ABSTRACT
During the spring of 2011, irregular migrants from Ethiopia, Iran, and Palestine set up tent camps next to Oslo's churches. This chapter examines the possibility for politics by non-citizens and casts light on how migrants' narratives reflected the particular socio-historical context in which they were situated. It provides a short background through which to understand the mobilization by irregular migrants in Norway. Irregular migrants' voices are formed within extreme and limited conditions. The chapter also provides an ethnographic examination of how the migrants' voices were framed in terms of victimhood, shared humanity and the good citizen. It discusses the need for constructing a platform of recognition in order for their voice to be heard as political and legitimate. The chapter finally suggests that migrants' narratives are formed within complex dynamics of power in which perceptions of who is a deserving refugee are constructed, shaping the available spaces of recognition.
