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Refugees have moved into the spotlight of public debate in Europe and North America, where they are targeted by multiple welfare state interventions. This volume analyses the tensions that emerge within the strong welfare states of Northern Europe when faced with an increased immigration of protection-seeking people. Examining the encounter between refugees and the welfare states, this book explores the daily strategies and experiences of newly settled groups and the role of media discourses and welfare policies in shaping those experiences.
Building on both textual analyses and ethnographic fieldwork in welfare institutions, asylum centres, and refugee communities, this volume provides an in-depth understanding of the complex realities faced by refugees: deterrence and categorisation, struggle and success, mobility and stagnation. As social phenomena, Northern Europe’s asylum systems and integration programmes must be understood in the context of the bureaucratisation of everyday life.
An electronic edition of this book is freely available under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND) licence.
'This collection analysing the entanglements of representation, governance and risk when immigration/asylum policy meets welfare states is a significant development in migration studies. Careful empirical work and fascinating analysis exposes bureaucratic violence. A must read for those interested in all areas of state policy.'
Bridget Anderson, Professor of Migration, Mobilities and Citizenship, University of Bristol
'Illuminating the complex and contradictory ways in which Northern European states evoked their welfare systems as a rationale for, and means of, controlling, disciplining and managing the 2015 ‘refugee crisis’, this volume offers an important contribution to research on the construction of refugeeness and how this is experienced by refugees.'Karen Fog Olwig, Professor of Anthropology, University of Copenhagen
Dalia Abdelhady is an Associate Professor in Sociology at Lund University
Nina Gren is a Senior Lecturer in Social Anthropology at Lund University
Martin Joormann is a Postdoctoral Researcher in Sociology of Law at Lund University
1 Refugees and the violence of welfare bureaucracies in Northern Europe: an introduction – Dalia Abdelhady, Nina Gren, and Martin Joormann
Part I: Governing refugees
2 Social class, economic capital and the Swedish, German and Danish asylum systems – Martin Joormann
3 Lesson for the future or threat to sovereignty? Contesting the meaning of the 2015 refugee crisis in Sweden – Admir Skodo
4 Representations of the refugee Crisis in Denmark: deterrence polices and refugee strategies – Martin Bak Jørgensen
5 Minimum rights policies targeting people seeking protection in Denmark and Sweden – Annika Lindberg
Part II: Disciplining refugees
6 Images of crisis and the crisis of images: a visual analysis of four frames of representation of ‘refugeness’ in Swedish newspapers – Jelena Jovicic
7 Media constructions of the refugee crisis in Sweden: institutions and the challenges of refugee governance – Dalia Abdelhady
8 (De-)legitimation of migration: a critical study of social media discourses – Marie Sundström and Hedvig Obenius
Part III: The Meaning of refugeeness
9 Living bureaucratization: young Palestinian men encountering a Swedish introductory program for refugees – Nina Gren
10 Aspiration, appreciation, and frustration: Syrian asylum seekers and bureaucracy in Germany – Wendy Pearlman
11 The trauma of waiting: understanding the violence of the benevolent welfare state – Nerina Weiss
12 Bureaucratised banality: asylum and immobility in Britain, Denmark and Sweden – Victoria Canning