Managing unlawful feelings: the emotional regime of the Swedish migration board

Abstract

How do organisations develop emotional regimes that make perfect sense to members but appear paradoxical and even morally outrageous to non-members? Exploring the case of a department for the investigation of asylum applications at the Swedish Migration Board (MB), I argue that through repeated and various types of interaction rituals, an emotional regime is enacted and sustained that provides employees with a sense of authenticity, meaning and organisational loyalty. At the department procedural correctness and the professional epitomise the emotional regime and the preferred organisational identity, including ways of acting on and managing emotions. The organisation becomes an emotionally self-enclosed system.

Who Is a Refugee? Political Subjectivity and the Categorisation of Somali Asylum Seekers in Sweden

“…The institutionalised belief of the Swedish migration authorities is that a just and democratic process of investigation is possible if only the applicants 'deliver' accordingly (Wettergren 2010). In practice, however, there are an endless number of obstacles to the ideal process of investigation, of which some will be highlighted in our analysis.…”

“…Thomas Spijkerboer (2005) also emphasises how assessors may treat details in applicant narratives as insignificant, and as a consequence of this neglect they remain undeveloped and continue to seem insignificant. Following a constructionist approach, we contend that the assessment of applications is a process of construction of the case/the applicant (cf Blommaert 2001;Wettergren 2010;Wikström 2007). Our analysis therefore strives to highlight visible mechanisms of significant/insignificant as it is applied to the applicant narratives in order to produce a desirable product, i.e.…”

‘With a Heavy Heart’: Ethics, Emotions and Rationality in Norwegian Immigration Administration

“…As a principle of justice however, 'equal treatment' has some specific limitations in the context of immigration management; differential treatment of citizens and non-citizens is a fundamental premise for migration regulations (Nash 2009) and employees in the immigration administration are conscious about the exclusionary nature of national borders: 'Immigration law is by definition a discriminatory system' (Bureaucrat 8). The injustice of border control and global inequality must be kept out of sight in order to sustain the idea of a just system (Wettergren 2010). …”

Doing gender in public services: Affective labour of employment agents

“…The new emphasis on customer‐orientation (Pollitt & Bouckaert, ) points to the rising importance of communicative, emotional and affective skills of public employment agents in ‘enacting the state’ (Hunter, ). They are encouraged to perform emotional and affective labour to support and motivate their customers, to be empathic towards citizens and at the same time monitor, discipline and sanction jobseekers if they do not obey the assigned duties (Wettergren, ).…”