Articulations of deportability : Changing migration policies in Sweden 2015/2016

• The struggles of people who sought to enter and move across Europe became increasingly intense in 2015 with unthinkable numbers of deaths on the sea and other dangerous parts of the various alternative routes. Initially Europe witnessed a popular mobilisation of solidarity and demands for a humane response articulated by government officials as well as in the media. However, the government responses changed rapidly and were replaced by a narrative of crisis and a steering towards harsher regulations and closed borders aiming to limit the numbers of asylum seekers. In Sweden, following the construction of such a narrative of crisis the Social democratic/Green party government and the right wing opposition launched an initial migration political agreement in November 2015 that was followed by several interventions during 2016 that sought to restrict the possibilities to get permanent resident permits and to facilitate the expulsion of irregular migrants. These interventions imply a critical shift in the direction of Swedish migration and asylum regulations. In this paper we argue that this shift visibly and bluntly moves towards enforcing the links between migration politics and labour politics. In other words: to abandon a human rights perspective. In this paper our analysis focuses on the Swedish migration politics’ switching from permanent to temporary residence permits; the racialisation of service and domestic work low pay sectors; and the intensification of irregular migrant vulnerability through work site controls and other measures to increase deportation practices. We conceptualise the effects of these interventions as a racialised continuum of deportability and explore how this continuum is constructed, experienced and contested in the context of the government responses to present migrations. The analysis builds on two kinds of material: government documents and press releases regarding the migration political interventions, and ethnographic material from two different studies exploring structures and experiences of irregularity in the Swedish context (Sager 2011, Öberg 2014)

Nyckelord

Irregularity

Continuum of Deportability

Labour Market Regulation

Segmentation

Migration Policy

Publikations- och innehållstyp

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