- Which research project are you currently working on the most?
I am primarily working on the project ‘Deporting Foreigners: Contested Norms in International Practice’ (NORMS), which is supported by the Research Council of Norway under the grant Research Programme UTENRIKS (Research on international relations, foreign and security policy and Norwegian interests), project number 314300.
The project explores international norms in deportation. Including both host and origin state perspectives, the project undertakes a comparative analysis of Norway, Sweden, Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia and Ethiopia. Specially NORMS looks at how state (and non-state) agents from host and origin states alike seek to legitimise or de-legitimise deportation, promoting competing norms in a contested policy field.
- What do you want to find out?
Our primary research objectives are to answer the following questions:
- How do host and origin state agents involved with deportation normatively understand it?
- To which extent, how and under which conditions do these state agents engage in norm entrepreneurship to legitimise or delegitimise deportation?
- How do national norms of deportation evolve?
- To which extent and how do norms of deportation clash within the EU border agency Frontex?
My research focus is primarily on Frontex, exploring how ideas, practices, and norms on return are formed, negotiated, contested, and spread (or not) within Frontex, but also across national bodies and actors. I am mostly interested in the ‘operation level’ – i.e. the agencies and officers responsible for carrying out return-related activities.
- Why is this important?
Frontex has had an increasingly prominent role in deportation, and it is important to investigate the implications of this. How, if at all, has this changed the deportation landscape in Europe? Has it shaped who is deported and how specific practices and approaches are (de)legitimised? It is also important to consider the implications of increased cooperation within Frontex and across Member States for migrants in Europe, especially those who are (potentially) subject to these practices.
- Who do you collaborate with?
I am at the ARENA Centre for European Studies and work together with the PI, Erlend Paasche, at the Institute for Social Research. We also have partners at the Erasmus University Rotterdam, the Forum for Social Research, Ethiopia, and the Department of Sociology and Human Geography at the University of Oslo.
- What do you look for when choosing partners?
For me it is important to have partners who have interdisciplinary (or different disciplinary) perspectives. This helps challenge my way of thinking and how I approach research questions. I also look for researchers with similar interests in migration governance, transnational learning, implementation and so on.
- What other research projects are you involved in?
I also research extraterritorial migration control, especially how activities and practices on-the-ground are negotiated and co-produced by mid- and street-level actors from global north and south states.
- What do you think is the most interesting thing about being a researcher?
I am passionate about migration and am naturally curious, so I love that research allows me to pursue both. I also really love digging for hidden and unknown material and going beyond ‘policy on paper’ to investigate what really happens in practices, in the social world.
- What is the most common question you get about work when you are with others?
I get a lot of questions about Frontex and European states’ more punitive externalisation practices, such as cooperation with Libya and Turkey to prevent asylum seekers and other migrants from reaching Europe.