This article investigates changes in the right to social assistance – a means-tested cash support programme, regulated by the Social Services Act – for irregularised migrants over a period of four decades, 1982–2022. The article makes the case that austerity policies have hollowed out the right to support, with significant repercussions for those with irregularised residency status. In doing so, it draws on a range of empirical data to shed light on the dynamics of legal change over time and across various settings, identifying both continuities and critical turning points. The latter include shifts in national or local migration policies, and novel intersections between migration law and social law, epitomised by court judgments that have redrawn the lines of inclusion and exclusion in the sphere of rights holders. The article also highlights continuous issues concerning inconsistencies in the legal sources made used of by courts, neglect of children’s interests and needs, and an application of requirements for participation in work-related activities that disadvantage migrants and citizens alike. Ultimately, the article offers insights into how social rights can be preserved in the context of increasingly restrictive migration and social policies.

Banishment concludes the keyword discussion by arguing that we can understand the exclusionary practices of welfare states as a politics of destitution, which ultimately leads to the banishment of unwanted individuals. It argues that banishment can be helpful as a conceptual lens through which to understand the purposeful strategies that render individuals deportable, whether citizens or non-citizens.

The first keyword, Welfare State, sets out to problematise the term itself. The welfare state is a national construct, a ‘national social state’ as Etienne Balibar calls it. Thus, transnational or global migration is often construed as a disruptive force, potentially destabilising the welfare state and the nation. This keyword entry critically examines common conceptions of what the welfare state should provide. It delineates some of the ways that migrants (and, more broadly foreign nationals who are not themselves necessarily migrants) are excluded or partially included, with a focus on contemporary EU social policies.

This article analyses how youth subject positions of the ‘racialized other’ are pro- duced, and how these positions interconnect with the concept of belonging to the rural community. We do this by analysing 15 group discussions with 63 young people living in rural areas in northern Sweden taking a discursive psychology approach, and focusing on how discourses produce certain subject positions of ‘the racialized other’. Drawing on the concepts of the politics of belonging and the ‘stranger’, we argue that discourses on belonging to the (rural) community create boundaries that exclude ‘other’ youth, as well as resistance and contestation. The subject positions that such discourses produce represent racialized youth in stereo- typical ways and imply a promise of belonging for certain ‘others’ based on their fulfilment of particular norms. However, such a depoliticized promise of belonging that places the responsibility for becoming integrated on the ‘others’ was also chal- lenged. Firstly, in relation to criticisms of the welfare system, and secondly, in rela- tion to racism as an unwelcome threat in rural communities.

Den här boken handlar om villkor för tjejers delaktighet och inkludering, i samhället och i idrotten. I boken följer vi en verksamhet som vi kallar Bollen, som är särskilt riktad till unga tjejer i den urbana periferin. Bollens övergripande ambition är att – genom fotboll utomhus och inomhus, så kallad futsal – skapa möjlighet för unga tjejer att delta i idrottsaktiviteter med ambitionen att tjejers deltagande i idrott i sin tur ska bidra till inkludering och jämställdhet. I boken undersöker vi hur verksamheten tar form i ett sammanhang präglat av tilltagande social och ekonomisk ojämlikhet, där det bedrivs ett arbete för att på olika vis motverka dessa ojämlikheter, i en bredare strävan efter social förändring. Boken är ett viktigt bidrag i den pågående diskussionen om hur idrotten kan vara ett svar på samhällets utmaningar, såsom tilltagande sociala klyftor och ekonomisk ojämlikhet. Och på vilket sätt idrotten kan möjliggöra deltagande och inkludering.  

In the aftermath of the so-called ‘refugee crisis’ in 2015, unaccompanied minors have been depicted as potential threats and challenges to receiving countries in the Swedish public debate. Through narratives of unaccompanied youngsters from 2011 to 2012, this article will illustrate that these youngsters were already struggling with the ambiguous refugee figures of the ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’ prior to the events of 2015. By studying their narratives, I analyse how deservingness comes into play in how they constitute themselves as subjects. In their narratives, they describe themselves as responsible, hard-working youngsters in relation to education and future working life. Moreover, their narratives also illustrate how descriptions of diligence and agency are used in order to oppose the discourse figures of unaccompanied minors as threats or victims. I conclude by suggesting that these narratives can be seen as manifestations of conditional belonging centred on deservingness, which the youngsters negotiate also after they have been granted protection.