This is an invitation for students who are interested in doing research as part of their masters thesis, that would connect to an exciting new project at the department of Global political studies (see more below). The advantage for participating students is the possibility of co-authoring published research reports/working papers and articles as well as providing a valuable addition to your CV and insight to what it is to work within a large research project.

The themes that we are investigating this semester, apart from continuous seminars with a theoretical orientation are

• Media analysis of discourses around undocumented migrants and irregular migration in Sweden and the UK.
• Case law regarding undocumented migrants human rights in the ECtHR.
• Legislations in UK, Sweden and other European countries in the field of undocumented migrants and other non-citizen’s human rights, a comparative approach.
• Policy decisions on city level of governance and state level of governance regarding undocumented migrants.
• International human rights legislation (EU; Council of Europe; UN) in the field of irregular migration.
• Theoretically oriented works on concepts such as Cosmopolitanism; Rights-claiming; Hospitality; Citizenship.

Welcome,

Anna Lundberg, Michael Strange and Mikael Spång. If interested in taking part, please contact anna.lundberg@mah.se, Eligible candidates are acquired to be fluent in English and be able to provide a one page statement making clear their reasons for taking part in the project.

About the project:

In the four-year project we will highlight undocumented migrant children’s claims to be right holders focusing on everyday experiences and agency. Drawing on Hannah Arendt’s observation that rights can be realised only in a political community and Jacque Rancière’s theory that politics of human rights must be rooted in the practices of rights-holders they the project has a strong agency perspective that asks how children themselves claim and utilize rights. We also investigate contradictions between different levels of regulation regarding undocumented children’s human rights.

To reveal how children subjectively experience life as undocumented and negotiate agency in this situation, a child-centred participative research design is adopted. Activities and interviews will be conducted in the city of Manchester, UK and Malmö, Sweden. The PhD student will be spending several months in Manchester. We also investigate international and national regulations in the area as well as policy at city level regarding undocumented children’s rights.

The research will provide knowledge about the situation of undocumented migrant children from the point of human rights. This is of central importance especially with regard to the children since they as under-age and non-citizens lack the traditional opportunities for political action. The project will also provide theoretically important insights of the contested meaning of human rights at different levels. Furthermore, a strong aim is to create conditions for a more tempered public debate in Sweden around highly politicised subjects.

Publicerar idag ett viktigt referat från Högsta förvaltningsdomstolen (från Migrationsnet)

2013-12-16 mål nr 3353-13

Migrationsverket nekade en kommun ersättning för arvode till god man för en ensamkommande flicka. Beslutet grundades på att flickan avvikit. HFD finner att flickan omfattas av personkretsen i lagen (1994:137) om mottagande av asylsökande m.fl., LMA och att kommunen har rätt till den begärda ersättningen.

Bakgrund

En kommun ansökte hos Migrationsverket om ersättning för arvode till god man för en ensamkommande flicka för perioden den 1 januari – den 7 juli 2011. Flickan hade ansökt om asyl i Sverige men fått avslag på sin ansökan och samtidigt utvisats ur landet. Avslagsbeslutet vann laga kraft den 14 juli 2010. Den 30 september 2010 avvek flickan från sitt familjehem och höll sig sedan undan. Kommunen lät godmanskapet kvarstå även efter avvikandet och fram till den dag flickan fyllde 18 år.

Migrationsverket avslog kommunens ansökan om ersättning med motiveringen att flickan hade avvikit.

Efter kommunens överklagande kom förvaltningsrätten fram till att kommunen var berättigad till ersättningen. Migrationsverket överklagade domen till kammarrätten som avslog överklagandet.

I Högsta förvaltningsdomstolen (HFD) anförde Migrationsverket att en förutsättning för att kommunen skulle ha rätt till ersättning var att flickan omfattades av 1 § första stycket 1 eller 2 LMA, vilket i sin tur förutsatte att hon hade rätt till bistånd enligt den lagen. Eftersom flickan höll sig undan hade hon enligt 12 § LMA inte rätt till bistånd och hon omfattades därmed inte längre av lagens personkrets.

HFD: s bedömning

HFD anför att frågan i målet är om kommunen har rätt till ersättning för kostnader för god man till ett ensamkommande barn som håller sig undan så att ett lagakraftvunnet beslut om utvisning inte kan verkställas.

Enligt 8 § förordningen (2002:1118) om statlig ersättning för asylsökande m.fl. har en kommun rätt till ersättning för kostnader för god man till ensamkommande barn som omfattas av 1 § första stycket 1 eller 2 LMA. Migrationsverket hävdar att en utlänning som håller sig undan så att ett utvisningsbeslut inte kan verkställas och av den anledningen saknar rätt till bistånd enligt LMA inte längre omfattas av personkretsen i 1 §. Det här kan dock enligt HFD inte utläsas av lagtexten. Tvärtom följer det av 12 § LMA att en person kan omfattas av personkretsen utan att ha rätt till bistånd och detta oavsett om det finns ett lagakraftvunnet beslut om utvisning. Flickan omfattas av personkretsen i 1 § första stycket 1 LMA. Migrationsverkets överklagande avslås.

