Transversal sanctuary enactments in Sweden: challenges, opportunities and implications

ABSTRACT

This article contributes to scholarly discussions about sanctuary enactments. We analyse transversal sanctuary enactments, i.e. when migrants in search of protection are provided with basic welfare and an opportunity to remain, in contestation of the state’s migration politics. The study draws on empirical data collected through a transdisciplinary research initiative in Sweden, the Asylum Commission. The analysis is based on interviews with 90 people, asylum seekers and people voluntarily or professionally involved in support work. The article explores bottom-up transversal processes paralleled and intertwined with a growing institutional disenchantment. By analysing practices and challenges in sanctuary enactments and their implications for individuals and institutions, we argue that such disenchantment may have broader societal implications in terms of fundamental changes in relationships between public institutions and civil society actors. Furthermore, our study points to the importance of seeing beyond the city as sites for sanctuary enactments and acknowledging sanctuary enactments initiated in Sweden’s rural areas.

KEYWORDS:

• Irregularity
• transversal sanctuary enactments
• trust
• deportation
• Sweden

Introduction

At a time of increased legal restrictions and practices regarding the opportunities for asylum seekers to obtain protection, this article contributes to academic and societal discussions about sanctuary enactments. The analysis is based on interviews with 90 people with diverse backgrounds and experiences regarding age, language, religion, nationality, gender and education. Based on a Swedish context of far-reaching restrictive measures in migration and welfare policies that followed the ‘long summer of migration’ in 2015 (Jørgensen and Schierup 2020), the article aims to analyse sanctuary practices. We focus on a) the emergence of grassroots bottom-up sanctuary enactments in both urban and rural spaces, b) transversal collaborations and alliance building, and c) simultaneous expressions of growing distrust in the state’s institutions. We use Nira Yuval-Davis’ notion of transversal politics (1994, 1997, 2006) to theoretically guide our empirical material analysis. We also use the notion of transversal politics normatively, as it is essential to point out ways of doing solidarity work that can foster work across and beyond differences (see Haiven and Khasnabish 2014). The processes and alliances we discuss can be described mainly as examples of social sanctuaries (see Mourão Permoser and Bauböck 2023). Social sanctuaries differ from territorial sanctuary and from other inclusive responses to irregular migration discussed by Bauböck and Permoser (2023) in the epilogue to this special issue because, unlike these other responses, social sanctuary is not put in place by governments but rather by networks of individuals and civil society organisations. As such, they involve practices enacted through temporary or long-term webs of relations formed by caring individuals. We identify transversal elements in practical struggles over the provision of insecure welfare and practices to hinder deportations. These enactments are simultaneously conditioned by and contestations of the stricter measures adopted by the Swedish government.

Building on scholarly discussions on sanctuary (Bazurli and de Graauw 2023; Boudou 2023; Darling and Bauder 2019; Hermansson et al.2022; Humphris 2023; Lundberg and Strange 2017; Mourão Permoser and Bauböck 2023; Wyn Edwards and Wisthaler 2023) and on the notion of transversal solidarity alliances (Agustín and Bak Jørgensen 2019; Ataç, Rygiel, and Stierl 2021; Della Porta and Steinhilper 2021; Jørgensen and Schierup 2020; also see Fleischmann 2020) we provide an in-depth empirical understanding of the multi-scale complexities of transversal elements in sanctuary enactments and analyse their broader implications for relations between public institutions and civil society actors.

Based on our analysis of the interviewees’ statements, we suggest that there is a widening gap between the Swedish state and many sanctuary enactors (see also Toubøl 2019). A growing mistrust reveals the consequences of the restrictive shift in the Swedish context, which we argue may reach far beyond the area of migration control. Notably, we will point to how losing faith in the system appears to be a trigger to get involved.

In what follows, we present the specific context of Swedish welfare and migration politics over time. Next, we share our analytical framework and our analysis, divided into three themes: (1) Spontaneous transversal sanctuary, (2) Transversal collaborations and alliance building and (3) Growing distrust as an unavoidable companion in transversal sanctuary. In the final section, we conclude that whilst erosion of trust in the authorities challenges the long-lived idea of a ‘Swedish exceptionalism’, transversalism may also lead the way towards unexpected democratic imaginations, foster alternative understandings of welfare institutions, and shape new institutions from below.

The bitter end of ‘Swedish exceptionalism’?

Sweden has often been referred to as an ‘exceptional welfare state’ based on the country’s reputation as universalistic and having inclusionary practices towards migrants and refugees that safeguard general access to welfare rights (Bendixsen 2018; see also Scarpa and Schierup 2018; Schierup and Hansen 2006; Schierup and Ålund 2011; Sältenberg 2022). While the concept of ‘Swedish exceptionalism’ refers to an idea rather than an empirical reality of the country as extraordinary, Sweden was one of the world’s most equal countries in terms of resource allocation in the 1970s. Historians explain this position as the outcome of a strong and effective state combined with broad support for equality from a coalition of the people’s movements (folkrörelser) that emerged from the 1870s onwards in opposition to the conservative defenders of inequality (Bengtsson 2020).

