Paper short abstract:

This paper analyses what motivates local citizens in Norway to engage, as volunteers, in activities aimed at welcoming newly arrived refugees and other immigrants, how they view their engagement, and how civil society engagement relates to integration politics.

Paper long abstract:

This paper is based on an ethnographic study of activities aimed at welcoming and assisting newly arrived refugees and other immigrants settle into their new/host communities and connecting them with locals in Norway. The paper explores, first, how individuals among the local population envision these activities, what motivates them to engage as volunteers, to what extent they conceive of them as political or not, and how this shapes their engagement. Issues relating to the emergency response at the time of heightened refugee arrivals to Norway in 2015 - including the question of letting refugees and asylum seekers into the country at all - were often framed in terms of solidarity and responsibility as a rich country. Longer-term engagement with settled newcomers was, however, typically motivated by concerns with inclusion, integration and social cohesion at the local community level. Some volunteers described the activities as apolitical (and therefore appealing to them), yet authorities and politicians hail their significance for integration efforts and promote them to that end. The paper thus considers the role of voluntary engagement in relation to integration politics, and the extent to which such activities, aiming to provide newcomers with the tools (language skills, cultural codes) necessary to thrive in Norwegian society, may reflect and internalize state integration discourse and concerns. I also assesses how the structure of these civil society initiatives may at times reproduce some of the unequal power dynamics highlighted by critics of humanitarianism (Ticktin 2011, Fassin 2012).