Transnational Welfare Management: Accommodating Transnational Living in Norway

More than ever, people’s living practices span national borders. As a growing group of individuals becomes tied to more than one welfare system, the lack of mechanisms to cater to cross-border migration produces frictions between national welfare provision and transnational clients. To accommodate transnational dynamics, national welfare systems adapt. This article sheds light on the Norwegian experience of this. It explores how the Norwegian social security organisation NAV and the bureaucrats who work there are challenged by and respond to an increasingly transnational population. It presents a framework for research on the transnational work of national welfare organisations’ and uses it to analyse micro-, meso- and macro-scale processes of adaption. The analysis finds that transnational living long has been accommodated through bureaucratic specialisation and entrepreneurship, whereas a current organisational turnaround responds by injecting transnational dynamics into the national mainstream.