2021
Statelessness & Citizenship Review
3(2)
ratio asylum claim approvals to stateless people has dropped to 41% in 2020, 75
from 80% in 2015. 76 According to 2019 statistics, 14,435 stateless people in the
population were registered, 77 that is, persons with a residence permit for at least
12 months. There are also asylum applicants with ‘undefined’ or ‘unknown’
identities, 78 potentially including stateless people who have been unable to prove
their identity. Twenty-two thousand were granted residence permits between 2015
and 2020. 79 Prior to the implementation of the temporary laws, the pathway for
stateless people to naturalisation was smoother and between 2013 and 2016, 80
most refugees from Syria, including stateless Palestinians, were granted
permanent residence facilitating naturalisation.
CONDUCT AND COUNTER-CONDUCT
A
Categorisation and Identity
One of the mechanisms used in the governmentality of migration relates to the
selection procedures. This includes categorisations, counting, registrations and
statistics used to establish who belongs and who does not, and who will be granted
the benefits of residence permits and who will not, thereby controlling or
excluding migrants and refugees (the ‘undesirables’) and keeping them outside of
nation-state borders. 81 The asylum procedure is a process of making credible
claims of identity and as such infringes on identity processes, as failure to establish
one’s identity may result in decisions of uncertain identities.
At this stage in the process, stateless Palestinians already experience particular
challenges. As Sweden has recognised a Palestinian state, Palestinian citizenship
is accepted for persons with passports registered in the West Bank or Gaza. 82
However, Palestinian citizens may, at times, be declared de facto stateless, 83 as
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
ibid.
Avgjorda asylärenden beslutade av Migrationsverket 2015 (Report, Migrationsverket 1
January
2016)
<https://www.migrationsverket.se/download/18.7c00d8e6143101d166d1aad/148555621492
9/Avgjorda%20asylärenden%202015%20-%20Asylum%20desicions%202015.pdf>.
Statistikservice, ‘Utländska medborgare i riket efter medborgarskapsland, ålder och kön. År
1973-2020’,
SCB
(Web
Page,
18
March
2021)
<https://www.statistikdatabasen.scb.se/pxweb/sv/ssd/START__BE__BE0101__BE0101F/U
tlmedbR/table/tableViewLayout1/>.
Mapping Statelessness (n 63) 17.
UNHCR Recommendations (n 65) 7.
See, eg, MIG 2013:19 (2013) Case No UM1590-13 (Migration Court of Appeal) (‘MIG
2013’); Rättsligt ställningstagande angående säkerhetsläget i Syrien (2013) Case No RCI
14/2013 (Swedish Migration Agency).
See Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo
(Routledge 1966); Liisa Malkki, Purity and Exile: Violence, Memory and National
Cosmology among Hutu Refugees in Tanzania (University of Chicago Press 1995); Zygmunt
Baumann, Wasted Lives: Modernity and Its Outcasts (Polity Press 2004); Michel Agier,
Managing the Undesirables: Refugees and Humanitarian Government (Polity Press 2011);
Nick Gill, Javier Caletrio and Victoria Mason, ‘Introduction: Mobilities and Forced
Migration’ (2011) 6(3) Mobilities and Forced Migration 301; Fassin (n 3); Griffiths,
‘Anonymous Aliens?’ (n 22); Elizabeth Mavroudi and Caroline Nagel, Global Migration:
Patterns, Processes and Politics (Routledge 2016); Vanessa Barker, Nordic Nationalism and
Penal Order (Routledge 2017).
Rättsligt kommentar angående bevisvärdet av palestinska 00-pass (2020) Case No SR
07/2020 (Swedish Migration Agency).
See Sawyer and Blitz (n 37).
276