In the summer 2013 a group of people walked from Malmö to Stockholm with the purpose to raise awareness about the refugee policies in Sweden. The initiative the Asylum Relay, Asylstafetten in Swedish, was initiated by refugees themselves and it was undertaken a second and third time in the summer 2014 and 2015. The initiative attained much media attention and in this masters thesis by Ida Granath, associated to our project, the media representations of the participants in the Relay is analysed using Critical Discourse Analysis, postcolonial aspects and citizenship studies. Ida also conducted participant observation by walking with the Relay in 2014. Her study finds that the media reproduce as well as challenge dominant discourses in the way they report on the Relay. The media build on existing discourses in the way “the refugee” is presented. Furthermore she finds that the media build on and reconstruct the idea of the nation-state and relations of power of authorities over refugees. However, it is also shown in the study that through acts of citizenship refugees are presented as active rather than passive, and they get a prominent voice in the media representation. The thesis can be read here: https://gupea.ub.gu.se/handle/2077/40519
Report on the rights of children in irregularity available on MIM website
I and Therese were interns in the project in the Autumn term of 2014. During the internship we wrote a report on the rights of children in irregularity, which we also had an opportunity to present earlier this year at Nottingham University as part of their Human Rights Law Centre’s Annual Student Conference.
Recently we received news that our report is now available to be read on the MIM (Malmö Institute for Studies of Migration, Diversity and Welfare) website. The report is accessible from here.
In the report we mapped the rights that undocumented children are entitled to according to the international and national level in the UK and Sweden. Our focus was on the rights connected to education, healthcare, social services and housing, as these are the four highlighted issues from the previous research (among them the Pilot Study conducted in Malmö in 2012 by Anna Lundberg and Emma Söderman).
We found that the two countries have moved in rather different directions in the past decade. In the UK, the undocumented children were previously entitled to some fundamental rights but their situation has worsened significantly in the last years. Sweden, on the other hand, has in the past years made the fundamental rights for children in irregularity more accessible. However, it became clear that even if there seems to be a full entitlement to these rights on paper, in practice other obstacles and practical barriers hinder accessing the rights in both countries. Apart from the law, the lack of sanctuaries or safe places, together with uncertainty around reporting obligations are factors that almost invariably increase the insecurity under which undocumented children live.
/Maarja, former intern in the project