Citizenship, Welfare and Social Cohesion: Is there a Civic Turn in Norwegian Integration Policy?

ABSTRACT ECPR-meeting in Warszawa, 29 March – 2 April, 2014 Grete Brochmann, University of Oslo CITIZENSHIP, WELFARE AND SOCIAL COHESION: Is there a civic turn in Norwegian integration policy? Norway has – in line with other advanced welfare states – had a need to find mechanisms to balance between economic sustainability, social justice and social cohesion, in a context with increasing immigration. Since the early 1970s, when the modern immigration era instigated, Norwegian authorities have applied a combination of policy instruments to accommodate the various challenges implied by the mixed inflows of newcomers; access control, extension of rights and social engineering. The Norwegian welfare model has very basically premised the way in which immigration has been handled. To uphold the “institutional equilibrium”, whereby features of the well-regulated labour market and the comprehensive welfare state mutually reinforce each other, equal treatment of legal residents has been a necessity. Thus extension of economic/social rights to newcomers has been institutionally embedded. On top of the “systemic interests”, ideological factors and values have induced additional policy features related to immigrants: multicultural accommodation and targeted integration measures in different spheres of society. In this paper I will analyze how Norwegian public policy towards immigrants has changed since the 1970s, main emphasis being placed on the ideological features. The Norwegian specificities will be discussed partly in contrast to the neighbouring countries, Sweden and Denmark, and theoretically the paper will relate to the so-called “civic turn”-debate.