Advocacy and Policy Change: The Case of VluchtelingenWerk and Immigration Lawyers on the Family Reunification Policy

The Dutch family reunification policy for asylum seekers can be seen as quite restrictive. In 2013, the policy was tightened, which had major consequences for dependent young adults as many young adults were left behind in unsafe circumstances in their country of origin or in refugee camps. This specific part of the family reunification policy has received a lot of criticism from several non-governmental actors, such as VluchtelingenWerk and immigration lawyers. Because they did not agree with the policy, they advocated for policy change. Eventually, the policy with regard to dependent young adults changed three times in the period between 2014 and 2016. The purpose of this research is to examine how the advocacy strategies used by the non-governmental actors, VluchtelingenWerk and the immigration lawyers, have contributed to the policy changes regarding the rights of dependent young adults in the family reunification policy in the period between 2014 and 2016. In order to examine this, this research contains a document analysis of both parliamentary documents and documents of non-governmental actors and several interviews. Based on the results of the collected data, the conclusion can be drawn that VluchtelingenWerk and the immigration lawyers have successfully contributed to the three policy changes by investing their advocacy in four ways: (1) Defining the problem definition with the aim to capture attention; (2) Developing policy solutions; (3) Influencing the political climate; (4) Strengthening the organization capacity. This way, they were able to come to an agreement on the problem definition and solutions to problems with policymakers, increase the political will, and to create or respond to a window of opportunity effectively. These factors eventually led to the three changes in the family reunification policy with regard to dependent young adults.