This book offers insights on politics and ethics of representation that are relevant to researchers concerned with struggles for justice. It takes moments of discomfort in the qualitative research process as important sites of knowledge for exploring representational practices in critical research.

The Politics and Ethics of Representation in Qualitative Research draws on experiences from research processes in nine PhD projects. In some chapters, ethical and political dilemmas related to representational practices are analyzed as experienced in fieldwork. In others, the focus is on the production of representation at the stage of writing. The book deals with questions such as: What does it mean to write about the lives of others? How are ethics and politics of representation intertwined, and how are they distinct? How are politics of representation linked to a practice of solidarity in research? What are the im/possibilities of hope and care in research?

Drawing on grounded empirical research, the book offers input to students, PhDs, researchers, practitioners, activists and others dealing with methodological dilemmas from a critical perspective. Instead of ignoring discomforts, or describing them as solved, we stay with them, showing how such a reflective process provides new, ongoing insights.

In the wake of the increased number of people on the move who arrived in Sweden in 2015, more restrictive migration policies and welfare policies have been introduced and become increasingly intertwined. In this article, we examine the intersection between local housing policy and national migration policy. By looking at the implementation of a new law, the Settlement Act, which makes reception and accommodation of newly settled refugees mandatory for all municipalities in Sweden, we analyse municipal practices of mobility control, emphasising the waiting produced through the provision of temporary housing. Based on interviews, policy documents, reports and news media reporting, we analyse how two municipalities regulate conditions of stay through temporary access to housing and poor living conditions. Such practices involve processes of waiting and produce long periods of uncertainty, preventing migrants from being able to plan a future. This eventually affects the possibility for family reunification and permanent residency, which is conditioned by requirements such as stable housing and employment.

This article explores four Swedish municipalities which have reacted differently to legislation aiming to regulate a 'fair and equal' distribution of refugees: from barefaced rejection to the advocacy of refugee settlement as an investment in future citizens. Interviews with people who work with settlement show that housing is made central in different municipal strategies and creates an unequal landscape of evictability for refugees depending on where they are placed. Temporary and conditional residence permits for refugees, which have been made standard in this time of temporary legality, are simultaneously dependent on settlement strategies in municipalities: housing and access to jobs determine whether you can stay or stay with your family. This deportability of refugees is what is at stake. Yet access to housing is continuously treated as a mundane 'service': both in the categorical denial of housing and in the evaluation of what can qualify refugees to deserve settlement.

This panel session is based on chapters from the upcoming anthology ”The politics and ethics of representation: Moments of discomfort” (Routledge, forthcoming). The qualitative research process is often filled with moments of discomfort. These can appear during all stages of the research: when choosing the subject of your research, during fieldwork, in the process of analysis and when presenting research findings to different audiences. We take these moments of discomfort seriously and use them productively as a starting point for reflections on the politics and ethics of the research process. Starting from our experiences in carrying out eight different research projects as PhD-fellows, we analyse moments of discomfort as sites of knowledge production that help us gain important analytical insights into methodological, theoretical, ethical and political issues that are crucial for the fields in which we engage. We argue that moments of discomfort relate to an anxiety of representation. Hence, the main questions that we address during the panel session are: How can we create an ethical representation of those with whom our research is concerned? What can be said or not in certain contexts? What are the tensions between aims of what we wish to represent and how this representation is understood by different audiences in specific contexts? The chapters presented during the panel session correspond to three areas that are crucial for issues of ethics and politics: (1) writing and naming; (2) power and silences; (3) stories and audiences. The session addresses different issues such as the practices of anonymisation, acts of rejection in relation to informed consent, silences in the fieldwork and in relation to representation, and considerations of representing stories from the field for different audiences.

Hela Malmös frukostprogram bryter normer i kampen mot fattigdom och målet är att skifta perspektiv: Från välgörenhet till politiskt inflytande. Vi bad Mikael Mery Karlsson och Vanna Nordling, forskare vid Malmö Universitet, skriva om hur civilsamhället skapar utrymme för människor att leva tillsammans.