A restrictive development

Linked to the idea of a universalistic model and in international comparison, Sweden has also been described as a country where the population has considerable trust in the state and public institutions. However, alongside the die-hard beliefs in Sweden as a humanitarian model state, austerity politics have grown inexorably since the 1980s. For several decades, proposed by the centre- and right-wing parties, cutbacks and market-oriented solutions in the public sector have affected migrants in particular (Scarpa and Schierup 2018; Sainsbury 2012). Scholars have analysed these inequality-inducing processes as welfare chauvinism (Norocel 2016), nationalism (Barker 2018), growing right-wing populism (Mulinari and Neergaard 2018), and a dramatic shift in the migration control regime (Barker 2018; Elsrud, Gruber, and Lundberg 2021a). The continuous adjustments to neoliberal ideals and practices, successively eroding the Swedish welfare state and the previous link between social rights and residency, have led scholars to the conclusion that we are seeing an ‘end of Swedish exceptionalism’ (Dahlstedt 2015; Dahlstedt and Neergaard 2019; Scarpa and Schierup 2018; Schierup and Ålund 2011). With the events and legal actions initiated by the government in 2015, the image of Sweden as a humanitarian welfare state has become unavoidably shattered and replaced by discourses of exclusion.

In what follows, we draw on a moment in the Swedish migration context that started in 2014-15, when the Swedish population, in unprecedented numbers, met people who arrived in Sweden to seek asylum (SOU 2017, 12). Demonstrations for a solidaristic refugee policy that had support from the government took place all over the country. In an often-quoted speech in early autumn of 2015, the Swedish Prime Minister stated that ‘my Europe does not build walls’ (Swedish Government 2015). For the migrant rights movement, this period was a welcome pause in a long-term-development of less inclusive asylum legislation combined with racist rhetoric and increased influence of the right-wing nationalist party, the Sweden Democrats.

Of great importance for the restrictive turn announced by the Swedish government in 2015 was the temporary ‘Act (2016:752) on restrictions on the possibility of obtaining a residence permit in Sweden’. This law severely restricted opportunities for permanent residency, family reunification, and residency based on humanitarian grounds. Previously, the main rule for people with refugee status in Sweden had been to obtain a permanent right to stay. Beforehand, there also existed a possibility to receive residency on humanitarian grounds applicable to, among others, many categorised as unaccompanied minors. This opportunity was now removed, and the precarious situation of these young people subsequently became the raison d’être for many sanctuary enactments we analyse in this article (see Garvik and Valenta 2021, 12). In tandem with stricter laws, professionals and people seeking asylum alike have raised the alarm about inhuman and humiliating interpretations by the Migration Agency and the migration courts and increased arbitrariness in decision-making processes (e.g. Asylarkivet 2022; Elsrud, Gruber, and Lundberg 2021a; also see Humphris 2023). While it was difficult to predict the outcome of asylum regulations before 2015, despite permanent residency and family reunification being more tangible, the Swedish asylum process is significantly more legally insecure today (Elsrud, Gruber, and Lundberg 2021a; Asylarkivet 2022).

Other legal changes have contributed to increased economic precariousness, such as adjustments to the ‘Act (1994:137) on the reception of asylum seekers and others’. These have restricted access to financial support and accommodation from the Migration Agency for those who receive decisions on expulsion or whose deadline for voluntary return expired (Lundberg and Kjellbom 2021). People who have had their asylum application rejected and then sought residency to study or work lose their access to financial support and housing from the Migration Agency while waiting for their decision. Meanwhile, the right to emergency support under the Social Services Act (2001:453) was restricted or unavailable for persons without a formal right of residence in the country (Lundberg and Kjellbom 2021). While the latter significantly affected irregularised asylum-seekers, the withdrawal of emergency aid is also a sign of more general austerity policies challenging the fundamental welfare state idea that no one should starve, and no child should be forced to live on the streets (Kazemi 2021). Another change in recent years is that welfare institutions and border police are called upon to cooperate, thereby rationalising the deportation bureaucracy (see, for example, Malm Lindberg 2020). Social workers, who operate in institutions that differ in their societal role from border control workers, have been drawn into the migration control system (Högberg, Gruber, and Nyström 2020). As deportations are often stopped or impossible, many people remain in limbo (Lundberg 2020).

Furthermore, there is a clear shift from welfare to workfare in which welfare provision has become connected to employment rather than needs. Nowadays, the only way to get a permanent residence permit is by getting a job in Sweden. Such a contribution-based approach has been a European trend for decades, now asserting itself more broadly in the Swedish context (Borevi, Jensen, and Mouritsen 2017; also Altermark 2020; Kazemi 2021).

