Mimicry and Mobility: Exploring the Travels and Assemblages of Work-Related Crime Policy

Abstract This article examines the transnational transfer and adaptation of the concept ‘work-related crime’ (WRC) in the Nordic context, focusing on its movement from Norway to Sweden. Drawing on interviews and document analysis, and employing the policy mobilities literature as a theoretical lens, it discusses how the WRC concept was introduced in Sweden at a time of policy-related uncertainty. The article shows that the newly assembled Swedish WRC policy is characterized by discursive flexibility, allowing it to encompass an array of issues and appeal to a political majority. This flexibility, it is argued, allows for mobility, enabling the issue of labour exploitation to become embedded in existing policy areas—in this case, in the intersections between migration, crime and labour policy.