Resisting social death with dignity. The strategy of re-escaping among young asylum-seekers in the wake of Sweden’s sharpened asylum laws

Elsrud, Torun

doi:10.1080/13691457.2020.1719476

Cited by 27 publications

(46 citation statements)

References 29 publications

(32 reference statements)

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“…Participants described how a loss of hope led them to attempt suicide, indicating that experiencing hope is essential for survival. At other times, hope has worked as an emotional crutch to support them through seemingly hopeless waiting or give them the energy to embark on a continuous escape (Elsrud, 2020;Elsrud and Lalander, 2022). Hoping for a political change has also led participants to join organisations and mobilise to protest against asylum law restrictions and for asylum rights.…”

Section: Hope and Governmentality In The Asylum Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Thus, we argue that controlling people's time and emotions (for example, hope and despair) is an efficient technology of governmentality, intending to create docile bodies. Although hope can be used to manage the present through fighting for a possible future, relying on hope as the fuel for realising a certain future can also create a 'stuckedness' (Hage, 2009;Kleist and Thorsen, 2017;Elsrud, 2020). Stuckedness is a situation of waiting and getting nowhere while anticipating and hoping for a better future.…”

Section: Hope and Governmentality In The Asylum Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Governing through hope: an exploration of hope and social change in an asylum context

Herz

Lalander

Elsrud

2022

Emotions and Society

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The aim of this article is to elaborate, theoretically, on the ambiguity of hope and its relation to social change in the asylum context. This ambiguity involves two different perspectives of hope. One more mundane view of hope where it is considered an emotion used to overcome complex issues and move towards a better situation in the future. A perspective often used by social and migration authorities to urge people to hope for a future should they submit to the authorities’ logic. The other perspective, more common in some research, challenges such positive connotations and argues that hope can put people in a position of suffering where hope may hinder or slow down the realisation of social change. With the aid of scholars who have theorised about hope and ethnographic cases from our research on hope in the asylum context, we develop a theoretical perspective on hope and social change. Our perspective includes concepts such as the governmentality of hope, fragmentation of hope and glimmers of hope. To grasp the relationship between hope and social change, we must account for several mixed emotions, such as feelings of despair, fear and bitterness, as well as glimmers of hope. Such mixtures of emotions may be essential to initiate and create social change. A central argument in this article is that an analysis of hope when people risk being governed by hope would benefit from a parallel analysis of social change.

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Section: Hope and Governmentality In The Asylum Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Hope and Governmentality In The Asylum Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

Governing through hope: an exploration of hope and social change in an asylum context

Herz

Lalander

Elsrud

2022

Emotions and Society

Self Cite

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“…A significant part of our interaction with the young individuals took place during periods of stressful waiting for authority decisions that have a crucial impact on their lives and future. Some of the participants have felt it necessary to set out on a continuous escape and, thus, are caught in dire circumstances at various places in Europe (Elsrud, 2020).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…These young men, 19 and 20 years old, were deprived of everything that they had built up during their years in Sweden through the state's bureaucratic violence. Their precariousness is the consequence of a chain of negative actions and decisions made by Swedish authorities, whose legal certainty has been subjected to intense criticism from researchers in recent years (Hedlund, 2016;Johannesson, 2017;Elsrud, 2020;Skodo, 2020;Elsrud et al, 2021). Now battling for survival in Italy after having embarked on a continuous escape, this time from Sweden, their stories convey that they live in prolonged social and existential suffering (see Khosravi, 2018).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Precariousness among young migrants in Europe: a consequence of exclusionary mechanisms within state-controlled neoliberal social work in Sweden

Elsrud

Lalander

2022

Critical and Radical Social Work

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This ethnographic article addresses social work’s participation in exclusionary practices performed by migration authorities in Sweden, leading to extreme precariousness among young people searching for protection. Through ethnographic descriptions of young people who fled from Sweden to other European countries, we argue that Swedish social workers played an active role in depriving young people of their social rights. A central concept in the article is administrative violence. Such institutionalised violence risks being excluded from a moral assessment. We argue that moral responsibility is not about following state rules, but may instead involve acting in a way that rules do not support. If social work accepts the boundaries of the nation-state, its border work and the logics of neoliberal ideologies, it cannot live up to the ethical standards of social work and its emphasis on social justice.

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“…I likhet med alla former av gestaltseende är ett sådant ställningstagande förknippat med ett antal epistemologiska och metodologiska konsekvenser för de resultat som kan genereras. I genomgången av den forskning som finns om målgruppen ensamkommande barn och unga är det, enligt min mening, framför allt två faktorer som kan väcka viss förvåning hos läsaren.Det råder ingen större tveksamhet om "vems röst" det är som framförs i de tämligen få etnografiska studier som gjorts på området (se t.ex Wernesjö 2012Wernesjö , 2014Gruber 2013;Åkerlund 2016;Elsrud 2020;. Lems m.fl.…”

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I väntan på integration: en etnografisk studie om en institutionellt återskapad vardagsverklighet

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Även om man inte känner till pjäsen eller till dess författare vet man antagligen att väntan på Godot anspelar på ett hopplöst tillstånd som hålls flytande genom illusionen av något hoppfullt. Studien handlar om en institutionellt återskapad vardagsverklighet på ett HVB-hem för ensamkommande barn och unga. Det övergripande syftet med denna fenomenologiskt orienterade studie är att åskådlig- och begripliggöra de institutionella villkor under vilka personalen förväntas realisera sitt integrerande samhällsuppdrag. Boendet är en institutionell scen. Ett antal individer – med vittskilda livshistorier – blir inkastade på denna scen för att tillsammans rekonstruera ett vardagligt meningssammanhang som i sig själv ska främja barnen och ungdomarnas integration i det svenska samhället. Allegoriskt uttryckt kan (föreställningen om) denna integration likställas med Godot. Ingen vet riktigt vem denna Godot är, om han kommer eller om han ens existerar. I sin frånvaro fyller Godot likväl en allsmäktig och messiansk roll för de inblandade aktörerna. Det är föreställningen om barnen och ungdomarnas integration som ger den institutionella tillvaron mening. Denna tillvaro koloniseras dock ständigt av olika institutionella faktorer som förvrider det mellanmänskliga meningsskapandet till något absurt. Denna avhandling är en etnografisk berättelse om det absurda i de institutionella villkor under vilka denna integrationsfrämjande vardagsverklighet återskapas

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Resisting social death with dignity. The strategy of re-escaping among young asylum-seekers in the wake of Sweden’s sharpened asylum laws

Abstract: To cite this article: Torun Elsrud (2020) Resisting social death with dignity. The strategy of re-escaping among young asylum-seekers in the wake of Sweden's sharpened asylum laws,

Cited by 27 publications

References 29 publications

Governing through hope: an exploration of hope and social change in an asylum context

Governing through hope: an exploration of hope and social change in an asylum context

Precariousness among young migrants in Europe: a consequence of exclusionary mechanisms within state-controlled neoliberal social work in Sweden

I väntan på integration: en etnografisk studie om en institutionellt återskapad vardagsverklighet

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