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ABSTRACT The dominant narrative on equity, diversity, and inclusion in U.S. medical research emphasises the underrepresentation of Black and Hispanic participants in clinical trials, largely based on therapeutic phase 2 and 3 trials. Far less attention has been paid to phase 1 trials—particularly those involving healthy volunteers who assume health risks without therapeutic benefit, often for money. Focusing on inequalities in the distribution of research participation, risks, and potential benefits, this study analyses secondary data from 429 U.S. industry-involved phase 1 trials with 18,217 participants registered on ClinicalTrials.gov between January 2018 and October 2024. We examined trial-level demographics—race, ethnicity, sex—by phase 1 trial type and U.S. geographic region, comparing enrolment with U.S. Census estimates. Quasi-binomial regression models were used to identify trial-level factors associated with enrolment patterns. Black and Hispanic individuals were overrepresented in healthy-volunteer trials by 14 and 16 percentage points, but underrepresented in oncology trials by 7 and 8 percentage points. Overrepresentation in healthy-volunteer trials was especially pronounced for Hispanic participants in the U.S. West and South and for Black participants in the Northeast and Midwest. Female participants were underrepresented, except in non-oncology disease trials. We found a strong association between higher male and Black participation but not Hispanic participation. These findings highlight intersecting race, ethnicity, and gender inequalities in the distribution of research risks and rewards. Promoting equity in medical research requires moving beyond one-dimensional underrepresentation narratives to address the structural inequalities shaping racialised and gendered patterns of inclusion and exclusion across clinical trial phases, types, and locations. 

List of Experts – Migration, Integration, Ethnicity, etc.

Sweden’s migration and integration policies are currently undergoing major changes that have implications for society as a whole. At REMESO, journalists can find researchers who can comment on, analyze, and provide perspectives on these developments and the public debate.

Aleksandra Ålund is a professor emerita specializing in social movements for the social and cultural rights of migrants and “post-migrants.” She has studied multicultural suburban areas in Sweden, as well as how migrants and human rights activists collaborate across national borders to influence national and international organizations and UN conventions on the rights of migrants and refugees.
Contact: 011-36 32 32, aleksandra.alund@liu.se

Anna Bredström is an associate professor of ethnicity and migration. Her research focuses on medicine, health, and healthcare. She studies topics such as post-COVID, racism in healthcare, health inequalities, youth sexual health, and how race and ethnicity categories are used in medical knowledge production and biometric technology.
Contact: 011-36 32 42, anna.bredstrom@liu.se

Stefan Jonsson is a professor and department head at REMESO, with expertise in migration, asylum law, nationalism, discrimination, and integration from a historical perspective. He also conducts research on the legacy of colonialism and imperialism in today’s world and on how migration and diversity are expressed culturally and artistically.
Contact: 011-36 36 30, stefan.jonsson@liu.se

Kristoffer Jutvik is a senior lecturer with expertise in inclusion, mobility and asylum. His research focuses primarily on changes in Swedish migration policy and its impact on society and individuals, as well as political participation among people with a refugee background.
Contact: 011-363422, kristoffer.jutvik@liu.se

Karin Krifors is a senior lecturer in ethnicity and migration, specializing in the conditions of temporary migrant workers, digital migration systems, and new technologies in the management of asylum and immigration within the EU. Karin also conducts research on anti-racism, migrant social movements, and local integration networks—particularly in smaller cities and rural areas.
Contact: 011-36 33 33, karin.krifors@liu.se

Catrin Lundström is an associate professor who writes about Swedishness and whiteness and can comment on issues related to gender, race, privilege, migration, and intersectionality. She is also co-author of the book *White Melancholy: An Analysis of a Nation in Crisis*, which examines Sweden’s modern history of whiteness with a focus on the welfare state and the role of the Sweden Democrats in this context.
Contact: 011-36 34 35, catrin.lundstrom@liu.se.

