The sudden mass influx of asylum-seekers in Europe in 2015, emplaced major stresses on refugee reception systems and challenged centrallocal migration policymaking. This article explores how this crisis affected policymaking and implementation of refugee settlement in 2 the case of Norway. We show that the local level kept its autonomy in matters of refugee settlement, despite the crisis context. Upkeep of local autonomy enabled municipalities to change their policy, willingness, and ability to settle the increasing numbers of refugees by enhancing municipal incremental problem-solving capacities. A major finding is that the crisis provided motivation for local politicians and employees alike. Solidarity arguments combined with self-interest motivated the shift in municipal policy. This case adds to our knowledge of the importance of the local dimension of migration policymaking in crisis contexts. Political decisions and implementation of settlement of refugees remained decentralized, exemplifying the potential of decentralized welfare states.

Research suggests that migrants have a greater tendency to end up in nonstandard employment arrangements than native citizens do, but less attention has been paid to motivational differences within and between migrant groups. On the basis of a survey of temporary agency workers in Norway, we investigate the effect of different country backgrounds on the perceived suitability of nonstandard employment (NSE) at present and in the future. For the perceived current suitability, we find less variation between country backgrounds, but Norwegian workers are much less likely to accept NSE as suitable in the future. An ordinal regression shows that motivation (positive and negative) rather than country background is the strongest predictor of finding NSE employment suitable. As such, the article contributes to understandings about voluntary or involuntary motivations to engage in NSE in a way that informs discussions about migrants in different power positions in a Nordic labor market context. KEYWORDS migrant background / motivation / nostandard employment / temporary agency work

No abstract