In 2015, Sweden introduced inner border control. Five years later, the 'temporary' controls remain. Their increasing permanence raises urgent questions about the logics that undergird the exercise of biopolitical border security and the relationship between intent and practices on the ground. Drawing on in-depth interviews with Swedish border guards and fieldwork conducted at Hyllie Station-the first station en route from Denmark-this article contributes original ethnographic research on the sparsely researched Swedish border control and the work routines of Swedish border professionals. The central theoretical contribution of the article is the consideration of how discretion and a range of mundane factors complicate the realisation of biopolitics. The article further contributes to the scholarship on everyday bordering practices with methodological reflections on the importance of studying the 'unspectacular' border sites and a firm reminder that not all borders have turned into semi-automated, smart data borders. Overall, the article argues that the border control at Hyllie functions according to a 'leaky' (Marr 2012: 84) biopolitics; not a monolithic performance of overarching state objectives, but one assembled ad hoc, constrained by resource availability and shaped by the discretion exercised by border officers.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.