Anders Neergaard is a professor and director of REMESO with expertise in trade unions, migrant workers, foreign-born individuals, ethnicity, and discrimination. He can comment on, among other things, the restrictive development of migration and integration policies since 2016, as well as the Sweden Democrats and the Tidö Agreement.
Contact: 011-36 32 18, anders.neergaard@liu.se

Olav Nygård is a senior lecturer and conducts research on inequality in education, segregated schools, and foreign-born youth in rural areas.
Contact: 011-36 36 67, olav.nygard@liu.se

Carl-Ulrik Schierup, professor emeritus, combines critical political economy with sociology and cultural studies on migration, precarious work, stratified citizenship, ethnicity, racism, and nationalism. His current research focuses on anti-racist commons in Swedish cities, as well as global social movements for the rights of migrants and ethnic minorities.
Contact: 011-36 32 28, carl-ulrik.schierup@liu.se

Claudia Tazreiter is Professor of sociology at REMESO. Her research focuses on marginalised populations, belonging, identity and new formations of sociality. She has worked and researched in the Asia-Pacific, the Middle East and Europe. She is interested in the role researchers play in social transformation and the ways knowledge is produced within and outside institutions of learning. Claudia also works with scholars and students at risk and the associated topic of academic freedom and its links to freedom of speech.
Contact: 011-36 36 78, claudia.tazreiter@liu.se

At the beginning of November 2022, the Swedish Transport Workers’ Union (hereafter referred to as Transport) lost a legal battle as the Swedish court decided that it is illegal to exclude politically active Sweden Democrats from union membership (Frisk, 2022). A representative of the Sweden Democrats (SD) appears happy and content on the TV screen and claims that no one is to be excluded because of political affiliation. The union’s role is to represent workers, continues the SD representative (SVT, 2022). Transport’s argument for exclusion was based on the SD not accepting its fundamental values concerning the equal value of all people. Transport also argued that freedom of association gives unions, as well as other civil society organisations, the right to choose who can be members. The legal battle also highlights one of the many forms of resistance that LO and its unions have employed through more than thirty years of organised racist successes, which is to confront a party that is perceived by many as a threat to democracy. Transport’s attempt to prevent the presence of SD activists in the union reflects the continuous, sometimes successful and occasionally courageous work that trade union activists, some women and/or racialised people have done and do to maintain and develop a socially critical ideology and practice for social justice, in which issues of feminism and more recently anti-racism have to some extent become visible.

This conflict illustrates an aspect of the dilemma faced by Swedish trade unions today, with more than 20 percent of the population voting for the ethno-racist party the SD in 2022. Regarding LO members, 27 percent voted for the SD in 2022, an increase from 24 percent in 2018 (the corresponding figure for those who identified as workers and voted for the SD was 29 percent in 2022 and 24 percent in 2018).¹ The SD, which despite normalisation, as most clearly expressed in the Tidö Agreement,² from its Nazi and racist roots, sometimes ideologically and politically exhibits an explicitly racist (and, according to some, proto-fascist) worldview. In it, migrants are to blame for virtually all of Sweden’s problems, with support from a “culturally Marxist” establishment (Thorén, 2015, p. 33, citing Jonsson, 2015). At the same time, the SD’s parliamentary voting record and cooperation with traditional right-wing parties show how the party has in practice increasingly abandoned its care-racist welfare policies, maintained its ethno-racism (the construction of racism through a combination of ethnicisation and racialisation) and embraced (though not fully) more and more neoliberal economic policies (Mulinari & Neergaard, 2022).

