Maja Sager

From citizenship to mobile commons: reflections on the local struggles of undocumented migrants in the city of Malmö, Sweden

Abstract Focusing on undocumented migrants’ struggles over rights and representation in the city of Malmö, Sweden, this article argues that these practices constitute an enactment of citizenship. Drawing on the literature on autonomy of migration, we also explore acts of solidarity beyond the terminology of citizenship through the concept of ‘mobile commons’. We focus on experiences and activist practices of undocumented migrants as well as citizens in Malmö; the development of local guidelines extending limited social benefits rights to undocumented migrants; and a theatre performance involving undocumented actors. The analysis is organised thematically around the tensions emerging from these empirical cases: between visibility and invisibility, mobility and immobility and access to social rights. We argue that encounters between citizens and non-citizens can create situated spaces ‘in between’, by claiming citizen rights and by going beyond the language of citizenship.

Constructions of Deportability in Sweden. Refused Asylum Seekers’ Experiences in Relation to Gender, Family Life, and Reproduction

Abstract Drawing on ethnographic material, this article examines how the experiences of refused asylum seekers in Sweden are shaped by migration policies, welfare policies, and gender norms. The article develops a feminist account of deportability to examine some gendered and reproductive aspects of everyday experiences of seeking asylum in Sweden. Focusing on the interview accounts of one heterosexual couple and one woman from Kosovo, I explore how their experiences are formed by the refusal of asylum claims in cases of sexual violence and/or their relationship and parental status. The analysis reflects on the way in which the specific legislative situation in the time period in which these interviews were made led to a privileging of families with children above single migrants and/or couples without children. It also reflects on how experiences of deportability clash dramatically with the idea of Sweden as a women-friendly welfare state.

Precarity at Work. Asylum rights and paradoxes of labour in Sweden.

The fields of migration politics and labour market politics are closely linked in many ways. Some of these links are explicit and obvious, but nevertheless they need to be closely examined. It is crucial to examine legislative or discursive links to labour market dynamics, particularly in relation to refugee migration, as these links risk damaging basic human rights principles. People’s urge for mobility is channelled into processes of precarisation and labour market segmentation through the categorisation of rights and status intrinsic to migration controls, through racist discrimination, and through racialisation of work and the production of deportability (see, e.g., Balibar and Wallerstein, 2002; de Genova, 2005). This chapter examines some connections and overlapping issues between labour and refugee migration regulations to highlight and problematise these processes.