Mobilisation following the restrictive development

What are the consequences of the above development regarding sanctuary enactments? While resisting deportation is a key concern among the research participants in the present study, the Swedish situation affecting people at various stages of the asylum process calls for a broader approach to sanctuary enactments. First of all, it relates to a restrictive turn in legal application: In 2020, more than 70 per cent of the asylum applications were rejected (Swedish Migration Agency 2021), compared to 40 per cent in 2016 (SOU 2020, 46:488). Meanwhile, the described restrictions on financial and housing support have left people in economic and social deprivation. In Sweden, sanctuary enactors rarely separate their activities between soon-to-be-irregularised and already irregularised people (Elsrud, Gruber, and Lundberg 2021a). Instead, asylum-seeking people often move from ‘waiting-without-welfare’ to ‘irregularised-without-welfare’ while remaining in the same sanctuary enactment alliances. There are also several legal-technical reasons for including people who are still in the asylum process as a group in need of support, such as a two-week-long opportunity for rejected asylum-seekers that have managed to find employment to ‘change track’ and apply for a work permit that may eventually lead to permanent residency. Preparations to become a labour-immigrant applicant, should the asylum case be rejected, calls for support in finding employment. Another reason for a broad approach to who needs sanctuary work follows upon legal exceptions introduced for those categorised as unaccompanied minors who had turned 18 while waiting and were affected by lengthy processing times (Elsrud 2020). Such ‘compensating measures’ came as a concession to critique from the asylum rights movement and some parliamentarians on the left. They provided a small respite by temporarily suspending the risk of deportation and gave some young people opportunities to stay in Sweden as a student (see the ‘new upper secondary education act’, Law 2016:752, 16f §, 16i §, 17 §). However, the legislative changes adopted to mitigate the worst consequences of the government’s new migration policy did not guarantee any financial support or accommodation, leaving thousands stuck in limbo and uncertainty (Elsrud 2020).

Deportability, transversal sanctuary and trust

Nicholas De Genova uses the term deportability to conceptualise the constant threat of deportation that permeates the lives of many irregularised migrants and the precarious living conditions brought on by their irregular status (De Genova 2002). However, deportability is an ambiguous category. People tend to move in and out of stages of deportability while waiting for decisions or being temporarily irregularised between asylum rejections and the opportunity to file a new application. Thus, we use the concept of deportability to describe a condition ranging from potential removal to actual expulsion (see Sager and Öberg 2017). In a Swedish context, people living in deportability have either applied for asylum, have had their asylum application rejected, have arrived as temporary workers but lost their formal employment and residence permit, or have been allowed a temporary permit to remain for studies.

Despite the risks, fear of deportation does not prevent some people in Sweden from mobilising and protesting (e.g. Elsrud, Gruber, and Lundberg 2021a, 2021b; Kazemi 2021; Söderman 2019). Initiatives that resist increasing austerity policies and advocate for the rights of migrants have also developed elsewhere in Europe (Fontanari 2020; Picozza 2021). These solidaristic collaborations ‘[go] beyond nations’ ways of governing territories and population’ and have emerged as a reaction to contentious restrictions (Fontanari 2020, 241). The practices commonly involve protection from deportation combined with support in everyday life and the articulation of rights claims.

In the present study, we understand enactments as a particular political practice, a form of rights claiming (Ingram 2008), and a re-enactment of citizenship (Isin and Marc Nielsen 2008; Nordling 2017). Yuval-Davis defines practices of transversal politics as a ‘mode of coalition politics in which the differential positionings of the individuals and collectives involved will be recognised, as well as the value systems which underlie their struggles’ (Yuval-Davis 1997, 25). Such politics involve a constant flow of communication horizontally between grassroots initiatives, as well as vertically from international bodies to local initiatives. Moreover, according to Yuval-Davis, transversal politics involve practices and processes that reinforce solidarity beyond borders that simultaneously transcends simplistic cosmopolitan clichés (Yuval-Davis 2006, 280–282).

Using the term transversal, we attempt to capture bottom-up solidarity alliances and complex networks of activities, scales, and people from various professions (health care personnel, social workers, teachers etc.) and activist backgrounds who come together in sanctuary work (e.g. García Agustín and Jørgensen 2021; Jørgensen and Schierup 2020). Moreover, we identify enactments at different scales and intersections as an aspect of transversality. We refer to the diverse local encounters and sanctuary alliances that have evolved across borders that commonly are constructed between groups of people with diverse backgrounds. We also capture the interactions between these local bottom-up sanctuaries and pre-existing public and non-public organisations and institutions. Finally, we understand the term transversal as the stretching out of sanctuary enactments from the local context to national and international settings (e.g. García Agustín and Jørgensen 2021).

A common denominator in transversal sanctuary enactments is the networks’ engagement in resisting deportation at different political levels and territorial, social and discursive spheres (Mourão Permoser and Bauböck 2023). Through sanctuary enactments, precarious access to welfare and some security is provided to migrants who are either irregularised or in the process of becoming so, following the legal changes in Swedish migration law since 2015 (compare Darling and Bauder 2019; Rosenberger 2018; Rosenberger and Winkler 2014).

A significant aspect of transversal sanctuary enactments relates to the strong connection between these and institutional trust. In a study of activism in a Danish refugee context, Toubøl (2019) finds an interdependency between trust, or lack thereof, and the activists’ readiness to engage and act together with or on behalf of migrants. In line with Kaase (1999), Toubøl argues that trust is relational and increases or decreases through interactions. This reasoning suggests that interactions in transversal sanctuary enactments will work in tandem with feelings of institutional (dis)trust. As will become apparent in our analysis, sanctuary actors’ (lack of) institutional trust emerges in interactions with the authorities and with other people and organisations that have personal experience from interacting with, for instance, the Migration Agency, the migration courts, and the social services.

Research design

This article draws on empirical material from interviews conducted within the Asylum Commission (Elsrud et al. 2021b). The interview study has been conducted in collaboration between researchers and activists. Working in pairs of two, consisting of one researcher and one activist, we interviewed 90 people (healthcare staff, social workers, teachers, volunteers and various support groups from civil society and people with experience of having sought asylum themselves). Through their sanctuary enactments, all interviewees have been involved in the asylum context in the wake of changes introduced in 2015. While all the interviews inform our analysis, in this text, we mainly draw on the ones where the interviewees are voluntarily engaged. The present article has evolved out of an interest in civil society actors’ experiences of transversal sanctuary enactments following the restrictive development in Sweden.