This chapter has two central aims. First, we argue for the relevance of racial capitalism in the studies of the Swedish model in general and trade unions (TUs) specifically. Second, in doing so, we argue that racial capitalism could be captured in three different but connected dimensions: within the national state, human mobility and the border of the national state, and North–South trade of commodities and foreign direct investment. We explore these three dimensions through exemplifications from Swedish TU movement discourses, capturing both blue- and white-collar TU s and TU confederations (TUC s). One way of expanding the analyses of racism in the Swedish context, is by exploring how labour intersect with Sweden without the confinements of methodological nationalism (Anderson, 2019; Sager, 2016). In this chapter, we approach one aspect of this: the discourses of TU s and TUC s through the lens of racial capitalism. While this perspective is attracting considerable interest these days (Ali & Whitham, 2021; Bhattacharyya, 2018; Gilmore, 2021; Robinson, 2000; Taiwo et al., 2021; Vickers, 2021), it is almost invisible both in the analyses of TU discourse and, more specifically, of Swedish labour market relations. To some extent, this latter absence is linked to the idea of Swedish exceptionalism (McEachrane, 2014; Palmberg, 2009; Schierup et al., 2022), which, among other points, argues that Sweden has been outside both colonialism and imperialism and that race and racism are external to labour market relations. The Swedish model of industrial relations has been highly influenced by the ideas of Swedish exceptionalism and has generally been analysed as autonomous and isolated from global relations of power (Johansson, 2008; Mulinari & Neergaard, 2022; Sjölander, 2005; see also chapters 1 and 11 in this volume).

A concept increasingly used in analysing the intersection between class, race, and gender is racial capitalism. While rooted in Marxist debates in and about South Africa’s apartheid regime (Levenson & Paret, 2023), it is Cedric Robinson’s Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition (1983) that, through critical dialogue with several social justice movements, has become the general reference point today.

We bring racial capitalism to bear on the archetype of welfare capitalism – the Swedish model, referred to as the ‘Nordic Model’. We do this with the aim of qualifying and challenging some institutionalised understandings of welfare capitalism represented by Sweden and, to a lesser extent, Finland – two welfare states with small populations in the northern peripheries of the Global North.

This edited volume explores the relevance of the concept of racial capitalism in analysing ‘Nordic exceptionalism’ (Keskinen et al., 2009; Loftsdóttir & Jensen, 2012) in general and, more specifically, for an analysis of the Swedish model (Ålund et al., 2017; Ålund & Schierup, 1991). In the last decade, there has been an upsurge in research, spurred by the republication of Robinson’s (1983) book in 2000 and 2020. Much of this work, however, has had a strong Anglo-US inflection. Few studies have focused on continental Europe or the Nordic region. In this edited volume, the focus is on theoretically inspired and empirically grounded analyses of Sweden in the Nordic context, exploring the Swedish capitalist welfare model from a perspective that places processes of racialisation and racial regimes at centre stage.

The anthology brings racial capitalism to bear on the archetype of welfare capitalism – the Swedish model, referred to as the ‘Nordic Model’. We do this with the aim of qualifying and challenging some institutionalised understandings of welfare capitalism represented by Sweden and, to a lesser extent, Finland. Few studies have focused on continental Europe or the Nordic region. In this edited volume, the focus is on theoretically inspired and empirically grounded analyses of Sweden in the Nordic context, exploring the Swedish capitalist welfare model from a perspective that places processes of racialisation and racial regimes at centre stage.

In the recently published open access volume “A New Wave of Anti-Racism in Europe? Racialized Minorities at the Centre” edited by Ilke Adam, Jean Beaman & Mariska Jung, Diana Mulinari and Anders Neergaard contribute a chapter reflecting on the continuities in counter-hegemonic struggles for racial justice in Sweden . They focus  on the continuity of different forms of silencing subaltern anti-racist struggles. Mulinari and Neergaard point to the presence of racialized minorities as not belonging to the Swedish nation in three critical events of Swedish anti-racism, and highlight how their presence and anti-racist frames were silenced in media and scholarly research or by mainstream anti-racist organizations in all three instances. They moreover illustrate the important highlighting of powerful forces “the magic”, seemingly beyond rationality, that supported, inspired and protected them in their engagement in the anti-racist struggles. The authors use the concepts of “ghosts”, by Avery Gordon (2008), referring to the ancestors in the anti-racist struggles to illustrate and better understand this form of continuity in anti-racist activism.

This study aims to examine how post Covid-19 condition as a diagnosis is viewed and interpreted by Swedish stakeholders, showing how these understandings carry a range of epistemological tensions. The study also seeks to understand the implications of these epistemological tensions for treatment and care organisation.

