Swedish cities use housing rules to control who can stay, study finds
Municipalities across Sweden are using housing decisions as a de facto deportation tool for refugees with temporary permits, new research shows. The findings reveal how local governments weaponize access to shelter—treated as routine administration rather than a rights issue—to determine who remains in the country, creating vastly unequal outcomes depending on where asylum seekers are placed.
Originaltitel: Housing and temporary legality: The evictability and settlement of refugees in Swedish municipalities
<p>This article explores four Swedish municipalities which have reacted differently to legislation aiming to regulate a 'fair and equal' distribution of refugees: from barefaced rejection to the advocacy of refugee settlement as an investment in future citizens. Interviews with people who work with settlement show that housing is made central in different municipal strategies and creates an unequal landscape of evictability for refugees depending on where they are placed. Temporary and conditional residence permits for refugees, which have been made standard in this time of temporary legality, are simultaneously dependent on settlement strategies in municipalities: housing and access to jobs determine whether you can stay or stay with your family. This deportability of refugees is what is at stake. Yet access to housing is continuously treated as a mundane 'service': both in the categorical denial of housing and in the evaluation of what can qualify refugees to deserve settlement.</p>