The EU has been the principal focus of rhetorical entrapment due to its growing identity as a normative actor whose actions are based on globally acknowledged norms and values. Due to the well-established concept of Normative Power Europe (NPE), the analysis of persuasion mechanisms, mostly between the EU and the EU potential member, has its starting point as the causal effects of norms. The non-EU countries accept the EU's normative identity but try to manipulate EU norms to their advantage. In these accounts, the EU has sometimes been presented not as an actor but rather as a normative context in which rational actors are situated using the EU norms to increase their own benefits (Aoun, 2012; Kratochvíl and Tulmets, 2010).
Using the logic of obligatory action where norms guide actors' behavior, the EU's engagement and ‘the others’ leads to states sharing a belief system of the EU (Petrova, 2016). Within this socialization, the arguments by the non-EU’s partners - pushing their self-interests – are capable of compelling the EU to conform with its own normative positions. The idiosyncratic interlocutors are hence able to frame norm-based arguments and disband any socially sustainable counterarguments to compel the EU to act accordingly.
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The debates on migration policies revolve around international norms of asylum protection and the EU’s role as a global leader in upholding those norms. Rhetorical action leads to a policy change by first invoking knowledge claims about the causes of an issue and even its effects.
Knowledge claims shape policy proposals and are determined by the actor’s understanding of policy problems and appropriate interventions. Salmivaara and Kibler (2020) term such policy proposal as policy rhetoric; this is a policy recommendation that emerges from different argumentations, beliefs and underpinning rhetoric. Boswell et al. (2011) refer them to as policy narratives - “the factual beliefs espoused by policy-makers and others engaged in political debates about the causes and dynamics of the problems they are seeking to address, and about how policy could impact these dynamics” (Boswell et al., 2011:4, see also, Boswell, 2011). As causes of policy change, policy rhetoric possesses the most influence when they are cognitively plausible, morally compelling, and contains perceived interest. Besides, they are more persuasive when they keep coherence, consistency and plausibility.
When policy rhetoric is quite prevalent, they attract expert knowledge and place the policy debates at the center of analysis, stressing the role of ideas in policy formulation. Policy changes that emerge from political decision-making are partly influenced by public debates and tend to depart from the state’s policy preferences (guided by rational interest) or objective
‘facts.’ This happens when political actors gather the ideas from the outside to construct a policy problem and the most appropriate solution (Carling and Hernández-Carretero, 2011).
Although conventional political thoughts shape rhetorical practices, they are also motivated by rival actors in an attempt to win a situation to their advantage (Bleich 2002; Schmidt and Radaelli, 2004; Boswell, 2011). For a knowledge claim to be competitive vis-a-vis others, it needs to be understandable to the knowledge experts and persuasive to the general public.
There exist no specific approach to the formation of policy claim. Commonly, different groups come together, gather scattered rhetoric and form a complete policy knowledge. Policy
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knowledge typically acquires a particular pattern, especially in situations that are hard to define or have no straightforward solution, such as crises. During crises, decision-makers make their decision heavily influenced by an existing rhetoric, i.e., the next course of action, who is responsible for what, how, and why. Policymakers usually work to align their policy proposals with the existing wave of opinion, which they use to explore and define an issue in addressing a policy dilemma (Boswell, 2011; Krebs and Jackson, 2007).
EU policy changes have been influenced through rhetorical practices, which express policy knowledge (Aoun, 2012; Boswell, 2011; Carta and Morin, 2016:68; Vertovec, 2011).
Rhetorical action has been used to influence a shift in the EU migration policy change (Guglielmo and Waters, 2005). Policy rhetoric in the migration domain is based on ideologies that range from left-right. In the case of irregular migration control, left-wing politics have ideologies that promote less restrictive migration policies. On the contrary, right-wing politics tend to promote policies founded on their school of thought, i.e., securitization of migrants and criminalization of asylum seekers (see Boswell et al., 2011). It is deducible that policy rhetoric is constructed and diffused based on the actors’ interests. Balch and Geddes found that rhetorical practices related to human trafficking impacted the UK’s migration control system during the 2006 migration crisis (Balch and Geddes, 2011). Carling and Hernández-Carretero examined the effect of rhetorical practices in Spain about the West Africa irregular migration to the Canary Islands. They examined the effect of high-risk irregular migration narratives and those related to security threats to immigrants and how those narratives influenced migrant-protection policy changes. They found that political narratives at the national level triggered governments' efforts to reach out to the African countries to establish migration management partnerships (Carling and Hernández-Carretero, 2011; Hernández-Carretero and Carling, 2012). In every level of policy articulation, knowledge claims by various actors are involved, including politicians, practitioners, technocrats, researchers and media. Policy rhetoric is
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perceived as knowledge claims and becomes a shared role between politicians and technocrats.
The move to bring together the political rhetoric and the knowledge claims within the EU is a changing role of expert knowledge.