The study draws upon qualitative interviews with 36 experts and key individuals in Sweden have been conducted. The experts agree that post Covid-19 condition is a complex syndrome and that persons who suffer are in need of care. However, several tensions in post Covid-19 condition as a diagnosis can be discerned. Most experts agreed on the gender and racial disparity where white women with Swedish background were a majority of post Covid-19 sufferers, while migrant patients and the elderly are largely absent. In relation to social categories, the question if children can have post Covid-19 condition is here a highly contested question. There is also disagreement on the aetiology of post Covid-19 condition, with some experts viewing it as a new, unique condition requiring specialised treatment, while others see it as similar to other post-viral conditions, treatable in primary care.

This article examines how the U.S. ‘inclusion-and-difference paradigm’ translates to the Swedish context. According to Steven Epstein (2007), this paradigm combines health equity arguments for racialised minorities and women with a biological understanding of racial and gender differences in medicine. Drawing on interviews with experts, policymakers, and clinicians involved in international clinical trials in Sweden, we argue that critical elements of the U.S. paradigm – notably the ‘categorical alignment’ of race-and-ethnicity taxonomies between the social worlds of medicine, government bureaucracy, and political discourse – are absent in Sweden and, more generally, Europe. Consequently, there is no coherent framework for interpreting the existing ‘niche standardisation’ of certain medicines based on race and ethnicity, such as racialised treatment recommendations. In conclusion, we discuss possible future scenarios and highlight a recent collaboration between the pharmaceutical industry and EU institutions. Despite the challenging context, this collaboration aims to establish a European standard for race and ethnicity data in clinical trials. However, we argue that such attempts warrant caution: with racism being so widespread in contemporary Europe, emphasising racial differences in medicine may unintentionally reinscribe harmful notions of race.

The fall of 2022, with the election success of a coalition of right wing and ethnoracist parties marks the transition from a racialized to a racist state in Sweden. We analyse the discourses of three welfare projects in Swedish racial capitalism, Keynesian, Neoliberal and ethnoracist, in relation to safety/security.

Methodologically, we use CDA analysing elite institutional texts (party documents, government, and media texts), supplemented with references to previous research, thereby linking and comparing historical and modern discourses.

Departing from Althusser’s distinction between repressive and ideological state apparatuses, we demonstrate how a re-interpellation of welfare has shifted focus to repression, targeting the racialized other. The discursive combination and word associations used, while avoiding the category of “race,” create a vernacular of racism without race.

Recognizing the structure of Sweden’s racial capitalism as fluid and complex, the migrant “other” has become the shorthand for racialization in popular and academic vernacular, while the Muslim other becomes the nucleus of threat. It foregrounds the racialized “others” as an ethno-biological category and shifts the discourse and policy toward securitization, signifying a discourse that purports the impossibility of social inclusion.

In the last decades, the term digital sovereignty, together with technological sovereignty and strategic autonomy, has become common vocabulary within the EU. While originating in discussions about global computation and the erosion of national sovereignty, the discourses underpinning the use of digital sovereignty resonate with earlier colonial notions of ‘rescuing Europe’ and the ‘balance of powers’ recurring throughout the history of European integration. The discussions about EU digital sovereignty and its infrastructuring remind us of the EU’s colonial past by re-inserting so-called European values into the expansion of digital infrastructures in Europe and beyond. While the literature studying the emergence of European digital sovereignty showcases how the use of the term underlines and confirms a geopolitical turn within the EU, it has not yet discussed its historical colonial connections. This article demonstrates, first, that the sociotechnical imaginaries attached to the infrastructuring of the EU’s digital sovereignty re-actualise an earlier nexus between the European integration project and colonial extractive infrastructures predating the creation of the EU. Second, with the case of the Global Gateway, this article shows how this nexus gains new life through the infrastructuring of digital sovereignty, again unfolding in the Global South.

