Résumés
Abstract
Official calls for “failed” asylum seekers to leave Sweden ignore the difficulties and harms befalling stateless people who cannot return to previous countries of residence because they lack citizenship. Stateless people are caught in limbo, a position where they have no prospects of return or of attaining a residence permit in a predictable future. To learn the underlying logics and consequences of such limbo and how it is (re)produced in the Swedish migration bureaucracy, this article investigates three data sets: interviews with seven stateless Palestinians, the Swedish Migration Agency’s internal guidelines for the return process, and the same agency’s country reports on stateless people’s situation in the assigned deportation countries. Inspired by Hannah Arendt’s reflections on statelessness and modern bureaucratized societies, the article reveals that there are great challenges to access rights for stateless persons and in holding anyone accountable for decisions adopted by Swedish migration authorities. Moreover, the article shows how limbo induces two interconnected and multilevel technologies in migration authorities: ignorance and repressive consent. As communicating vessels, these technologies form a bureaucratic violence. While diminishing migrants’ access to safety and a dignified life, violence is sustained by legislative changes and insidiously hidden from public debate.
Keywords:
- limbo,
- Sweden,
- ignorance,
- repressive consent,
- migration control,
- deportability,
- Migration Agency,
- borders,
- border police
Résumé
Les appels officiels à quitter la Suède pour les demandeurs d’asile déboutés ignorent les difficultés et les préjudices subis par les personnes apatrides qui ne peuvent pas retourner dans leur ancien pays de résidence car elles n’ont pas la citoyenneté. Les personnes apatrides sont coincées dans un vide juridique et sont dans une situation où le retour ou l’obtention d’un permis de résidence dans un avenir proche leur sont tous deux impossibles. Pour comprendre la logique qui sous-tend ce vide juridique, ses conséquences et la manière dont il est produit et reproduit par la bureaucratie de l’immigration suédoise, cet article étudie trois ensembles de données: des entretiens avec sept Palestiniens apatrides, les lignes directrices internes de l’Agence suédoise de la migration pour les procédures de retour, et les rapports de cette même agence sur la situation des personnes apatrides dans les pays de déportation désignés. Inspiré par les réflexions de Hannah Arendt sur la condition d’apatride et les sociétés modernes bureaucratisées, l’article révèle la grande difficulté à accéder aux droits pour les personnes apatrides et à tenir qui que ce soit responsable des décisions prises par les autorités suédoises chargées des migrations. De plus l’article démontre comment le vide juridique induit deux technologies interconnectées à des niveaux multiples au sein des autorités migratoires: l’ignorance et le consentement répressif. En tant que vases communicants, ces technologies constituent une violence bureaucratique. Tout en diminuant l’accès des migrants à la sécurité et à la dignité, la violence est entretenue par des changements législatifs et est insidieusement cachée du débat public.
Parties annexes
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