REFUSING REFUSAL: THE STRUGGLES OF STATELESS PALESTINIANS IN THE SWEDISH MIGRATION REGIME HELENA LINDHOLM * This article explores the ways in which contemporary Swedish migration politics are manifested and performed in relation to stateless Palestinians. A qualitative case study shows how the migration regime of Sweden aggravates conditions of statelessness through managerial aspects of categorisations, temporalities, passivisation and spatialities. The article illustrates how securitised migration politics are detrimental to how statelessness is lived and experienced but also that stateless migrants actively engage with this regime in order to resist, protest and achieve change. Using counter-conduct as a prism through which to analyse migrant resistance, the article further explores how stateless migrants do not passively submit themselves to the outcome of penalising regimes, but struggle for a right of presence. TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction and Aims .......................................................................................... 267 Theoretical Considerations: Statelessness, Deportability and Migrant Resistance as Counter-Conduct ............................................................................ 268 Mixed Methods ..................................................................................................... 273 State of the Art: Statelessness and Sweden’s Migration Politics .......................... 274 Conduct and Counter-Conduct ............................................................................. 276 A Categorisation and Identity....................................................................... 276 B Temporal Conduct and Counter-Conduct: ‘The Days I Lost’ .................. 279 C Conduct through Co-optation: ‘You Have Not Cooperated’ .................... 282 Spatial Resistance: ‘This Is a Prison’.................................................................... 284 Concluding Remarks: The Refusal of the Refused ............................................... 285 INTRODUCTION AND AIMS In late 2019, Ahmed, a stateless Palestinian man from Gaza in his 40s, was evicted from Restad Gård, the accommodation of the Swedish Migration Agency (‘SMA’) in the city of Vänersborg. His application for protection had been rejected and he was to be deported but found it impossible to return to Gaza. He saw no other solution than to spend his nights outside of the building. To keep warm, he wrapped himself in plastic and a tarpaulin as he lay on the asphalt outside of the imposing brick-layered building. Ahmed was on hunger strike during January and February 2020, with the intention of drawing attention to his situation. Later, a small blue tent bought by his friends became his only semblance of ‘home’. By February 2021, there was no change to his situation and due to the freezing cold, he was briefly hospitalised with hypothermia. Ahmed’s circumstances reflect how lives are made invisible and impossible through the governmentality of Sweden’s * Helena Lindholm is Professor in Peace and Development research at the School of Global Studies, University of Gothenburg. Disclosure Statement: I certify that there are no conflicts of interests. The funding for this project has been made available through the author’s current position. I am extremely grateful for the comments by the reviewers.