”Even if you are illiterate, I assume you still have a sense of time like everyone else.”
A qualitative analysis of temporal contradictions in Swedish asylum bureaucracy
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.37062/sf.59.23570Keywords:
time management, asylum bureaucracy, Swedish Migration Agency, case file study, legal certaintyAbstract
The article examines temporal governing in the Swedish asylum bureaucracy through a qualitative analysis of the case files of ten asylum-seeking families. The documents studied include more than 5,000 pages of asylum investigation protocols, decisions, court judgments, certificates, appeals, submissions, personal letters, memos, and other material. The study focuses on decisions made by the Swedish Migration Agency and the oral investigations documented by the agency’s officers. Three inherent and overlapping contradictions related to the temporal governance of the Migration Agency are identified: 1) migration officials insist that asylum seekers provide a strict chronological narrative, whereas what they have lived through has been chaotic, 2) migration officials rush asylum seekers through the asylum process, but the applicant is then subjected to a stressful period of prolonged waiting, and 3) migration officials discount any speculation by asylum seekers when they explain why they are seeking protection, although speculation is unavoidable when conveying fears for the future. The contradictions affect the procedure for judging the asylum claim as well as the outcome of the assessment. The article also highlights consequences of time management paradoxes for asylum seekers and on the societal level in general.
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