Moreover, the interviewees’ experiences of encounters with the asylum bureaucracy and other public institutions sparked our interest in relationships of trust between civil society actors and the authorities. Interestingly, in contrast to literature focusing on transversal solidarity in cities (Jørgensen and Schierup 2020), our interviewees are often based in rural environments in Sweden. Their geographical position shows that sanctuary enactments are also performed outside the urban centres, on which most research is focused.

Most interviews were carried out over zoom due to the pandemic and usually lasted from 1.5–2.5 hours. On several occasions, we carried out follow-up interviews. The interviews have been transcribed verbatim. During recurring workshops with the research group, we read and thoroughly discussed the interview transcripts to familiarise ourselves with the material before thematisation (Braun and Clark 2006). We have anonymised places, organisations, and people; some quotations have been slightly edited for readability.

Transversal sanctuary enactments

The following analysis starts from small-scale bottom-up actions where we emphasise how the growing involvement leads to more engagement, friendship circles, and group-based advocacy work, which are accompanied by an increasing frustration over what is seen as the Swedish authorities’ withdrawal from their responsibilities. We then discuss more organised forms of transversal sanctuary collaboration and alliance building between local initiatives and larger established organisations that have evolved as a consequence of the shift of responsibility for asylum welfare from state authorities to civil society actors, indicating that the state is not (re)liable. We finally address the interviewees’ experiences of losing faith in the authorities as a trigger for, as well as an outcome of, transversal sanctuary enactments that stretch out from local contexts into transnational activities and geographies.

Politicisation - The spontaneous emergence of transversal sanctuary enactments

Many interviewees’ transversal activities started spontaneously and on a small scale following their relationships with people seeking protection in Sweden in 2015. Their meetings with people seeking asylum first took place through their professional work, for example, in health care, social work, teaching, etcetera, or through volunteering. Some of our interviewees had been involved in asylum reception for a long time, had personal experiences of interacting with people seeking asylum or had a long involvement in the asylum rights movement through legal advice or support groups. Some were asylum seekers themselves or had previously sought asylum.

The choice to become involved was described by many as a ‘non-choice’ triggered by being exposed to the suffering of people whose previous experience one did not share yet acknowledged as fellow humans in need of solidaristic action. As argued by Yuval-Davis (1994, 2006) and García Agustín and Jørgensen (2021, 860), transversal solidarity is often based on a ‘respect for differences and advance the formation of commonalities’. Involvement among the interviewees was also triggered by the experience that people seeking protection were ignored, silenced, or declined support from Swedish authorities. It was sparked by growing disenchantment in public institutions while the societal discourses hardened.

One interviewee, Benny, became engaged in 2017 when he and his wife decided to invite a group of young people from Afghanistan to move into their home. These young people had lost the right to remain in municipal facilities upon reaching the age of maturity, which can happen either on their 18th birthday or at another date ascribed by migration authorities as they ‘re-age’ asylum-seeking minors into adults (Elsrud 2020). Benny’s initial contact with these young people was established through his wife Dagny’s work at a publicly funded youth centre. The couple lives in a small rural municipality in central Sweden. Their engagement soon began to grow, and they reached out to other individuals interested in supporting young people who had lost their right to stay in municipality facilities. At the time of the interview, Benny and Dagny had contributed to developing eleven grassroots ‘voluntary family home’ organisations around Sweden.

While appearing as well-planned actions, Benny’s and Dagny’s involvement started from a sudden need. As Benny explained, he slipped into activism:

I am not really the type who goes out and writes amnesty now and things like that. I have been more concerned with ‘this is a situation’. There are many young people who have it damn bad. They’re here now. We must help them […] If we are to be able to save this [situation] both financially and humanly above all, and most effectively, it must be through giving these young people amnesty (Group interview 14).

The statement illustrates a common reason for getting involved in sanctuary enactments, namely the practical needs of the people concerned, combined with disappointment with how the state treats refugees. Several interviewees told of an initial, often spontaneous, idea of assisting one person who had been irregularised and a subsequent growing political commitment and frustration over the fact that authorities could not be trusted to adhere to people’s rightful claim to safety. From more contacts and involvement with irregularised young people, deeper political insights followed. Individual ‘automatic’ responses to broader resistance work, awakened by encounters with injustices and precariousness, eventually lead to collaboration between different actors. This development shows how relationships, interaction and an incipient distrust trigger increased transversal sanctuary activities (e.g. García Agustín and Jørgensen 2021; Toubøl 2019). It is here, at the level of direct interaction with people seeking asylum and, on their behalf, with authorities, that Benny, Dagny and other interviewees started to experience institutional misconduct that led to a loss of confidence in the authorities.

