Lesson for the future or threat to sovereignty?

Abstract

Following the entry of 162,877 asylum seekers in 2015, Sweden introduced border controls in November of that year. These were followed by new laws in 2015-2016 that curtailed the possibility of being granted permanent residence, family reunification, and the social rights of asylum seekers. Such measures were necessary, according to the Swedish government, because the large number of entries triggered a refugee crisis. These were far-reaching changes in a country that has long prided itself on welcoming asylum seekers. But, far from threatening Swedish state sovereignty, as the Swedish national government and mainstream media claimed, I show that this perceived crisis has both justified, asserted, and extended it by recourse to national and international law on the one hand, and an associative chain link between asylum seekers, illegal immigration, terrorism, and crisis, on the other. At the same time, I reveal how the perceived crisis has exposed rifts between different levels of Swedish governance, where the municipalities, in particular, have opposed the national government's portrayal of 2015 as a fundamental threat to Swedish sovereignty and domestic governance. Indeed, the municipalities sought to portray 2015 as a difficult but valuable lesson for scaling up services and capabilities to help people fleeing persecution. In this chapter, I problematize this dynamic primarily by analysing an official government report (Statens Offentliga Utredningar) on the refugee crisis. My analysis additionally rests on news articles and interviews I conducted in 2017 with a Swedish Migration Agency Executive Officer and a local civil servant in the southeast of Sweden. The report, published in 2017, is entitled 'Att ta emot människor på flykt: Sverige hösten 2015' ('Receiving Refugees: Sweden during the Fall of 2015'-hereafter 'Receiving Refugees'), and is the final product of a Swedish government commission formed in 2016. The government directed the commission to describe the sequence of events that comprise the refugee crisis on the one hand, and to map how the national government, national state agencies, counties, municipalities, and civil society organizations managed it, on the other. Gudrun Antemar,