| dc.description.abstract | Since 2018, and as ISIL have gradually lost its territory in Syria, several Norwegian female ISIL affiliates have requested the Norwegian authorities for assisted repatriations back to Norway. As research has helped unravel their motivations to join ISIL and their role in the civil war, what was once considered passive victims are increasingly perceived as active, determined and politically oriented individuals accountable for their membership in a terrorist organisation. This thesis looks into the political debate that has accompanied this change of perception in Norway, by assessing opinion pieces, parliamentary debates and TV and Radio debate. The aim has been to ask: How do images of ‘Self’ and ‘Other’ attribute responsibility for the fate of Norwegian female ISIL affiliates, thus enabling appropriate course(s) of action? The analysis is firmly grounded in Lene Hansen’s (2006, pp. 5-6) assumption that foreign policy is formed by a depiction of the identity of the ‘self’ versus ‘the other’. This is supplemented by rhetorical political analysis, which enables a theoretically informed analysis of how actors can strategically re-direct characterisations and thereby affect the direction of the debate and the practices it generates. With the assumption that argumentation ‘can resituate prevailing circumstances’ (Martin 2015, pp. 39-40), rhetorical political analysis allows ideational structures, or discourses, space alongside rhetorical devices in seeking to explain how arguments and decisions made. By mapping how the issue is debated over time, the thesis unravels basic disagreement over the how the issue of repatriation should be seen. More specifically, a key bone of contention concerns how moral, humanitarian and arguments concerning the rule of law should be applied to foreign policy. This might reflect an ongoing questioning of Norwegian identity – both who we are as a nation and who should be included in the national self. | eng |