Igår under vårt panelsamtal om MR-utmaningar i skyddet av människor som saknar uppehållstillstånd, på MR-dagarna i Stockholm, presenterade vi en handbok för arbetet med papperslösa inom Socialtjänsten. Den bifogas här!

file://localhost/Users/imanlu/Desktop/Handbok%20för%20socialarbetare%20i%20mötet%20med%20papperslösa-1.pdf

Local and regional authorities play a crucial role in ensuring the implementation of fundamental rights of undocumented migrants, with the particular example of access to health care. We see this in our research at Malmö University and it is also confirmed in a newly published report by PICUM. “Sanctuary cities” in Canada and in the US are referred to as encouraging examples of local and municipal governments offering comprehensive protection measures for undocumented migrants’ human rights. Examples are given, from Spain, on local communities’ legislative steps in order to counter the negative impact of the new proposed federal regulation and to guarantee access to health care for undocumented migrants in their territory. Four main reasons for these local actors’ actions can be identified:

1. Maintaining social cohesion and social inclusion;

2. considering access to health care as a basic fundamental right;

3. ensuring public health and preventing transmission of infectious diseases;

4. economic efficiency: in the long term it is more cost-efficient to maintain a system of social care and social assistance that ensures an equal level of treatment amongst everybody within the society…

A worrying trend is also identified in the report, towards more restrictive policies in health systems as regard entitlements to rights. “In line with naomi Klein’s “shock doctrine”, according to which a good crisis provides an ideal cover for national governments to drive through the changes that they have long wanted to make, it can be argued that the spanish Government is currently taking advantage of the economic crisis in order to promote a new model of health care services, based on social exclusion rather than social inclusion.” Read more here: http://picum.org/picum.org/uploads/publication/CoR%20Report%20Access%20to%20Healthcare%20EN_FR_IT_ES%202013.pdf

We meet outside Anna Lundberg’s room on Gäddan (third floor), Malmö University. 12-15 it is! Bring your own lunch.

ALL ARE WELCOME BUT WE NEED TO KNOW IN ADVANCE SO PLEASE SEND US AN E-MAL (anna.lundberg@mah.se)!

September 18-19
GPS Research Days with James Ingram, Mc Master University.

September 26
Origins of Totalitarianism Hannah Arendt and Hannah Arendt and Human Rights: The Predicament of Common Responsibility Peg Birmingham.
Presentations: Mikael Spång and Anna Lundberg
Note: Amanda Nielsen, PhD candidate in Political Science, Linné University, is presenting her work at the MIM-seminar 14:15 Besvärande rättslöshet – Papperslösa, den nationella välfärdsstatens dualitet och mänskliga rättigheter som politisk resurs (in Swedish).

October 15
Citizenship, Migrant Activism and the Politics of Movement Pieter Nyers and K Rygiel (reds); Nando Sigona (2012) “’I have too much baggage’: the impacts of legal status on the social worlds of irregular migrants” Social Anthropology 20 (1): 50-65.
Neocosmos, Michael (2012) ”Can a human rights culture enable emanicipation? Clearing som theoretical ground for the renewal of a critical sociology” South African Review of Sociology 37 (2) 356-379
Presentations: Jacob Lind, Emma Söderman and Anna Lundberg

October 31
The Exclusionary Politics of Asylum Vicky Squire and Border Politics: The Limits of Sovereign Power Nick Vaughan-Williams; Presentation of “Vi har rätt” by activists Linus Kullving and Maria Svensson.
Presentation: Michael Strange

November 7
Rancière, Jacques (2001) ”Ten Theses on Politics” Theory and Event 5:3 and Krause, Monika (2008), Undocumented Migrants: An Arendtian Perspective1 in the European Journal of Political Theory 7(3): 331-348, New York University as an example of how this is relevant.
Presentations: Mikael Spång and Michael Strange

November 18-19
Lunch-lunch: FAS network “Network on irregular migration and irregular migrants” ethics and engagement.
With (among others) Anna Lundberg, Maja Sager, Åsa Smith, Emma Söderman.

December 3
Are Human Rights for Migrants?Critical Reflections on the Status of Irregular Migrants in Europe and the United States. Marie-Benedicte Dembour, Tobias Kelly Presentation: PhD and Anna Lundberg

December 17
Re-Presenting the Good Society, by Maeve Cooke.
Presentations: Michael Strange and Emma Söderman.

December 19
Christmas lunch and presentation of PhD projects.

By the end of September we will arrange a seminar with James Ingram, Department of Political Science at McMaster University in Canada.

James Ingram’s main interests are in modern, especially contemporary, continental political theory, from Kant and Rousseau via Marx to Critical Theory, deconstruction, and post-Marxism. He has recently published the book Rethinking Cosmopolitanism: The Ethics and Politics of Universalism, which tries to rethink the idea of cosmopolitanism through a critical examination of the failures of top-down universalisms. His current research extends this work by exploring particular areas of especially transnational politics, including human rights, culture, democracy, and representation.

All are welcome, read more here

http://www.mah.se/Nyheter/Kalender/Cosmopolitics—GPS-Research-Days/

In the newsletter from PICUM we read about a campaign in the UK that intends to  send out a hard-line message to undocumented migrants that they should go home. It consists of billboards and advertising vans that will drive around several London boroughs. The campaign has been criticised for misleading ads displayed on billboards. A large-print claim of “106 arrests last week in your area” on the billboards is followed by an asterisk referring viewers to a footnote too small to be read when the van is moving, indicating the week in question and a large number of boroughs which are not usually referred to as ‘one area’ including direct arrests at airports of new arrivals (read more here: http://picum.org/en/news/bulletins/41724#news_41689)

In PICUM:s latest news letter we could read about that FRA (The European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights) recently developed guidelines for EU member states to enable undocumented migrants to report crime and access justice without fear of being apprehended. Anonymous reporting to the police through a third party is suggested, as well as to delink the immigration status of victims from the main residence permit holder if he or she is the perpetrator. Read more here: http://fra.europa.eu/sites/default/files/fra-2013-apprehension-migrants-irregular-situation_en.pdf

A reminder about our workshop at the IMISCOE-conference in Malmö: http://www.imiscoeconferences.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=160:workshop-42-crisis-regional-migration-regimes-and-human-rights&catid=36:workshops&Itemid=55