This article explores how race and processes of racialization – as social, cultural and historical constructs – manifest within the global football industry, focusing on Ghanaian migrant players in Sweden. Based on ethnographic fieldwork, it examines how racialization is practiced, negotiated and reproduced through the experiences of Ghanaian footballers, the discourses of those working with them and portrayals in the media. In contrast to official narratives of diversity and equality, the article shows how saviorism, everyday racism, racialized athletic notions, commodification, and racist abuse persist on and off the pitch. These narratives are circulated by Swedish actors, Ghanaian representatives and sometimes the players themselves, who view racism as normal. They respond by ignoring it, laughing it off or focusing on the game – strategies that reveal an awareness of being observed – while acknowledging its harm. Protest is rarely an option when careers and livelihoods are at stake. Indeed, subordination is both a precondition and a shaping force of their international careers.

Lindberg, E. (2025). Race on and off the field: Ghanaian footballers in Sweden. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 1–20. https://doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2025.2524026

This open access book creates conceptual links between political emotions, citizenship, home and belonging. The book describes that, in the case of decided return and reintegration to a post-conflict society and a fragmented state, like Bosnia and Herzegovina, the returnees do not conceptualize the emotional dimension of their BiH citizenship as home and belonging as this citizenship does not make them feel safe and secure. Instead, “feeling at home” is found in family, place and time, while belonging is categorized as ethnic, religious, relational, landscape, linguistic, and economic. The emotional dimension of the home state citizenship is constituted through a wide spectrum of emotions, ranging from anger, frustration, fear, guilt, shame, disappointment, nostalgia, powerlessness, to patriotic love, pride, defiance, joy, happiness and hope. This book provides a valuable resource to students and scholars of migration and diaspora studies, as well as political scientists, human geographers and anthropologists

A group of LiU PhD candidates took part in a research exchange programme in Vienna. The programme is an interdisciplinary collaboration in philosophy, sociology, and migration studies, that strengthens academic ties between  Austria and Sweden and contributes to innovative research.

The Research Exchange Program for PhD Candidates Austria – Sweden 2025, is a collaborative effort organised by Professor Claudia Tazreiter at LiU and Professor Dr. Marina Gržinić from the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna.

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. 

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.

We are happy to announce the presentation and discussion of two topical volumes on migration and racism, border regimes, and politics of solidarity co-organised by DEMOS, Aalborg University, and REMESO, Linköping University:

Contending Global Apartheid: Transversal Solidarities and Politics of Solidarity, edited by Martin Bak Jørgensen & Carl-Ulrik Schierup, Haymarket 2023

The Crisis Mobility Nexus, edited by Leandros Fischer, Palgrave Macmillan 2024.

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Filmed Seminar, Migration Policy Institute, European University Institute, Florence

The seminar discussed the merits of Modern Monetary Theory, showing how it offers a realistic approach to migration. Speaker: Peo Hansen (Linköping University). Chair: Stephanie Acker (Migration Policy Centre (MPC) of the EUI’s Robert Schuman Centre).

My book note about How migration really works by Hein De Haas for the Journal of Peace Research.

A blogpost introducing the Horizon Europe Project at REMESO. The project MORE critically examines policies on return and readmission and attempts to develop viable alternatives, across eight EU member states, the UK, and at the EU level.

Panel, Neutrality Studies, Chaired by Pascal Lottaz , Kyoto University, Faculty of Law.
“Since Sweden and Finland decided to join NATO, there is an unprecedented militarization going on all over the Scandinavian countries with the most insane political developments taking place in Sweden that is now selling out some of its sovereign territory to the US military. This use of the Nordic countries for NATO purposes and geared against Russia is unprecedented in either the 20th or 19 centuries. To discuss what this means I have got with me three fantastic experts: Two from the region and one fellow neutrality researcher. From Sweden we are joined by Professor Peo Hansen, from Linköping University. From Finland we’ve got Dr. Tapio Juntunen from Tampere University And finally we are very delighted to be joined by Ambassador Nasir Andisha, who is Afghanistan’s Ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, and also the author of “Neutrality and Vulnerable States – An Analysis of Afghanistan’s Permanent Neutrality”