For Benny and Dagny, and others in support of similar claims, the municipality was an immediate target for spontaneous advocacy work to enable access to welfare for young people who had been excluded from formal protection through a residence permit or were waiting for a decision on a renewed application. Mona, a woman running a farm with her husband in a rural area, described how she observed a growing number of young people needing help to stay close to their friends and school. She introduced her parents to sanctuary work resulting in their contact with 37 young people whom they began calling their grandchildren. In her view, getting involved was the only way to handle the systematic exclusion when asylum-seekers were pushed out of formal protection systems. These welfare rejections sometimes ended up requiring another form of sanctuary work, such as more structured organisation and strategic choices in negotiations with the municipality. Benny explained:

We soon realised that if we are to be able to influence the municipality and maybe even influence politicians and so on, then we must do it in a structured and uniform way. So, as ‘voluntary family homes’ [organisation], we were a pretty nice unity in and around [town], especially at the time.

In this case, Benny, together with friends and family, convinced the municipality to respond to some of their claims, for example, by providing monetary support to their organisation.

Other typical sanctuary enactments constitute a form of ‘rapid response’ to a senseless disrespect for human life and health (e.g. Cuison Villazor and Gulasekaram 2019) by, for example, establishing warning routines on various closed digital platforms about border police presence and expected deportations. Such responses signal that the authorities are seen as opponents who cannot be trusted. Organising protest marches, contacting politicians, voluntary legal work and writing letters to stop planes carrying deportees are other frequent actions within the repertoire of bottom-up sanctuary. These activities of incipient sanctuary enactments in the context of growing distrust also involve personal risks of getting sentenced for those involved, for example, when helping people in Denmark to enter Sweden.

Regardless of which type of sanctuary enactments the interviewees described, a common thread was feelings of prolonged uncertainty. Sanctuary enactors struggle with feelings of insufficiency as there are always more needs to meet. Who in the end gets support is contingent on many factors, such as the financial situation, emotional ties and constructions of deservingness (see Monforte, Maestri, and d'Halluin 2021; see Rosenberg and Winkler 2014). Moreover, the lack of resources and feelings of insufficiency are paralleled by increasing frustration over the fact that the state, commonly responsible for providing for the needs of people seeking asylum, not only withdraws but also exposes them to violent treatment (see Elsrud and Lalander 2022).

These diverse experiences and ways of handling emergencies demonstrate tensions. Transversal politics are not always possible as it is difficult to reconcile different interests and positions (Yuval-Davis 1994), such as conflicting interests between the state’s ambition to control migration and claims made for the right to stay. Among the interviewees, a deeper insight into migration regulations and the effects of the new political climate on access to welfare, combined with initial reactions to individual ‘crises’ became the starting point for an emerging lack of trust. This lack of trust, coupled with a spontaneous urge to act politically by staging various types of informal, set off transversal sanctuary enactments among people from diverse backgrounds and professions. Despite lacking resources, several participants recalled a development from helping only a few to assisting many. With this came a deepened understanding of migration regulations in practice combined with a growing realisation that the welfare state was not living up to its promises. These experiences became the starting point for various organised collaborations to contest the repressive development.

Transversal collaboration and alliance building - tensions and opportunities

Transversal sanctuary enactments commonly expand to include collaborations between different types of actors within sanctuaries, i.e. between local networks, professionals such as lawyers, and established organisations (see García Agustín and Jørgensen 2021).

One area where transversal collaborations evolved among the interviewees was concerning the legal situation. Legal advice activities by professional lawyers and laypeople alike included explaining the asylum procedure and preparing the person for the asylum interview, identifying and translating relevant documents, and finding relevant information about the conditions in the former home country.

Notably, following a final refusal decision in Sweden, the person concerned has no right to publicly funded legal aid. Interviewees who are professional lawyers with extensive experience in migration law described the rapid legal changes as having proposed a significant challenge to Sweden as a country based on rule-of-law principles. Although the lawyers explained how individual protection grounds were questioned and even ignored in the asylum process before, this ignorance reached new levels in 2016. Hence, interviewees identified a great need for legal expertise.

The resulting situation brought new demands for alliances and co-organised actions, including fundraising to hire professional lawyers. One of the sanctuary workers talking about collaborations around fundraising is Marianne. She told about her involvement in different forms of reception work: as a teacher, a professional responsible for a municipal reception unit that placed young people in proper school arrangements, a voluntary provider of a family home, and a legal guardian. From her broad experience, Marianne spoke about alliances with the church(es)’ to recruit and finance legal expertise. Her experience was that the church collaborations were crucial in getting some appeals in hopeless cases changed by the courts.

Several other interviewees also described how they had developed alliances with the local church to support irregularised migrants hiding from the police. A common experience in these alliances was the deep frustration with how the welfare state had developed. The austerity policies and the more ad hoc cutbacks had led to a deep distrust of the system. Anette is a professional social worker who initiated two private properties in a rural area in Sweden for young people who had not had their protection needs recognised. Together with members of a local church, she collaborated with friends to enable several accommodations for people of all ages who had been irregularised after years of insecure waiting. Her initial activities turned into a semi-institutionalised transversal practice with several operating homes to provide safe accommodation and financial support. Depending on people’s legal status, these homes were either covert or open.

With support from local church members in the form of accommodation, funds, and voluntary family homes, Anette’s sanctuary initiative became transversal, feasible and long-lasting. The church members did not limit their work to the provision of charitable assistance but worked politically against deportations, which was related to an increasing distrust in formal protection systems. Some of Anette’s co-sanctuary workers who were helping people whose asylum applications had been rejected to travel to other European countries were also social work professionals.

