ABSTRACT
In this chapter, I examine how irregular migrants’ access to basic care such as shelter and economic support has been (re)structured in Norway, and to what effect, by situating some of the stories of the irregularised migrants followed in the study within a broader account of shifts in Norwegian welfare policies and laws. These shifts include rejected asylum seekers changing access to work permits, shelter and economic support through the asylum reception system, access to support from the social services, as well as the emerging new role of NGOs in providing care for irregular migrants. One of my main arguments in this part is that during the past decades, there has been a dual process whereby irregular migrants were increasingly demarcated legally outside the scope of welfare legislation, while at the same time humanitarian exceptions were built into the system to relieve some of the tension between the welfare state’s commitment to basic security and the exclusionary practices of migration control. The chapter is structured around the accounts of three different persons who had lived irregularly in Norway for more than ten years, showing how the limited inclusive practices contributed to their precarious circumstances of living.
