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This article, published in Critical Sociology, discusses empirical evidence and theoretical perspectives on a structurally and spatially ingrained racial capitalism, dispossession, and precarisation in what is identified as “neo-apartheid” Sweden. Theoretically the argument rests on a critical re-engagement of the notions of “racial capitalism” and “neo-apartheid” in contemporary critical research, inspired, by research on racial capitalism in South Africa. The argument is illustrated, empirically, by a scrutiny of processes of segregation, racial stigmatisation, and “the return of primitive accumulation” reflected in predatory housing policies and super-exploitation of labour, conditioning livelihoods and opportunities of sub-altern Others in disadvantaged urban neighbourhoods. Through a local case in the region of Järvafältet in metropolitan Stockholm,  the paper addresses subaltern struggles contesting racial capitalism in a society that used to be an international showpiece of social equality (link below, open access)

This article explores affectivity, temporality, and their interrelation in patients who contracted COVID-19 during the first wave of the pandemic in Sweden and with symptoms indicative of post-COVID-19 Condition (PCC) that remained one year after the infection. It offers a qualitative phenomenological philosophy analysis, showing how being ill with acute COVID-19 and with symptoms indicative of PCC can entail a radically altered self-world relation. We identify two examples of pre-intentional (existential) feelings: that of listlessness and that of not being able to sense what is real and not real, both of which, in different ways, imply a changed self-world relation. We offer an analysis of intentional feelings: how the fear of not “returning” to one’s previous self and the hope of such a return weave together the present and the absent, as well as the past and the future, in ways that make the future appear as constricted, disquieting, or lost. We argue that a phenomenological differentiation among experiences of living with symptoms indicative of PCC—through attention to the way intentional affectivity and pre-intentional affectivity help shape the embodied self’s attunement to the world—is apt to yield a better understanding of the variations within these experiences and contribute to clinical practice.

This symposium explores the relationship between international migration and economic informalization, with a particular focus on labor–capital power dynamics. In recent years, both political attention and policy actions in the countries of the Global North have increasingly concentrated on the ‘informal economy’ at international and national levels. Despite this heightened attention and intervention, economic informalization continues to expand, alongside the growth of atypical and precarious working conditions in the labor market. Common understandings and discussions of these phenomena often attribute them to fraudulent activities of (primarily self-employed) individuals and organizations, and to international migration. However, the contributions to this symposium challenge such simplistic interpretations by illustrating various ways in which contemporary capitalism is incorporating economic informalization, and how international migration is utilized as a component of this dynamic.
The purpose of this introduction is to present the historical context for the processes and relationships that will be discussed in the contributions to this symposium, as well as the way in which social scientists have historically conceptualized and interpreted the socioeconomic and political phenomena of the informal economy and international migration.

This chapter, in Raul Delgado Wise, Branka Likic-Brboric, Ronaldo Munck & Carl-Ulrik Schierup (eds) Handbook on Migration and Development (Edward Elgar, 2024, pp.367-385), addresses the corporate hijacking and redesign of the migration and development agenda, as an essential dimension of the critical understanding of a neoliberal global governance project. It identifies the challenges that this managerial approach—centred on ‘economic growth, individual resilience’ and the business actors as main development agents—presents for the promotion of a comprehensive, solidarity-based approach to migration and development. The main question is if and how can CSOs meet this challenge and promote migrants’ rights and international solidarity?

This Handbook presents a comprehensive overview of the interaction between migration and development from a range of critical and counter-hegemonic perspectives. Exploring the strengths and weaknesses of existing practices connected with the migration and development nexus, contributing authors provide a clear understanding of their complex dynamics.

Divided into three thematic sections, the Handbook opens with a range of cutting-edge theoretical insights and methodologies that seek to establish the current state of the art. Following this, chapter authors use exploitation and dispossession as overarching concepts to frame key aspects of migration and development from a labour and class perspective. The Handbook then looks ahead, considering the opportunities and dilemmas illustrated by the various initiatives aimed at framing a multi-level governance regime for migration and development across the globe.

The Handbook on Migration and Development is an invaluable resource for students, academics and researchers in migration, development studies, sociology and social policy. Bringing together a wide range of underrepresented voices, this Handbook is also of benefit to policymakers working in international migration.