In this article, Bojanic, Jonsson, Neergaard and Sauer present a synthetic overview of the five country cases included in the special issue that analyse the emergence of cultures of rejection since 2015. In general, they discuss the conceptual framework of ‘Cultures of Rejection’, elaborated throughout the issue as a more encompassing approach that is sensitive to the values, norms and affects that underlie different or similar patterns of exclusion and rejection in different contexts. These cultures are located in the everyday lives of people. The article, therefore, first identifies contexts, objects of rejection­—often migrants and racialized Others, but also ‘the political’ or state institutions—narratives and components of cultures of rejection that we label reflexivity, affect, nostalgia and moralistic judgement. The contrasting reading of the five cases shows that people struggle for agency under precarious and insecure conditions, and fight against imagined enemies. As Bojanić, Jonsson, Neergaard and Sauer conclude, cultures of rejection mirror ongoing processes of neoliberal dispossession, authoritarization and depolitization that culminate in a wish for agency and resovereignization. Second, and based on this overview, trends in cultures of rejection are detected against different national contexts as well as against common trends of social and economic transformations and crises, such as, for instance, the COVID-19 pandemic. This results, finally, in a discussion of ways of challenging the cultures of rejection towards more democratic and solidaristic societies. One starting point might be the ‘re-embedding’ of the economy in society, that is, a more equal distribution of resources and future perspectives.

While many countries were locking down due to the spread of COVID-19, Sweden remained open with few restrictions, as authorities relied predominantly on a civil sense of responsibility and collective compliance with government recommendations. Drawing on interviews conducted with workers in retail and logistics in 2020–21, ethnographic work in digital environments as well as in public spaces and demonstrations, this article analyses discourses of everyday life and discourses of rejection, exploring how rejections were shaped in reaction to how the government and the Public Health Agency of Sweden handled the pandemic. Ortega Soto’s article uses the concept of cultures of rejection—emphasizing a complex compound of values, norms and affects that reject different phenomena in different contexts—to analyse how working and living conditions, political opinions, social views and media habits informed workers’ disagreements with and reactions to the official handling of the pandemic, as well as how this may have led to a growing loss of trust in government. Ortega Soto further investigates how the expression of cultures of rejection differs across generations by looking closely into the ways that nostalgia and a sense of loss enhance such responses among various social groups. The article contributes to a wider understanding of the political shifts and cultural changes that were manifested in the context of the pandemic in Sweden.

This chapter contributes to the growing literature on external voting, viewed as a transnational practice of external citizenship. Our chapter adds to the debates on the legitimacy of the right to vote without residing on the national territory by focusing on the case of Bosnia and Herzegovina, a post-conflict society with a large, mainly conflict-generated diaspora. The case of Bosnia and Herzegovinian external voting is particularly interesting, because of a large disparity between its normative intention of reversing the political effects of ethnic cleansing and its actual implementation. The question we aim to answer is whether external voting in Bosnia and Herzegovina lives up to its normative claim. To explore this question, we conduct legal analysis of Annex VII and Annex III of the Dayton Peace Agreement, which respectively provide the constitutional basis for physical and “political” return. We next turn to legal analysis of the BiH Election Law and BiH Law on Residence to show how both these laws have moved away from the original intention of the Dayton Peace Agreement (DPA) the de facto acceptance of postwar permanent residence as the main basis for all voter registration, including external voting registration. Finally, we attempt to evaluate the normative claim within the DPA, the promise of external voting allowing for “political return” through the reversal of the political effects of ethnic cleansing. To evaluate this claim we present a brief historical overview of postwar elections in BiH, describe some notable initiatives for mobilizing the diaspora vote such as “Glasaću za Srebrenicu” (I will vote for Srebrenica), “Prvi mart” (March First), and “Moja adresa Srebrenica” (My address is in Srebrenica), and discuss some illustrative examples from the 2018 general and 2020 local elections, which could potentially be indicative of trends within BiH external voting.

