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

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.