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The right to housing is a key principle in international human rights law, meant to apply to everyone. However, it is often less accessible to vulnerable groups, especially immigrants. This study examines how local housing policies can contribute to “gatekeeping”—an underexplored aspect in research. We argue that municipalities may use exclusionary policies as a way to control their territories by limiting access for vulnerable groups. We conducted a systematic review of international academic literature, using three types of bibliometric analysis.  First, statistical analysis reveals the field’s growth and how it is characterized by publications often combining an impressive set of data and methods. Second, the material is explored through network analysis, emphasizing how a few important journals lead the distribution of knowledge. Finally, a thematic analysis highlights consistency in the detrimental effects of exclusionary policies across different contexts. The main themes are as follows:

• Explicit exclusionary policies for migrants
• Residential and ethnic (de)segregation
• Economic aspects of housing and housing policy
• Municipal housing policies, bottom-up initiatives and governance
• Housing and internal migration in China

Our statistical analysis shows that this research field is expanding, with a few key journals leading the way. These publications often combine various types of data and methods. Notably, journals in the broader field of geography play a particularly significant role. This suggests that it’s not social sciences as a whole that dominate, but rather geographic perspectives within social science, often focusing on urban and housing studies. The strong connections between references in these areas highlight this trend.

Our thematic analysis highlights consistency in the detrimental effects of planned or unintended exclusionary policies across different geographical contexts and housing regimes. Thus, even if our review scopes across very different housing markets and regimes, gatekeeping mechanisms are present with similar consequences. The analysis underscores the conflict between individual responsibilities and societal obligations, where current policies tend to place substantial burdens on the individual. The material also conveys how local governments employ exclusionary practices as gatekeeping mechanisms, regulated by legal frameworks, disproportionately affecting future population regulation. These policies, diverging from universal welfare provisions, introduce additional hurdles for vulnerable groups, exacerbating housing challenges. A distinction between planned excluding practices and policies with such unintended effects are also evident. The analysis underscores the conflict between individual responsibilities and societal obligations, where current policies tend to place substantial burdens on the individual to find and become housed, although being aware of the limitations of the local housing options for vulnerable groups

Our analysis not only highlights the key insights from the reviewed literature but also reveals critical gaps that demand attention.

 

Discrimination Mechanisms: There is a striking lack of studies directly addressing overt discrimination based on visible attributes. When this issue is mentioned, it’s often framed as an indirect outcome of how grassroots bureaucrats interpret policies, rather than being tackled head-on.

Geographical Gaps: Research from regions like Asia (outside of China), South America, and Africa is notably scarce, leaving significant parts of the world underexplored.

Political Dimensions: The political aspects of local policymaking remain largely overlooked. For example, future studies could delve into how housing production and zoning policies shape the gatekeeping of communities. Similarly, the role of partisan motives in driving exclusionary housing policies has received little attention.

These gaps present exciting opportunities for future research to broaden the understanding of local housing policies and their impact on vulnerable groups. Addressing these issues could lead to a deeper, more comprehensive view of how gatekeeping operates across different contexts.

About the Authors:

Gustav Lidén, Associate Professor, Mid Sweden University.

Emma Holmqvist, Researcher, Uppsala University,

Joel Jacobsson, Lecturer, Mid Sweden University.

Kristoffer Jutvik, Assistant Professor, Linköping University,

Jon Nyhlén, Associate Professor, Stockholm University.

In an article published in the Nordic Journal of Migration Research, Kristoffer Jutvik and Emma Holmqvist explores the impact of residence status on well-being and stress. Migration policy in the Nordic welfare states is increasingly marked by restrictiveness. Although research has studied the consequences of this policy trend, there is limited knowledge about how it affects stress levels and the well-being of migrants. The article examines the impact of a policy change implemented in Sweden in 2016 that resulted in the swift abandonment of permanent residence. The study relies on survey data to compare differences in self-stated levels of stress and well-being among those granted permanent residence status according to the pre-2016 policy and those granted temporary residence according to the new policy. The findings indicate a significant difference in well-being between the two groups, with those granted temporary residence permits experiencing lower levels of well-being as well as more stress related to their own and their family members’ status. Importantly, the study concludes that a lower sense of well-being is correlated with higher levels of stress connected to residence status. These results have important implications for evaluating the impact of the post-2016 migration policy in Sweden and assessing similar policy trends in other contexts.

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.