The chapter focuses on ethics and politics of representation in a PhD project on Swedish social workers giving support to undocumented migrants. It discusses the balancing act of representing social workers as complex actors, neither ‘doing good’ nor only being repressive. In a Swedish context, social workers are often associated with neutrality and a supposedly ‘good’ welfare state. The analytical choices made when representing the individual social workers in the analysis, and especially the decision to present the research participants using their professional titles, might have added to the idea of the ‘neutral social worker’. However, this also facilitated reflection on institutional conditions and the limits set by ideas of ‘professionalism’. The ambivalent relation between social work and activist ideals of social transformation was also highlighted through the analytical framework, which focused on practices. The chapter identifies a tension between social transformation and everyday practice that often was difficult to communicate to some audiences. It is argued that the methodological dilemmas and the tensions in terms of representations and varying expectations from different audiences actually were fundamental for bringing the analysis forward.

Parenting after forced migration carries specific challenges, especially during the first years – difficulties and trauma related to migration, adjusting to a new language, new norms and expectations, and leading a transnational life. This presentation is based on a literature review, with the aim to gather and synthesise existing research concerning the conditions for and experiences of parenthood among newly arrived forced migrants. Searches were conducted in Pubmed, Sociology collection and PsychInfo. In total, 27 articles were included. The result is reported as themes categorized as strengths and challenges for newly arrived parents. Themes under the category strengths are: health and social service, new possibilities, establishing oneself, and networks and family. In the category challenges are found: health, establishing oneself, socioeconomic status, and social networks and relationships. The importance of accurate information about, and access to, health care and social service where the specific situation of this group is taken into account was stressed. New possibilities relating to education and living in peace and freedom may arise from seeking refuge in a new country. However, many newly arrived parents have poor socioeconomic status. Worries relating to the migration process and residence status may make parenting more difficult. Family life and social networks are stressed as important factors for parenting. Supporting parents who have recently fled must involve both practical support, information and help with orientation in the new society, alongside established parental support programmes.

In this article, we bring attention to the local-level administration of social services as a site of bordering. Specifically, we focus on the provision of social assistance (i.e. a means-tested cash support program, ekonomiskt bistånd) for irregularised migrants. Based on a close comparative reading of the City of Malmö’s 2013 and 2017 guidelines on social assistance, we analyse how entitlements to social assistance have been redefined and restricted following the 2015 so-called refugee crisis and the subsequent overhaul of Swedish asylum policy. Prior to this ‘crisis’, in 2013, the City of Malmö became the first Swedish municipality to extend access to social assistance to irregularised migrants. In 2017, the guidelines were revised with the expressed aim to discourage irregularised migrants from remaining in the country. We see this as a shift from a needs-based approach to one that, instead, sees social policy as subordinate to the goals of immigration enforcement. Further, we conceptualize this as a shift towards a type of indirect internalized bordering measure that so far has received relatively little scholarly attention in the Nordic context, namely self deportation measures that aim to deter immigration and encourage ‘voluntary return’ by restricting access to public services and welfare benefits for (irregularised) migrants. Finally, we argue that the overall specialization, juridification and standardization of social service provision supports the shift in question, providing a convenient justification for restricting entitlements to irregularised migrants. 

Responding to asylum seekers’ relocation from Sweden to France, migrant solidarity groups have started to share resources and information relevant to the process of deciding about and going through with the journey, and, on arrival in Paris, providing advice on how to make it through sleeping rough and the asylum process in France. The relocation of Afghan asylum seekers to France, has gained a specific form of visibility and presence, in media and in migration rights networks, that we claim has placed the route on the Swedish landscape of migration and border debate. The purpose of this article is to develop the conceptual discussions of mobile commons through an analysis of the networks of and around ‘Swedish Afghans in Paris’. The article explores the ways in which national bordering scapes are both reinscribed, expanded and destabilized by migrant networks and claims. Further, we analyze the phenomenon of ‘Swedish Afghans in Paris’ with attention to the tensions and contradictions in regard to the politics of belonging and mobile commons. The phenomenon of Swedish Afghans in Paris forms a productive starting point for analyzing the conditions of commoning in the context of the Swedish bordering scape; of the ways in which belonging and nationality are claimed in complex and shifting ways; and of the ways in which these commons bridge different places transnationally. The article contributes to scholarly discussions on migrant struggles by developing a nuanced understanding of mobile commons as contestations and entanglements of bordering and claims to national belonging. Thus, we emphasize the ambivalent elements of mobile commoning.