As explained above, much sanctuary work by our interviewees occurs in rural Sweden. This fact is a socio-geographical topic seldom discussed in scholarship on sanctuary. Following a political decision to ‘distribute’ people seeking asylum to municipalities in both rural and urban areas, there has also arisen a need to understand the conditions under which rural sanctuary enactments occur. Transversal sanctuary enactments have evolved all over the country following a solidarity preparedness among civil society actors to respond spontaneously to the precariousness caused by migration law restrictions and to connect to local organisations when possible. Still, the lack of pre-existing organised networks in rural areas has implications for sanctuary workers calling for creative bottom-up solutions like the ones presented in this article.

Nevertheless, creative collaborations during 2015–2017 were also found in bigger towns and cities. After watching the news about the difficulties for young asylum-seeking people, Kristina, a middle-aged woman living in an urban area, decided to join a demonstration for the rights of young asylum-seeking people. She described in the interview how her grassroots network managed to get limited funding for temporary housing for young persons without residence permits. Kristina’s success in working to support people with housing was the result of collaborations with larger organisations:

(…) a little of their money seeps down to us so that we can arrange temporary housing solutions. So, we have several apartments around [big town] where we cater for people on the money we have received from [large organisation]. Two thousand [SEK] per undocumented young person every month (Group interview 6).

While resources were insufficient, they were essential in the social sanctuary enactments. This ‘seeping down’ of resources illustrate the transversal element in our analysis of sanctuary enactments, as they involve actors at different levels and with different missions and competencies. After 2015, the government distributed such resources on a few occasions to compensate for the worst effects of the changes in regulations. Organisations such as the Swedish church, the City Missions, and Save the Children could apply for funds from the government and then, as a second step, channel these funds to their local offices and on to local sanctuary enactments. These financial activities unveil a paradoxical circumstance in the recent Swedish asylum reception. While withdrawing formal support and welfare distributions combined with unprecedented restrictiveness in granting residency to asylum-seeking people and their relatives, the government ‘compensated’ - albeit marginally - through payments to civil society organisations that could channel these to people in need. Although such limited distribution of funds has been interpreted by activists as unfairly disseminated and a means of silencing oppositional voices, it also implies a transfer of responsibilities from public institutions to civil society actors. This tendency in Sweden and other European countries follows a general trend in recent years where different types of sanctuary enactments and civil society solidarity have been staged to take over basic welfare services (Della Porta 2018; Della Porta and Steinhilper 2021; Karlsson and Vamstad 2020; Lundberg, Jansson-Keshavars, and Obenius 2019).

Furthermore, transversal alliances and networks enabling access to the labour market have become essential. A permanent job is a crucial path to formal and permanent residency. Hera, one of the interviewees in a medium-sized town in a rural area, told about how she started her own company to hire people who need work solutions to stay. She cooperated with a large nationwide recruitment agency that specialises in finding jobs mainly for young people who urgently need work to avoid deportation. She described these activities:

[It is] to get a final solution for them, it is that they get a permanent job, and that is what is most important now. Everything else is great … A driver’s licence is a way for them to get help for a job and getting a truck driver’s licence is another way. Everything like that helps. But the most important thing is that they get a permanent job (Group interview 1).

Because of the importance of getting a steady job in Sweden to qualify for long-term and permanent residency, several interviewees developed collaborations with local businesses or, like Hera, became entrepreneurs and employers. Others engaged in organised searches to find companies with inclusive policies prepared to cooperate. Sanctuary actors becoming or collaborating with employers was also a response to the fact that those people who were directly concerned did not get a proper assessment of their asylum claims (Elsrud, Gruber, and Lundberg 2021a). Thus, intertwined with Sweden’s differentiated labour market, sanctuary practices also visualise the ambivalence of transversal politics. The interviewees’ efforts created ways towards a common political goal of expanding the possibilities of more people receiving permanent residence permits. However, the practices were also closely connected to reproducing a low-wage precariat that involved labour exploitation as the residence permit depended on the employment contract. Simultaneously, considering the legal amendments and current law enforcement, employment - even extremely strenuous and poorly paid - was often the only way to escape deportation to war-torn countries.

In summary, transversal sanctuary enactments are organised in multiple ways, struggle with various ambiguities, and occur both in cities and rural areas. In this sense, they have become a self-evident part of Swedish rural life. A common denominator is that sanctuaries are formed through processes of growing disenchantment and a flow of collaborations (which, as argued above, may include tensions and conflicts). Moreover, the sanctuaries are adapted to meet current needs and are accompanied by an awareness among sanctuary enactors that traditional welfare institutions and the legal system are not accommodating to these needs. In addition, transversal collaborations are not only practical arrangements but also become arenas for sharing knowledge and experiences that may contribute to a growing institutional distrust.

Growing distrust - the unavoidable companion in transversal sanctuary enactments

As discussed by several interviewees in the section above, commitment and resistance need organised collaboration to be sustainable and effective. This insight was related to a growing distrust of society’s formal safety nets. Kristina, who at the time of the interview had spent almost all her time on two local sanctuary alliances, expressed sadness and disappointment that could be seen among many other interviewees as well:

I think above all that organised collaboration is needed … and I think it is sad that it is required […] this is because society is failing. We [in Sweden] are not doing what a society should do. But we let a large group of young people do the best they can. And I cannot stand it [laughs uncomfortably]. (Group interview 6).

