Queuing for food and playing lottery for beds: a parallel social service system and the lived experiences of humanitarian service provision to homeless EU migrants in Norway

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article analyses humanitarian social service provision to homeless EU migrants in Oslo, Norway. Most of these migrants have no or weak affiliations with the formal labour market, resulting in restricted rights to public welfare services. Recent years have seen an upsurge of humanitarian services such as basic healthcare, food, shelter, and sanitary facilities, provided through nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). Nevertheless, availability is limited; thus, with the intention of securing fairness in a context where resources are scarce, service providers create strategies for restriction of access and queue management. The different services are spread out within the city, making migrants spend considerable time moving between them in their struggles to get basic needs met. Taking an afternoon spent with Bogdan, a Romanian man navigating several services, as my point of departure, I explore how humanitarian social service provision to homeless EU migrants simultaneously alleviates migrants’ precarious situations and regulates their everyday lives. The concept of the humanitarian administration of time is introduced to call attention to this duality. A main contention is that a parallel social service system, taking on a bordering function, is emerging in Oslo.