To Örebro University

Civil society organizations have often bridged the gap between government services and the needs of refugees. However, their influence is often shaped by government action or inaction. This dissertation explores the role of civil society in shaping and implementing Swedish migration policy during the Cold War era. It focuses on the refugee-related work of the Swedish Red Cross and the Swedish Free Church Council between 1951 and 1991, analyzing how their strategies were developed and executed, both discursively and in practice.

To investigate how governmental migration discourses were either internalized or resisted, and to understand the strategic choices made by the organizations, the study employs a combination of archival source analysis and analysis of historical discourses and contexts, alongside a framework based on the concept of migration governance.

The findings show that civil society actors and their local representatives constituted a significant power resource for advocacy. Furthermore, transnational networks were effectively operationalized as power resources, offering alternative avenues for continued refugee advocacy beyond the domestic sphere.

The study highlights a general tendency within both organizations to act as executors, reinforcers, and enablers of governmental refugee policies, in line with Sweden’s corporatist tradition. Although both organizations occasionally criticized government policies, their advocacy was limited by the legal and institutional frameworks at both domestic and international levels. This points to the inherent constraints of engaging in advocacy within governmental frameworks.