Refugees and the Violence of Welfare Bureaucracies in Northern Europe

(Hardback)

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Refugees have moved into the spotlight of public debate in Europe and North America, where they are targeted by multiple welfare state interventions. This volume analyses the tensions that emerge within the strong welfare states of Northern Europe when faced with large migration flows from non-European countries. Examining the encounter between refugees and the welfare states, this book explores the daily strategies and experiences of newly settled groups and the role of media discourses and welfare policies in shaping those experiences. Building on both textual analyses and ethnographic fieldwork in welfare institutions, asylum centres, and refugee communities, this volume provides an in-depth understanding of the complex realities faced by refugees: deterrence and categorisation, struggle and success, mobility and stagnation. As social phenomena, Northern Europe's asylum systems and integration programmes must be understood in the context of the bureaucratisation of everyday life. -- .

Reviews

'This collection analysing the entanglements of representation, governance and risk when immigration/asylum policy meets welfare states is a significant development in migration studies. Careful empirical work and fascinating analysis exposes bureaucratic violence. A must read for those interested in all areas of state policy.'
Bridget Anderson, Professor of Migration, Mobilities and Citizenship, University of Bristol

'Illuminating the complex and contradictory ways in which Northern European states evoked their welfare systems as a rationale for, and means of, controlling, disciplining and managing the 2015 refugee crisis, this volume offers an important contribution to research on the construction of refugeeness and how this is experienced by refugees.'Karen Fog Olwig, Professor of Anthropology, University of Copenhagen

Author Bio

Dalia Abdelhady is an Associate Professor in Sociology at Lund University

Nina Gren is a Senior Lecturer in Social Anthropology at Lund University

Martin Joormann is a Postdoctoral Researcher in Sociology of Law at Lund University