Legal Mobilization in the Field of Asylum Law: a Revival of Political Opportunity Structures?

Legal Mobilization in the Field of Asylum Law: a Revival of Political Opportunity Structures? Increasingly, we see collective actors in the field of asylum in Europe turn to litigation as the preferred strategy to attain their goals, which is a form of legal mobilization. Both at the national and European level, non-governmental organizations (NGO) are active in high-profile cases. These NGOs operate in a different national political and legal system, but do have similar European-level opportunities. Next to that, current literature suggests a possible relevance of organizational factors, such as resources, to explain the use of these legal mobilization strategies. By looking at NGOs with different levels of legal mobilization in two national contexts, a cross-case comparison is made in this article to explain what external and/or internal factors are relevant in making NGOs ‘turn to the courts’. This article draws on empirical data to establish what drives four NGOs from Italy and the Netherlands to mobilize the law. This data is compared to existing literature on legal mobilization to show a potential revival of a theory that has been left behind over the last years: research on Political Opportunity Structures. This strand of literature emphasizes the importance of possibilities, constraints and threats at the (national) political level that drives NGOs in their strategy choice.