Suspicious minds and unwelcome researchers : obstacles encountered when researching forced return in Sweden

Abstract

Forced return in Sweden is characterized by heavy politicization, systemic fragmentation and is shrouded in a veil of securitization. Forced return is both an organized activity, with different state and non-state authorities involved, and an activity that seeks to end a relationship of responsibility between the state and the non-citizen. The forced return migration process is generally not conceptualised as a comprehensive process by policy-makers or practitioners but rather as a loosely linked series of activities that eventually lead to the return of the migrant. This is possibly due to the disparate institutional actors involved. For migrants however, the actual “end threat” of removal to their country of origin is very real and hangs like a dark shadow on their existence for as long as they hold temporary permits of residence. This dark shadow of deportation takes on new and tangible proportions through the institutional forms and practices that migrants, who have either failed their application for asylum or who have no other lawful permit to remain in the country, encounter. Our project attempts to start filling a knowledge gap by exploring migrants’ own experiences of this particular forced return process conceptualised as a social, cultural and political phenomenon. Access and contact with migrants is therefore of utmost importance to our project. The original plan at the start of this 18-month project was to first obtain access to one or more of Sweden’s five immigration detention centres where we would spend time, through regular visits, with migrants at risk of deportation. This would have enabled regular contact with migrants since we were aware that meeting migrants at risk of deportation out in the community would be very difficult. Indeed, as our own study came to confirm, in Sweden migrants at risk of deportation out in the community are difficult to identify since they (understandably) do not share widely their legal status, partly to avoid stigma, but mostly because it increases their precariousness in various settings. We now know that migrants, particularly those who do not opt for voluntary return, take time to or even refuse to consider the real eventuality of return, and therefore would also not identify themselves as potential deportees.