This chapter unpacks the complex and contested nature of ‘irregular labour migration’ and explores the meaning and analytical rigour of this conceptualization. We discuss four social positions: 1) authorised migrant regular worker, 2) authorised migrant irregular worker, 3) unauthorised migrant irregular worker and 4) unauthorised migrant regular worker. Using the distinctions between informalization from above and below, respectively, and the notion that irregular work can be the effect of exit as well as exclusion we discuss enabling and restraining factors in relation to these four positions. In entering a dialogue with the distinction between irregular labour and unauthorised migration we focus (ir)regularity of work and (un)authorised status.

The chapter is part of the edited volume Guglielmo Meardi. (2024). Research Handbook on Migration and Employment. Edward Elgar. 

The Institute for Research on Migration, Ethnicity, and Society (REMESO), IKOS, Linköping University, will organize an international conference from the 3rd to the 5th of September 2024. The conference, titled “Legal Status, Temporality, and Integration – Changing Migration Regimes and Precarization of Citizenship,” is being organized by REMESO, Linköping University, in collaboration with The Canada Excellence Research Chair in Migration and Integration (CERC) at Toronto Metropolitan University. The event, which will take place in Norrköping,  aims to gather approximately 30 migration researchers from Sweden, the EU, and Canada. The project is financially supported by the Research Council for Health, Working Life, and Welfare (FORTE – Decision No: GD-2023/0034).

The primary responsibility for organizing the conference lies with Professor Zoran Slavnic of REMESO, Linköping University, who, alongside Professor Anna Triandafyllidou of CERC, Toronto Metropolitan University, oversees the academic content of the conference.

The conference is planned for four sessions. The first two sessions will focus on the structural roots of new restrictive immigration policies and how policymakers in receiving countries deal with these problems (Session 1), and the ability of individual and collective agency of migrants to act independently despite these structural limitations (Session 2). Sessions 3 and 4 will address empirical cases from Sweden and Canada in this context.

Each session will open with an introductory keynote speech by leading scholars in these fields, followed by the presentation of four papers per session. The conference will conclude with a panel discussion featuring all keynote speakers.

Filmed Interview, The Market Exit.
I’m Andres Acevedo and this is The Market Exit. During the migration crisis of 2015, the small country of Sweden admitted a very large number of refugees. What effects did this surge of migrants to Swedish have on the Swedish economy? To find out, I met professor Peo Hansen, author of the book “A Modern Migration Theory” and from our conversation, I realized that many of the economic models we use for assessing our economy and society are deeply flawed. In the conversation, we talk about the field of research called the fiscal impact of migration. We talk about the difference between real resources and financial resources. We talk about the so-called brain drain within the European Union. We talk about why politicians are so afraid of speaking the truth about migration.

Filmed interview with Neutrality Studies, Chaired by Pascal Lottaz, ​Kyoto University, Faculty of Law.
“The EU to this day treats Africa as a colonial backyard that must be ‘managed’ rather than engaged with on equal footing. At the same time, Josep Borrell begs China to recognise the EU as a fellow great power—something no self-respecting power would ever even dream of. All of this is symptomatic not only for the EU commissions current mental state, but the history of the Union, a history it often downplays or forgets about all together. My guest today is a Swedish academic; Professor Peo Hansen of Linköping University. His research focuses among other things on European integration, migration, political economy, and geopolitics. Dr. Hansen is the author of several books, including “Eurafrica: The Untold History of European Integration and Colonialism” of which there is also an academic article and recently he wrote a short magazine article as well.”

Over the last century, the South African state has periodically engaged in the practice of ‘exempting’ various migrants from their otherwise irregular immigration statuses. Always backed by official legislation, exemptions represent one way by which dominant capitalist interests have relied on the legitimacy of the state to meet their labour needs by sometimes employing undocumented migrants from the Southern African region. Through insights from sub-imperialism and bordering, this paper discusses historical case examples from policy articulations, parliamentary debates, secondary literature and archival materials. By exploring cross-national relationships of exploitation and differentiation, the paper argues that exemptions should be understood as attempts by which the contradictions of ubiquitous informal cross-border mobility and employment in a regime of unfree regional movement might be resolved. Exemptions also attest to the challenge of governing human mobility in a region invested with a historically vast infrastructure of producing, attracting as well as exploiting cheap migrant labour.