Negotiating the Boundaries of Social Membership: Undocumented Migrant Claims-making in Sweden and Spain

Abstract

In this article, I address the role organisations and networks play in mobilising for the rights of undocumented migrants and in setting agendas for their inclusion and social membership. I compare two societies with different frameworks of welfare and migration regimes. The empirical material used in this article consists of 44 interviews with actors involved in the processes I define as negotiating social membership in Stockholm and Barcelona: policy-makers, immigration officials, trade unions, NGO activists and the undocumented migrants themselves. In both Sweden and Spain, mobilising groups have been important for the recognition of undocumented migrants. Until recently, undocumented migrants were largely invisible in the Swedish context, often living in extreme marginalisation and precariousness. In Spain, where the informal labour market is more extended and boundaries between the legal and the illegal are less pronounced, migrants have had greater opportunities to settle and to some degree integrate into society. The political opportunities for mobilised actors vary in relation to both the welfare and migration regimes, the structure of the labour market, and more subtle factors as receptiveness for claims-making at a certain time, tolerance for informality in society, and choices of individual actors in crucial positions.

Keywords:

• Undocumented Migration
• Migrant Claims-making
• Social Membership
• Citizenship
• Contentious Politics

Notes

[1] Barcelona is the capital of the autonomous region Catalonia, which is the main recipient of immigration in Spain: 1.261.416 followed by 938.781 in Comunidad de Madrid, in June 2013, according to the Spanish government's statistics. (http://extranjeros.empleo.gob.es/es/Estadisticas/operaciones/con-certificado/201306/Residentes_Principales_Resultados_30062013.pdf). Much immigrant activism in Spain has been concentrated in Barcelona, a city with a history of local activism and an organised civil society (e.g. Morén-Alegret 1999).

[2] Neither the government, the police nor the Migration Board are willing to estimate the number of people living irregularly in Sweden as this is perceived as too arbitrary. Taking a look at the statistics, it is only possible to get an overview of the number of asylum applicants who ‘disappear’ after being rejected, but it is impossible to know whether they stay irregularly or leave the country.

[3] In March 2005, the Christian Council of Sweden, represented by the archbishop and then head of the Swedish Church, K.G. Hammar, demanded asylum for all applicants who had received a negative decision (www.svenskakyrkan.se, 2005).

[4] Demonstrations were organised with broad participation all over Sweden, and politicians and representatives of religious organisations held speeches, advocating for a general refugee amnesty. In May 2005, more than 150,000 signatures were handed over to the government to demand amnesty for all refugees whose asylum applications had been denied.

[5] The temporary law was mainly aimed at increasing the opportunity to obtain asylum for families with children, but everyone who had received a negative decision had the right to reapply. Slightly more than 30,000 rejected asylum-seekers, of whom around 8000 had been hiding in the country, reapplied, and 56% of these had their applications approved at this time (www.migrationsverket.se, 2010).

[6] The centre, however, is clearly not performing advocacy for these migrants' rights; on their website, they state that ‘it is prohibited to employ someone who does not hold a job permit, and illegal for such persons to work’, and there are very few rights that undocumented migrant workers formally enjoy in Sweden, namely, the rights to: (i) some rest during work hours, and that these hours are limited, and (ii) an acceptable work environment (www.fcfp.se; Fackligt center för papperslösa).

[7] To estimate the exact extent of the undocumented immigration is of course impossible. According to the latest available estimates, 485,164 undocumented migrants resided in Spain in 2012 (www.ine.es; http://extranjeros.empleo.gob.es/es/index.html, October 2013). The most frequent method for roughly measuring this is to compare the number of legally residing immigrants (the last available measure of which is from 2008) with the number of foreigners registered in the residential registers. This method is problematic as it is possible, for instance, that immigrants who move do not deregister; however, it gives a rough estimate of how many immigrants without residence permits stay in the country.

[8] Other channels of entry, such as applying for asylum, have not been very viable in Spain; Spanish asylum politics ought to be considered restrictive. In 2008, for instance, Spain only approved 290 of 6250 asylum applications (Eurostat News Release 2009).

[9] The formal requirement for access to social rights in general has, until September 1, 2012, been to register in the local census. To do this, one needs to present a passport and prove that one has an address in the area, through a rental contract or someone who has such a contract, confirming they are a cohabitant. It is thus generally assumed that the vast majority of all undocumented immigrants who live permanently in the country are registered.

[10] Romero-Ortuno (2004), however, argues that healthcare providers' lack of knowledge of irregular immigrants' entitlements and ambiguous legal definitions is a major problem in several EU countries, and a short ‘ask around’ I conducted at Spanish healthcare institutions showed that the staff do ask immigrants for their residence permits when they visit clinics, reflecting the arbitrariness of the system as this in practice depends much on the willingness of the staff at each medical institution.