14:00 - 15:00
Negotiations on welfare and social security entitlements for EU migrants in Sweden
sara Nyhlén, Katarina Giritli Nygren
Mid Sweden University, Sundsvall

The overall aim of this article is to use the closing of an informal EU migrant camp to discuss how EU migrants fall through the cracks in the system– where humanitarian concerns being superseded by security ones. By taking a closer look at the ways in which discourses on welfare operate within the nexus of humanitarian care, social care and migration, it is possible to outline the role played by risk framing effects in allowing this shift to take place and how these apparently incompatible discursive regimes are intertwined and nourish one another. As a basis for our analysis, we use an ongoing EU-project, aimed to social inclusion and increased empowerment among vulnerable EU-migrants. The studied project is a cooperation between three municipalities, NGOs and the Swedish church. The project workers, both employed and voluntary, became the link in the communication between the authorities and the migrants making the eviction a “smooth” process without any disturbances making it possible to frame it as a “voluntary move” of the migrants. In this way, the project and the project workers became part of the reconfiguration of the state power, using the trust between the project and the migrants granting the actions legitimacy, as well as prohibiting critique of the actions from the project. The cooperation also made it possible for the eviction to, in the discursive practices, turn into the closing of an improper housing environment leaving the migrants homeless with very limited possibilities for shelter. By showing how this shift is occurring, the study show how the welfare discourse is used for risk and security measures, based on the notions of goodwill or the common good implicit in the welfare discourse, in reality it is legitimising exclusion and discrimination.


Reference:
S28-03
Session:
Symposium – Uncertainty in governance of migration and integration policy
Presenter/s:
sara Nyhlén
Presentation type:
Oral presentation
Room:
G1350
Chair/s:
Jon Nyhlén
Date:
Tuesday, 19 June
Time:
14:00 - 15:00
Session times:
14:00 - 15:00