From global to local: how local actors and networks shape global refugee protection norms in Brazil, Bangladesh, and Turkey

How and why are global norms ‘localised’? Existing studies suggest that the ‘localisation’ process can lead to different outcomes (adoption, rejection, adaptation, resistance) and that such process is driven by structural and institutional factors or the activities of ‘globalizing actors’. Complementing these works, we generate a new explanation, according to which the outcomes of the localisation process can be also powerfully mediated by the operation and organization of domestic governance systems and domestic governance actors’ understandings of global norms. To illustrate this claim we adopt a ‘macro–micro-macro’ approach to study the ‘heuristic case’ of the localisation of global norms on refugee protection in Bangladesh, Brazil and Turkey, three countries where, despite similar exposure to refugee flows and presence of globalizing actors, the localisation process led to very different outcomes. To do so, we apply qualitative content analysis and qualitative social network analysis elaborating original data collected in the three countries.