Sille, Irina

2025, Sille, Irina, D'Amato, Gianni

This study investigates advocacy strategies of professionalised non-governmental organisations in the domain of asylum. To understand the strategies of this specific type of actor, it mobilises a theoretical framework that combines a variety of perspectives and concepts from political sociology and critical migration and refugee studies. Based on expert interviews with NGO professionals, observations and documents produced and published by the organisations, the thesis analyses the strategic mobilisation of the NGOs’ and their professionals’ resources to influence national asylum law, policy and their implementation in Switzerland. Focusing on two case studies, it shows how two professionalised advocacy organisations engage in insider and outsider strategies within the specific political opportunity structure of the Swiss political system of direct and consensus democracy. By analysing how NGO professionals interact with different actors and the resources that they mobilise in these contexts, the study sheds light on the central role that legal expertise and the mobilisation of its instrumental and symbolic dimensions play in the organisations’ advocacy strategies. By doing so, it uncovers processes of depoliticisation in which the organisations engage through the mobilisation of their professionals’ legal expertise and (self-)perceived expert status. In a context in which the issue of asylum is increasingly politicised, the juridification of claims by the NGOs presents the organisations’ claims as politically neutral by defining issues linked to asylum in legal terms and by presenting themselves as consensus-favouring actors. More generally, the self-perception and representation as neutral experts are closely linked to credibility concerns that guide the organisations’ advocacy strategies. In terms of insider strategies targeting decision-makers within the federal administration and consisting in direct interaction with them, the law is mobilised as an instrument to assess evidence, construct generalised causes and argue for standardisation in the asylum procedure. As research driven actors, professionalised advocacy organisations do not only rely on the legal knowledge of their employees but also on information they gather through their network of actors working on the ground, their mandates and case work. Furthermore, it is the acknowledgement of their expert status that allows them to be invited to advisory groups and to play a role as intermediaries between the authorities and other actors in the asylum field. In terms of outsider strategies referring to the mobilisation of the public, the self-perception as legal experts and linked credibility concerns with the authorities do not only guide the timing of publicly expressed critique but also the claims made in public campaigns and the campaigning coalitions with other actors in which the NGOs engage. The second part of the thesis then analyses the specific frames mobilised in the NGOs’ public advocacy discourse. In contrast to other studies that often oppose a human rights frame with a humanitarian frame, this study shows how in two specific frames – the vulnerability and the responsibility frames – human rights and humanitarian arguments are combined.