This Article Full Text (PDF) References Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Alert me to new issues of the journal Add to Saved Citations Download to citation manager Add to My Marked Citations Citing Articles Citing Articles via Google Scholar Citing Articles via Scopus Google Scholar Articles by Khosravi, S. Search for Related Content Social Bookmarking                         What's this?

Sweden: detention and deportation of asylum seekers

Department of Social Anthropology at Stockholm University

Based on ethnographic fieldwork among undocumented migrants (including asylum seekers) in Stockholm between 2004 and 2006, additional interviews with police officers, deportation escorts and staff at Swedish detention centres and some fieldwork in Tehran in June 2005 and August 2007, this article examines the impact of Sweden's more restrictive asylum policy since the beginning of the decade. From a condition of `deportability' to incarceration in detention centres and then removal from Sweden, asylum seekers have been increasingly criminalised — their confinement and removal being seen as mechanisms for preserving national security. Focusing, in particular, on the techniques used by the detention apparatus to `humanise' and `rationalise' the confinement and expulsion of asylum seekers, it is argued that a discourse of `caring' and `saving' works, in effect, as a disciplinary mechanism that presents asylum seekers as responsible for their own detention and deportation.

Key Words: criminalisation of migration • human rights of foreign nationals • immigration imprisonment • representation of asylum seekers

Race & Class, Vol. 50, No. 4, 38-56 (2009)
DOI: 10.1177/0306396809102996


CiteULike    Complore    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter    What's this?