the most contested and controversial policy fields. This became especially apparent in 2015, when an unprecedented situation unfolded, known as the Syrian ‘refugee crisis’, widely considered to be the worst refugee crisis since the Second World War. In the wake of this development, my thesis examines how members of the Norwegian parliament have ascribed meaning to the field of refugee and asylum policy in an eight-year period between 2008 and 2016. In addition, the analysis focuses on whether the Syrian refugee crisis of 2015 had an impact on the collective meaning-making, and in what ways this shaped political outcome in the period of analysis. Contradicting imperatives placed on the governments of modern liberal states make the governance of immigration policy difficult, controversial and contested. The so-called liberal paradox of migration constitutes the theoretical perspective in this thesis, suggesting underlying reasons for the contestation in the parliamentary debate on refugee and asylum policy. The period of analysis encompasses two large influxes of immigrants, refugees, and asylum seekers in 2008 and in 2015, the latter being unprecedented in terms of magnitude and impact. Through a discourse analytical approach, collective meaning-making is uncovered, revealing what discourses were dominant in the Norwegian parliament. The analysis shows that a ‘humanitarian’ discourse, focusing on legal considerations and moral responsibilities, was hegemonic up until the emergence of the ‘refugee crisis’. The drastic increase of refugees and immigrants shifted the discursive hierarchy – placing a discourse focusing on the rights of ‘real refugees’ on top. The findings suggest that a discursive change took place in the wake of the refugee crisis of 2015, which was followed by several restrictions in Norwegian asylum policy. Finally, as discourse analysis offers a useful vantage point for hypothesis-generation, reflections on the main findings provide implications for further research. | eng |