Policed empowerment at the intersection of child welfare and migration control

Abstract

This article aims to show an example of how municipal policy promotes a social work of policing and expulsion, represented as a child welfare. It is legitimated through a therapeutic rationality promoting emotional wellbeing among asylum-seeking minors arriving on their own. The material consists of municipal policy documents Children's best interests when returning and Unaccompanied returns issued by the municipality of Strömsund, Northern Sweden, developed as a best practice project during 2014-2020. A post-structuralist policy analysis is applied, underpinned by Foucauldian governmentality. It de-constructs how productive and repressive elements of care and control are intertwined into a rationality of policed empowerment and a technology of activation into expulsion . The rationality encourages re-orienting motivations to stay in Sweden into willing self-exclusion, through collaborative reflection and normalization of expulsion as 'crisis management' and child welfare. Concerns of children arriving alone are described as manifestations of 'crisis', caused by immature mobility, expectations to stay in Sweden and separation from roots. Social services, legal guardians and staff at housings are encouraged to form a collaborative and motivational technology of support. Children's needs are represented as emotionally fragile, to be cared and reshaped therapeutically through collaborative reflection on exclusion as being in service of children's self-development. Techniques presented in the material re-shape motivations through collaboration, securitization and activation. Although effects might turn out differently, this case shows a combination of neo-liberal empowerment and policing encouraging a child welfare regime of exclusion and policing.