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Statelessness is one of the most severe conditions in which humans can find themselves in today. As a predicament that drastically impacts lives and identities, statelessness goes beyond the lack of citizenship to represent an inherent paradox of the dominant international state order. As a tool for nation-state projects and hegemonic identity constructions, statelessness has an extended history that is intertwined with persecution and exclusion in many parts of the world. This study explores the impact of statelessness on identity construction and access to rights between the contexts of the home country and migration. Deploying qualitative research tools, the analysis draws on the life histories of stateless Kurds from Syria, who are currently residents in Germany and Sweden. In ten chapters, the study examines the historical grounds, lived realities and presumptive solutions pertaining to the statelessness of the Kurds of Syria in the shadow of the recent conflict and displacement from the country. Through a chronotopic investigation into individual narratives, I argue for an alternative framework of knowledge about statelessness, beyond citizenist interpretations. This alternative which I call stateless standpoint epistemology has both conceptual and analytical functions, enabling us to understand how individual and collective identities are perceived and negotiated in the chronotopic transitions between various legal statuses (such as the stateless, the refugee and the citizen), and how boundaries of belonging and citizenship are constructed across these transitions. Exploring the entanglements of citizenship and identity in relation to forced migration, the study demonstrates that statelessness is an enduring issue, both as a lived reality of exclusion, non-belonging and political otherness and as a legacy affecting individuals, families and communities. The study explains the intricate relation between statelessness, identity and forced migration in historical, social and critical terms, contributing with new research perspectives that recognize statelessness as an intersectional, structural and political phenomenon, beyond the mere lack of state citizenship.

In their essay,  Paula Mulinari and Anders Neergaard examine the role of white and male- dominated trade unions in shaping the racial capitalism of the so-called Swedish Model. Inspired by W.E.B. Du Bois’s re-writing of U.S history, where white (and male) trade unions play a central role in producing and reproducing racial labor and social inequalities, the chapter points to the role of Swedish labor unions in reproducing racial capitalism and an ethno-racial welfare state. The chapter ends with the questiona discussion of to what extent and how trade unions—which are central to the Swedish model—may challenge racial capitalism.

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.