The narrative assemblage of civil society interventions into refugee and asylum policy debates in the UK

Katherine Tonkiss*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

This article explores how pro-refugee civil society organisations discursively navigate the challenges of influencing policy in contexts that are largely hostile to their perspective, and the tensions implicit in doing so. It draws on rich documentary data to present an analysis of the policy narratives of seven case study organisations in the UK. Through this analysis, the article argues that these narratives form an 'assemblage' of discursive conformity to and contestation of the dominant construction of the policy problem, with the organisations concurrently positioned both as experts in the field and as facilitating expert knowledge transfer from refugees themselves. It is through this assemblage that the organisations negotiate the dilemmas arising from their largely adversarial positioning in the policy debate.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)119-135
Number of pages17
JournalVoluntary Sector Review
Volume9
Issue number2
Early online date25 Jun 2018
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Jul 2018

Bibliographical note

Copyright The Policy Press. This is a post-peer-review, pre-copy edited version of an article published in Voluntary Sector Review. The definitive publisher-authenticated version Tonkiss, K. (2018) The narrative assemblage of civil society interventions into
refugee and asylum policy debates in the UK, Voluntary Sector Review, vol 9, no 2, 119–35, is available online at: https://doi.org/10.1332/204080518X15265487191463

Keywords

  • Assemblage
  • Civil society
  • Policy narratives
  • Refugees

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