Deportation Limbo: State violence and contestations in the Nordics

Description

Deportation limbo offers a political ethnography of deportation enforcement in Denmark and Sweden. It takes place in a time when deportation has emerged as a key priority in Northern European states’ migration policy regimes, and when states are stepping up their efforts to address the so-called deportation gap. The book takes the reader inside detention centres, deportation camps and migration offices, and explores how frontline officials deal with their task of pressuring non-deported migrants to leave, and the injurious effects of these efforts. Using the analytical frame of a continuum of state violence, the book details the tension-ridden enforcement of policy measures which, rather than enhancing deportations, render non-deported people stuck in precarious limbo. It brings up questions of the violence endemic to border regimes, and about racism, and bureaucratic exclusion in the Nordic welfare states. Contents Series editors’ prefaceviii List of figuresx Acknowledgementsxi Prologue1 Introduction: deportation fantasies4 1The politics of deportation and the Nordic welfare state25 2What you get is a prison: detention in Denmark43 3Deporting with care: detention in Sweden67 4Politics that kill, slowly: the Danish deportation camps93 5The idea is to exhaust them: minimum welfare provisions in Sweden117 Conclusion: state violence and its effects140 Epilogue: Abolfazl’s death and other afterlives151 Appendix: on methods153 References160 Index185