Keeping up with the kladdkaka: Kindness and coercion in Swedish immigration detention centres
| Author | Victoria Canning |
| Published date | 01 November 2020 |
| Date | 01 November 2020 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/1477370818820627 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1477370818820627
European Journal of Criminology
2020, Vol. 17(6) 723 –743
© The Author(s) 2019
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DOI: 10.1177/1477370818820627
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Keeping up with the
kladdkaka: Kindness and
coercion in Swedish
immigration detention centres
Victoria Canning
University of Bristol, UK
Abstract
Unlike many of its neighbouring North European countries, Sweden has historically been reluctant
to expand its use of immigration detention. Likewise, and similar to its use of prisons, it is a state
that often favours architectural ‘softness’ in the structure and regime of detention. However,
as this article contends, its reputation for hospitality and welfare is in contrast with the very
existence of such spaces. Reflecting on interviews with detention custody officers and governors
in two such centres, I demonstrate how ‘hard’ approaches to control are instead supplemented
with dualistically ‘kind’ and coercive measures to obtain their ultimate agenda: the deportation of
the unwanted immigrant Other. Considering the harms inherent to imprisonment, I argue that –
although preferable to harsher conditions enacted by various other states – the negative impacts
of confinement cannot be eradicated by ‘soft’ approaches, but rather require the eradication of
border confinement itself.
Keywords
borders, detention, harm, immigration, Sweden
Introduction
As in many of its Northern counterparts, immigration is an increasingly contentious
issue in Sweden. As Europe’s crisis in refugee reception unfolded – specifically in late
2015 and early 2016 – so too did a discourse of welfare and humanitarianism. While
Sweden’s neighbouring countries worked to foment ‘hostile environments’ for the
increasing numbers of people arriving to seek asylum, Swedish Prime Minister Stefan
Löfven initially declared that ‘My Europe does not build walls’ (in Barker, 2018: 1).
Civil society mobilized across parts of Sweden to offer blankets, tents, tea and food.
Corresponding author:
Victoria Canning, School for Policy Studies, University of Bristol, 8 Priory Road, Bristol, BS8 1TZ, UK.
Email: victoria.canning@bristol.ac.uk
820627EUC0010.1177/1477370818820627European Journal of CriminologyCanning
research-article2019
Article
724 European Journal of Criminology 17(6)
Therefore, when border restrictions were implemented through passport regulation on
24 November 20151 on the Oresund Bridge – the 8 kilometre architectural feat facilitat-
ing free movement between Denmark and Sweden – it symbolized the ultimate disinte-
gration of Sweden’s seemingly open approach to migration north.2 Developing on
from this, this article focuses on contemporary Swedish approaches to the internal-
ized control of people seeking asylum. According to the Ministry of Justice (2018),
‘the Government’s objective is to ensure a sustainable migration policy that safe-
guards the right of asylum and, within the framework of managed immigration’.
Drawing specifically from the context of immigration detention, it unpacks the per-
ceptively soft forms of control in Sweden’s approaches to immigration (Barker, 2013;
Ugelvik, 2013; Ugelvik and Dullum, 2012). In all I argue that, although often rela-
tively environmentally and architecturally unrestrictive, liberal rights-based frame-
works are not compatible with the challenge to civil liberties that is inherent in the
incarceration of people based on concepts of non-belonging and national identity
(Anderson, 1991; Murji, 2018).
Method and scope of the article
The arguments set out below draw from research in two immigration detention centres
– or förvar – in Sweden in September and October of 2017. As part of a larger 24-month
project researching gendered harms in asylum processes in the UK, Denmark and
Sweden, I gained access to two such spaces to undertake interviews with custody officers
and governors working there, as well as one oral history with a woman detainee. In all,
the project incorporates 74 in-depth semi-structured interviews with psychologists, sup-
port workers, border agents, refugee rights activists and other such social actors working
with people seeking asylum. This has been further enriched by oral histories with women
seeking asylum, which, at the time of writing, are still ongoing (see Canning, 2018a,
2018b; Canning, forthcoming; Canning et al., 2017). This article reflects predominantly
on my research experiences in these two centres (which I have anonymized as Centre A
and Centre B) and interviews with 11 staff working within them. However, the wider
context of bordering in Northern Europe is drawn into focus throughout, placing this
centrally but in a broad context of exacerbated controls, and the impacts thereof.
Participants are identified by the prefix ‘S’ (depicting Sweden) and number (for example,
S24) for the sake of anonymity as well as consistency across forthcoming articles.
As the title suggests, this article focuses on two primary mechanisms of social interac-
tion and soft control: notions of kindness enacted by staff who aim to ensure that the
experience of incarceration is not inherently unpleasant, and that the people detained do
not view them as part of a system of oppression; and the embedding of coercive practices
to ensure and enact the ultimate aims of the immigration detention centre. That is, ‘our
primary objective is to make sure they’re here, that they’re available for their deporta-
tion’ (S27, custody officer); thus all actions, however perceptively soft, are peripheral to
the very ontological existence of immigration detention.
Developing from work by Evan Stark (2007), Walby and Towers argue that ‘violence
always produces coercion since this is one of the harms that is definitional of violence
(such as fear, alarm or distress)’ (2018: 13). If we take structural violence as a state’s
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