Temporary Legality: Regulating Asylum through Housing and Education in the Swedish Welfare State

The thesis examines residence-permit requirements tied to housing and education to show how such requirements function as internal borders that are negotiated across and within municipalities, revealing how migration law is enacted through welfare institutions. Methodologically, it adopts a socio-legal lens to trace migration law beyond the Migration Agency and the courts into welfare sites, foregrounding the municipality as a bordering space. The analysis draws on 31 interviews with welfare practitioners, local politicians, and civil society actors, complemented by policy documents, court cases, and press material.

The analysis shows clearly that temporary legality produces a fluctuating space between legality and illegality, delegated to welfare practitioners to regulate. In such a space, municipal discretion, enacted through local policies and everyday practices, contests, cushions, or exacerbates migration law, generating locally differentiated status trajectories for individuals in need of protection. It is within such a condition, the thesis argues, that residence-permit requirements operate as internal borders, producing uneven and racialised access to welfare rights, family reunification, and permanent status. That is, by governing asylum through temporary legality, the Swedish state creates protracted forms of uncertainty and differentiates and dismantles the right to asylum.