Paper short abstract:

Drawing on ethnographic data from an ongoing research project (PROVIR), we look at how irregular migrants in Norway question the current order and ideas of who should be protected, and who should be listened to. How, if at all, do they in this process reconfigure the political?

Paper long abstract:

As Norway was still recovering from the shocks of the 22 of July terror attacks, around 25 so-called irregular migrants marched from Oslo to Trondheim along the St. Olav pilgrim way. The march was attended by Ethiopian, Iranian, Afghan and Kurdish migrants, and co-organized by political activists on the radical left. It followed a series of church occupations, hunger strikes, demonstrations and petitions that in the last year has made the presence and living condition of irregulars a pressing challenge to deal with for the Norwegian social-democratic welfare-regime.

In this paper, we examine the asylum march alongside other public interventions as moments of "becoming political". Drawing on ethnographic data from an ongoing research project on the provision of welfare to irregularized migrants (PROVIR), we look at how they question the current order and ideas of who should be protected, and who should be listened to. How, if at all, do they in this process reconfigure 'the political'?

Drawing on the works of, among others, Engin F. Isin and Aihwa Ong on citizenship, we discuss how irregularized migrants resist the reduction of them to "human detruits" and "criminals" - attempting to constitute themselves as in need of protection and worthy of citizenship. By examining the performative side of their citizenship struggle, we ask whether they in this process contribute to transforming the meaning of citizenship - or whether they, in the process of mobilizing against the system which defines them as noncitizens - simultaneously enforce established presumptions of what a potential and worthy citizen is?