In Kristina’s words, society’s failure led her to become involved in many different networks and alliances. What Kristina brought up regarding a growing lack of trust in authorities and the state was a recurring theme in the interviews. Most interviewees talked about having experienced an undeniable change after 2015 that has had vast material consequences. Nina, a former lawyer and judge who had worked in both district courts and courts of appeal, after having retired, had worked extensively, pro bono, to help mainly young people appeal after they lost their publicly funded legal representation. Nina’s involvement had begun after reading a migration court decision that she found shockingly flawed and deficient. This experience led her into a steady stream of sanctuary enactments:

Yes, for my part, it [the involvement] is that I have been so shocked that this is happening in Sweden. […] I have lived with the idea that we have a society based on the rule of law […] Yes, for me, it is a great sadness to feel that […] my old colleagues have simply, or some of them … they have completely let go of all principles and all meaning of the judicial oath. And for me, this has been sacred if we can now talk about something like that in this context. But it has been a foundation, a basic principle for our whole society. And for me personally, too. (Group interview 17).

Thus, the lack of legal certainty and the often-cruel faith of people seeking asylum in Sweden kept Nina going (cf. Hoye 2020). Being a judge herself, she reflected on the discretionary power among judges in the migration courts:

I think that the judges who go over to the migration court also see it as a very easy job. You do not have to think so much, is their attitude. There are some standard judgments that obviously are used repeatedly, and if they are not, if you find nothing else, you can always say that the person is not credible, ‘we do not believe his story’. And then it’s already lost. And it happens regularly […] you see it nowhere else [other areas of the law]. It is a rule of law, as Mia [another interviewee] says, that is only a facade. […] Every time politicians say: […] we have a legally secure migration process, I get completely allergic because they do not know what they are talking about. (Group interview 17).

For Nina, with an entire working life of practising law, it was perhaps easier than for other interviewees to pinpoint instances of improper legal practice and decisions that do not fit comfortably in a society that claims to be governed by the rule of law. The other lawyers we interviewed shared Nina’s view that the rule of law in Sweden has lost its position in the asylum system. This legal deterioration, they explained, applied not just to the migration courts but also the handling of asylum cases by the Migration Agency. Several lawyers confirmed what previous researchers have labelled as a ‘culture of disbelief’ (Daniel and Knudsen 1996; Norström 2004) or legal practices with a taken-for-granted objective of making people deportable.

While not lawyers, most of the other interviewees, with or without personal asylum experience, had come to similar conclusions after many years of sanctuary enactments. Their experiences relate to the migration authorities’ and courts’ handling of asylum claims and the welfare institutions’ handling of precariousness among asylum-seekers. Jeanette, a former professional politician educated in natural sciences, referred mainly to young people categorised as unaccompanied youth when they sought asylum in 2015. Since she started working with this group of young people, her image of Swedish authorities significantly changed.

I, who am used to working politically and used to trusting society and seeing how it works […] I have always been a bit of an activist, but now I am almost only an activist, and I have very little trust in authorities. So, I do not see that our society is functioning. If there is anything, there is a system collapse. It’s precisely here, in how they [the government and authorities] have backed themselves into this [corner]. And all issues concerning young people, or this group of young people, must be preceded by a very tough fight to have their rights claims met. And it can be any small thing, but it’s a struggle for just about everything. […] Really, there doesn’t seem to be any event that could cause them [the authorities] to change their legal standpoints so that they [the young people] can obtain a residence permit. (Group interview 11).

Jeanette was not alone in identifying and criticising this restrictive turn and the pervasive consequences it specifically has had for unaccompanied minors. According to Garvik and Valenta, the rejection rate in 2018 (based on numbers from the Migration Agency) for unaccompanied minors from Afghanistan was four times higher than before the restrictive changes in Swedish legislation (Garvik and Valenta 2021, 14, see also Wernesjö 2019).

While many interviewees describe prolonged tiredness emanating from years of encounters with the authorities and confusing regulations together with and on behalf of migrants with precarious legal status, few spoke about giving up. Rather than meeting the bureaucratic system and poor decisions with dejection and hopelessness, our interviewees felt challenged and compelled to act more assertively and get organised.

Anette, the former social worker mentioned earlier, who had initiated private accommodation for young people in collaboration with the church, testified to having lost her trust in politicians and authorities these last few years. She felt the Swedish bureaucracy worked against people seeking protection from war and persecution. Together with a friend, she also helped people to leave Sweden to seek asylum in other European countries. When we asked about her motives, she answered:

For me, it is also about decency, not accepting this violence against vulnerable people who have not committed a crime but only sought security and a better life, a future. Not accepting a system that forces on us injustice, inequality and dehumanises us. […] I ask myself, what is the alternative? What would it mean if I gave up now and chose to prioritise my own life over theirs, a ‘normal’ life? […] Driving a person across the border is a risk, but not doing so also comes with a high price, for sure, emotionally. (Group interview 6).

Like other interviewees, Anette saw no choice but to take matters into her own hands when faced with the current system. She saw little chance that her life would ever become ‘normal’ again:

I will never be able to go back to an ordinary life […]. This life has become the new normal for me, and the only thing I wish I could escape is the psychic terror of constantly fighting so that the catastrophe will not happen. […] In a way, when you live such a life where the consequences to those you love are so drastic, the limit to what you are willing to do shifts slowly. (Group interview 6).