The EU is often presented as a “peace project” that emerged in opposition to nationalism, war and the turbulence of geopolitics. Peo Hansen argues that while this narrative continues to shape perceptions today, it overlooks the role that geopolitical concerns have always played in the integration process.

The post-racial discourse that permeates many Western European countries depicts society as having moved beyond race concepts and classifications. This article focuses on Sweden, a country that, in line with the post-racial thinking, declares race to be an offensive and unscientific concept. The article investigates what happens when this post-racial discourse meets clinical research standards that encourage, if not demand, the collection of data on patient race. Through an analysis of the reporting of patient race in 76 multinational trials with at least one study site in Sweden, and a review of the regulatory and medical standards and trial documents that direct the collection of patient race in trials, we show how race classification is kept intact in trials despite conflicting with post-racial norms and conventions. Notably, our findings diverge from the way racialisation is typically assumed to work in Sweden and related countries. We argue this is possible because the two incompatible understandings of race are distributed (Mol, 2002, The body multiple: Ontology in medical practice, Duke University Press) among different social worlds. The distribution, we propose, is upheld through the paucity of major debate on why and how race classification should be carried out in clinical trials in Europe as this allows contradictions to remain unspoken.

Less than a year ago, a curious incident caught the attention of a nurse working inhealth education in Sweden. The nurse noticed that in several parts of thecountry, regional health policy recommended that anaesthetic plasters be leftin place longer for children with dark skin. The policy stated that“coloured chil-dren need 1.5-2 hours to take effect”, whereas white children only needed anhour. The nurse was appalled. She knew that the idea that dark-skinned patientsexperienced pain differently was a stereotype dating back to slavery, when blackbodies were considered more resistant to pain and therefore less in need of pain-killers during the many painful medical experiments that took place at the time.She decides to look into the matter and discovers that it was indeed a commonpractice to leave plasters on longer if the child was considered non-white. In thelate autumn of 2022, the media broke the story. Reactions were strong: Parentsrecounted their experiences of long hospital waits, and health workers admittedthat they had never questioned what they believed to be an evidence-based rec-ommendation. Shortly after the story broke, the policy was changed. Today, thestandard recommendation is one hour for all children, regardless of colour

In public discourse, the social inclusion of migrants is often regarded as a challenge demanding migrants to increase their engagement in adapting to the new host country. Such imaginaries commonly declare migrants as being unwilling to acquire language skills and specific cultural values. In parallel, formal education is often proposed as the single most important remedy to inclusion, which generally solely implies labor market participation. However, there is a range of other, often neglected, practices that migrants themselves regard as important for their social inclusion in society. This article aims to analyze what practices are assigned meaning by newly arrived migrants in Sweden on their path toward social inclusion in the country. This is a longitudinal interview study with 19 newly arrived adult migrants that were interviewed on two occasions, three years apart. Drawing on a sociocultural perspective, we understand social inclusion as an ongoing process by which individuals become members of different communities. The result shows that important for social inclusion is access to valuable relationships and close social ties. These relations are important in all communities in which the migrants participate. The analysis illustrates three different communities, outside of formal education and employment, that migrants ascribe meaning to concerning language learning and social inclusion. These communities are sports, internships, and civil society engagements. Through its longitudinal design, this study also illustrates how migrants’ narratives and their meanings shift with time and how migrants relate to these

The chapter argues for the usefulness of the concept ‘racial formation’ for analyses that seek to grasp both historical continuity and change, to combine structural analysis with that of human agency, and to connect the process of racialisation with multiple inequalities. In their view, the concept also provides a way to think through the challenges of knowledge production for purposes of social justice, embedded in a tradition of intellectual activism. Using Sweden as a case study, Mulinari and Neergaard explore the role of silence, denial and forgetting of imperialism, colonialism and racism in mainstream Swedish academia and society. They further identify the central contribution of the concept ‘racial formation’ and elaborate it with the help of post-colonial feminist/queer scholarship. The chapter ends with an examination of how the Swedish racial classification system is constructed and changed; by which institutions; and through which discourses, social struggles and key actors.

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