Based on legal interpretation, interviews with rejected asylum seekers, and decisions from hospitals and the County Governor, this article examines the degree of compliance with the human right to health care for adult irregular migrants in Norway. The findings indicate that a certain minimum of health care services is accessible for most. However, economic concern represents a heavy burden. Fear of deportation, often considered a barrier to health care in earlier studies, represents a problem for those who evade deportation and lack information about health-care providers' duty of confidentiality. Unclear legislation leads to uncertainty among health personnel. This uncertainty produces, in some cases, an arbitrary practice. The article suggests that the most serious gaps between health-care needs, national legislation, and international human rights obligations appear to exist concerning the lack of rehabilitation rights after surgery, the lack of health care for patients suffering from serious mental health issues, and the high threshold for treatment of chronic diseases.
The criminalization of migration-related acts, rather than simply strengthening state authority, also represents a risk of exposing legal legitimacy deficits. By drawing on juridical analysis of court judgements, legal documents, and case law, together with ethnographic observation in court and analysis of media coverage, the article argues for acknowledging the extra-legal aspects of criminalization. By employing the concept of legal consciousness, we bring attention to how bordering processes are challenged from below by using the courtroom to expose potential legitimacy deficits concerning crimmigration enforcement. The article shows how the courtroom is not merely a place for convictions but also a site for resistance and social mobilization: a platform that may give marginalized groups voice and visibility, invoking a complex picture of state power, involving the ability to use force as well as reluctance and ambivalence connected to the questionable legitimacy of criminalization strategies.
Drawing on in‐depth interviews, observation, and legal sources, this article examines how rejected asylum seekers experience their status and the legal regulations related to it, and how they react as a result. Their legal consciousness must be understood in the light of their illegal status, which makes them keenly aware that legal regulations and power structures decisively affect their everyday lives. They are ‘outside the law’ yet struggling to become insiders. While they all use legal services in their individual struggles, their engagement in collective counter‐hegemonic struggles is greatly affected by social relations, networks, and culture. Honneth's theory of recognition is used to expand the narrative of ‘dissenting collectivism’ within legal consciousness scholarship and capture the collective resistance of the marginalized. Unlike studies portraying these migrants as fearful of any involvement with the authorities, this article demonstrates that individual experiences of injustice and violated expectations of recognition can lead to collective resistance and mobilization.
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