Anette appeared to be living a full-time activist life pushing herself more and more. She was willing to do what she had not even considered before 2015. Anette was even rearranging her working life to better suit her sanctuary enactments. For her and many other participants, sanctuary enactment had also contributed to changes in their everyday life, including how they viewed themselves and their immediate context. (e.g. Reger, Myers, and Einwohner 2008).

All in all, it appears to be the observations and experiences of injustice and disrespect for legal principles that foremost had triggered, as well as was one outcome of, the sanctuary enactments. Many interviewees described Sweden as very different from the image of Swedish exceptionalism. They described how Sweden had changed towards less legal certainty and increased austerity politics facing people seeking protection. This view was shared by many and their feelings of distrust hint at the vast political implications of the restrictive turn in Swedish migration policies. In our final discussion, we turn to the broader societal implications of these developments.

New solidarities in Sweden – implications of transversal sanctuaries

Harsh conditions, precariousness and inequality for people seeking asylum are by no means new in Sweden. Such circumstances existed well before 2015. Nevertheless, the recent changes have meant hardship on an unprecedented scale (Asylum Commission 2019; Beskow 2018; Elsrud, Gruber, and Lundberg 2021a, 2021b; Jansson-Kesharvaz and Nordling 2022). Sanctuary enactments in this context are an important contestation of hostility towards people seeking asylum and the expulsions from the welfare system.

We have analysed bottom-up rural and urban sanctuary enactments following the restrictive asylum policies introduced by the Swedish government in 2015. Sanctuary enactments in this context often emerged spontaneously as the enactors started helping someone they had met through their work or acquaintances. The interviewees described the process as a transformation characterised by a growing political awareness of an unjust asylum process and insecure welfare rights, insights that also made them gradually lose trust in the Swedish authorities. Through practical involvement, the interviewees encountered others who had undergone similar developments. Diverse groups, including welfare workers, legal experts, volunteers and activists, eventually formed alliances and networks. These enactments and collaborations, mundane as well as radical, were accompanied by an erosion of trust among the involved actors, regardless of their backgrounds.

Our findings reveal a relationship between, on the one hand, practical sanctuary work, networking and alliance building and, on the other hand, (dis)trust, where the two evolve in tandem. We see these mutual and intertwined processes as a spiral of disenchantment and political awakening.

One valid conclusion from our analysis is that transversal sanctuary practices change values and everyday life for the involved people and their more extensive networks. This change has implications for supporting people in vulnerable situations and approaching welfare institutions with rights claims (one’s own or claims made on behalf of others). Moreover, it has consequences for understanding promises in law and human rights treaties regarding social and political rights and how to address migration in different contexts. While citizens’ trust in the ruling system and its institutions is vital for the legitimacy of a democratic state (Füredi 2013), the unfair allocation of resources, precariousness of migrants, and legal uncertainty that emerge in our interviews create legitimacy deficiencies concerning the idea of Sweden as a welfare state. This deficiency should be viewed in the light of a long-lived idea of ‘Swedish exceptionalism’ having permeated values and discourses in the Swedish context for a long time. In particular, the decreasing trust in the government and public institutions, combined with exhaustion and fear of what might happen after potential deportation to oneself, a friend, or a family member, indicate the pervasive consequences of the restrictive shift in Swedish migration policies.

Furthermore, the erosion of trust also points to the consequences of the restrictive shift going beyond the area of migration control. New ways for solidarity and maintaining a minimum level of welfare are initiated within and through transversal sanctuaries. Collaborations between civil society, local businesses, professionals, and activists to alleviate the consequences of restrictions based on residency status illustrate how professionals, organisations and citizens join sanctuary enactments for a different future (Kazemi 2021; Lundberg and Strange 2017; see Yuval-Davis 2006).

In our analysis, sanctuaries appear not as specific places or statuses but as enactments related to legislative, political, and social contexts. Hence, transversal sanctuary enactments also illustrate the emergence of new political transversal communities. As argued by García Agustín and Jørgensen, besides connecting different identities and scales, transversal solidarities also link institutions and social imaginaries. In other words, transversalism can lead the way towards unexpected democratic imaginations, foster alternative understandings of welfare institutions, and shape new institutions from below, ‘when civil society generates its own institutions, on one hand, and, on the other hand, in how existing institutions can be opened to changes or influences by civil society’ (García Agustín and Jørgensen 2021, 860). Hence, transversal sanctuary enactments are intertwined with a growing distrust in the institutions fundamental to a democratic society. Although unstable and limited, in the radical transversal sanctuary enactments we have analysed, there is a seed for imagining and practising a community where people are granted rights and liveable futures regardless of legal status.

Interviews

Individual interview 14, January 22nd 2020

Individual interview 16, June 22nd 2020

Individual interview 22, February 17th and March 2nd 2020

Group interview 1, April 8th 202

Group interview 6, April 24th 2020

Group interview 11, May 8th and May 15th 2020

Group interview 14, June 15th 2020

Group interview 17, July 21st 2020

Acknowledgement

We would like to thank the participants for so generously sharing their experiences with us. We also want to express our appreciation to the reviewers for their constructive feedback and critique and the editors of this special issue for insightful comments. Further, we thank Formas for funding this research initiative under grant no 2019/01872. The research has been approved by the ethical review board (Etikprövningsmyndigheten), decision no 2019–05363.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).