REMESO TALKS

In the Tidö Agreement, M, KD, L and SD describe an objective that “authorities shall be obliged to inform the Swedish Migration Agency and the Swedish Police Authority when they come into contact with people who are staying in Sweden without a permit. This means that authorities that a person may come into contact with have a responsibility to ensure that the person has a legal right to stay in Sweden”. Since Linköping University is a government agency, the Division of Research and Migration, Ethnicity, and Society (REMESO) would like to make the following statement on the so-called information obligation that the government wishes to introduce.

To our students
REMESO’s educational programs require a learning situation that is safe for students, teachers and other university employees. Therefore, we do not check, and will never check, whether those who participate in our courses or stay in our environments have a residence permit. The department has internal rules that allow for this practice to be taken by everyone involved in REMESO’s programs.

To our colleagues in universities and colleges

The task of the university teacher is, by law, to organize higher education in his or her own subject area. The researcher is entitled by law to freely choose his or her research problems, freely develop his or her research methods, and freely publish his or her research results. In turn, the university’s task is to organize education and research, and to cooperate with the surrounding society so that the knowledge available at the university benefits society. It is not part of the tasks of either the teacher, the researcher, or the university to inform the Migration Agency and the Police Authority about their activities or those who participate in them. On the contrary, the so-called duty to inform goes against the teacher’s educational mission, undermines academic freedom, and is contrary to good ethics.

To others
Those who are primarily affected by the proposed duty to inform are not university teachers and researchers at universities and colleges, but employees in health care, social services and schools. With this statement, we join many similar statements from trade unions, municipal administrations, regions, employers and workplaces that oppose the imposition of police duties on persons in the public sector. Such an arrangement is incompatible with the professional duties and ethics of those involved, as well as with democracy itself. The more people who join these protests, the more likely it is that the government will withdraw its plans to force public sector employees to become informers.

Norrköping, Sweden, June 14, 2023
Adopted unanimously at the REMESO staff meeting