This paper investigates the current situation of the youth that applied for asylum in Sweden in 2015 as Unaccompanied Asylum Seeking Children (UASC). Specifically the former UASC youth from the Hazara ethnic group who were denied asylum yet are still living as undocumented in the municipality of Malmö, Sweden in 2018, now aged between 18 to 21 years old. This case study employs a hermeneutic-constructivist approach utilising semi-structured interviews with 10 of these Hazara unaccompanied, undocumented asylum seeking (UUAS) youth to examine their experiences and perspectives in terms of political and emotional belonging to communities and places in which they experience some form of marginalisation. Theories surrounding the concepts of belonging which consists of both emotional and political elements will be used, along with ‘othering’, to frame the youth’s experiences. The results of this study demonstrate how political belonging affects emotional belonging in various ways depending on context. The study also highlights how the impact of elements within both forms of belonging are assessed by individuals, and how these considerations are instrumental to a migrants decision to remain in, or leave, a location. This study also calls for further research in this field on these concepts of belonging affect marginalised groups.

This paper examines the intensified focus on ‘return’ in Danish asylum policy and the changed approach to the assessment of revocation of residence permits and asylum claims made by Syrian nationals. The aim of the study is to understand the interplay between Danish state actors and the Refugee Appeals Board and their tactics of legitimization in adopting this new approach and rejecting asylum protection to three Syrian nationals. The study concludes that discourses linking asylum protection to ‘international obligations’, refugee status to ‘return’ and ‘the refugee’ to an essentialist understanding of the term are fundamental in facilitating the decisions made in the cases. Furthermore, a governmental goal of ensuring ‘the security of society’, that is, the Danish population defined in national terms, underpins and works to sustain these discourses. The findings contribute to creating detailed knowledge about the Danish asylum system and the logic supporting the increased focus on ‘return’.

In dialogue with Critical perspectives in the field of Forced migration, this thesis aims to explore the spaces of „irregularity‟ regarding unaccompanied minors living non-status in the city of Malmö. With a theoretical departure in the ontological ideas of Hanna Arendt and Giorgio Agamben, the perspective of the Autonomy of Migration, and the concepts of „Acts of Citizenship‟, the thesis argues that these spaces are structured by multiple mechanisms of control, such as deportability, racism, poverty and precarity. In addition, the thesis investigates how these structures of control are contested by the minors. As the „irregular‟ subject in its presence challenges the Nation-state „order‟, the study argues that all her or his acts must be interpreted as confrontations. Hence the study aims to highlight the claims of rights and freedoms performed, not only by the minors themselves but also by the social networks surrounding them. The research is built upon fieldwork with non-status minors, asylum rights activists and semi-grass root actors in the spring of 2011 in the city of Malmö. Influenced by Methodological and Epistemological perspectives of Critical Ethnography and Action Research, the thesis also contains a normative requisite to deconstruct and question hegemonies and marginalizing structures.