International Organizations: Norm Setting and Norm Implementation for the Protection of Forced Migrants

• Applicant: Dr. Nele Kortendiek, since 1/2024
• Subject Area: Political Science
• Term: since 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 441512655

International Organizations (IOs), especially the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), play an important role in providing assistance and protection for forced migrants. The mandates and the evolution of both these IOs reflect the tension between the interests of individual states, on the one hand, and the rights of migrants on the other. This tension is inherent in all policies pertaining to transnational mobility/flight migration. At the same time, the IOs cooperate both at the conceptual level and in connection with the implementation of programs and policies. However, we lack knowledge on whether and how the tension between interests of states and migrants’ rights is also reflected in the IOs’ policies, programs and actions. Accordingly, this project investigates how these IOs interpret international norms as norm interpretation provides IOs with room to maneuver in following up particular interests. We inquire (a) whether and to what extent the IOs interpret international norms in accordance with state interests or migrant rights and (b) whether and to what extent we can observe differences or alignments between the IOs and different organizational levels. For this purpose, the project studies the internalization and implementation of gender norms and humanitarian norms, understood as processes of institutionalization within the IOs at the level of the IOs’ headquarters and at field level (Greece and Kenia). Here, the project makes use of qualitative interviews, qualitative content analysis, and process tracing. The project has two main goals. On the one hand, it seeks to reconstruct the ways in which the two IOs understand international norms. On the other, it sets out to explain norm interpretation in the IOs with reference to a theoretical framework based on two broad strands of literature in International Relations as a sub-discipline of political science. These strands are research on international norms and research on inter-organizational relations. The project contributes to the field of transnational institution-building by taking into account the relations between two exogeneous institutions.

• DFG Programme: Research Units
• Subproject of: FOR 5183: Transborder Mobilities and Institutional Dynamics
• Co-Investigator: Professorin Dr. Lisbeth Zimmermann, since 11/2023
• Ehemalige Antragstellerin: Professorin Dr. Andrea Schneiker, until 12/2023