Academics have for decades written on the need to interrogate the labels upon which the field of Refugee and Forced Migration Studies has been founded. At the centre of these discussions has been theorising around the 'integrity' and 'content' of the refugee label itself, with foundational texts expounding the need to take nothing about the meaning and purpose of this label for granted. This is evidently important in popular accounts, where the term's misuse fuels anti-immigrant sentiments and societal mistrust, as well as for the futures of these populations, as multiple interpretations of their status affect attempts to negotiate durable solutions to their plight. Without denying the importance of these theoretical accounts, or the incredibly rich literature that has emerged on account of them, this thesis suggests that much of the theorising on labelling to date has lacked a clear theoretical framework around which to structure otherwise critical observations vis-à-vis the performative and malleable characteristics of language. It therefore introduces semiotic theories and methodologies as an approach for making sense of these manifold interpretations and their relationships to each other, and to explore what impacts this has on negotiations over refugees' futures. Associated theories are used to explain the controversial negotiations that surrounded the invocation of the Cessation Clause for Eritrean refugees in Sudan in 2002, and the ongoing attempts to apply Cessation to Rwandan refugees in Uganda. Both processes were mired by controversy, and yet almost no literature exists detailing when, why and how they unfolded as they did. Disaggregating the refugee 'label' through the semiotic frameworks provided by Saussure and Barthes helps explain the conceptual and spatial dissonance that plagued attempts to conclude these protracted refugee situations. Through doing so, this thesis seeks to make three main contributions. First, it provides these extended accounts of how decisions to apply Cessation are arrived at, thereby filling an empirical gap in literature on this process. Second, it presents a heuristic framework rooted in linguistic theories to explain how certain words and objects - including the refugee label - can see their meanings transformed and bourgeon over time, the mechanisms through which this distortion occurs and is accommodated within discussions over the treatment of refugees, and the implications that the application of this theoretical framework has for how we understand particular incidents of decision-making within the refugee regime. Third, these theoretical approaches are shown to result in key challenges to how the role, content and function of the word refugee have been conceptualised to date.

Elisabeth Abiri claimed that the political question regarding immigration to Sweden had been securitized during the 1990s and that national security, therefore, had been prioritized on the expense of human security and human rights. This thesis will examine whether or not her perspective is valid as an explanatory tool in the context of Swedish migration politics during the “migrant crisis” 2015-2016. Her perspective will be examined by cross-referencing it to the theory of political securitization by examining the propositions, proposed laws and measures, speeches and claims by members of the Swedish Government regarding this topic. I will also define national security so that this term may be applied as a tool for analysing the validity of Abiri’s claim in the aforementioned context. The perspectives of human security and human rights and human rights and migration will also be applied in order to test Abiri’s perspective’s validity. The results show that migration politics in Sweden has indeed been securitized and that this, in turn, has been the factor which allowed the Swedish government to, not only propose, but also adopt new laws and extraordinary measures that have turned the priority from migrant rights and security to national security. Keyword: Securitization, Migration, Migration Politics, Human Rights, Sweden Antal ord: 10623

The state of Arizona became the main corridor for unauthorised migration into the United States in the early 2000s. A security approach to the issue at the state and local levels of policymaking became increasingly marked later in that decade. This escalation challenged the longstanding settlement in the United States that immigration was an exclusively federal matter, but occurred during a time when, by traditional measures, the unauthorised entry problem was easing. Such a development raises important questions about why security is chosen as a policy approach, highlighting the need to understand the securitization of immigration as a matter of political rationality. This thesis uses recent immigration politics in Arizona as a case study in order to examine why policymakers treat an issue like immigration as a security issue, when other interpretations are available. This thesis provides a detailed historical narrative of the evolution of migration and border-security politics at these levels of government in Arizona from 2004, when a broad political consensus began to emerge that there was a security problem on the international border which the state had to act to address, to 2011, when the then-years-long trend of securitizing immigration at the state level was abruptly halted. Taking an interpretivist approach to understanding policymaking, this thesis employs semi-structured elite interviews with state and local-level policymakers in Arizona, and extensive analysis of media and government documents. This research contributes originally to knowledge in two main ways. First, it furthers the migration politics field by advancing its understanding of the securitization of migration, and particularly the phenomenon of parties across the political spectrum coming to support security approaches towards, and restriction of, immigration. This thesis thoroughly explains the occurrence of this phenomenon in a major case, identifying the elite political logics, strategies, and understandings that were instrumental in the decisions that composed this process. Second, this thesis contributes to a developing security-studies literature that conceptualises securitization not as an “exceptional” form of politics, but as driven by “normal” political considerations. This research identifies how competitive democratic political logics produced phenomena usually ascribed by securitization theory to exceptionalism, including the narrowed field of contestation around security issues, and the adoption of policies that would previously have been considered extreme. It also examines how, in this case, securitization was successfully contested democratically. In this way, this thesis contributes toward the development of a concept of “security politics.”

The paradox of contemporary migration in the EU is that new actors, rules, and institutions have emerged and created internal spaces where there is a gradual reorientation of the character of EU border regime. These spaces have become arenas where EU member states are re-categorizing, re-scaling, expanding, and diversifying their modes of internal migration control and enforcement. To overcome this paradox, this research seeks to explore migration policies in Sweden, Germany, and France to demonstrate that the narratives about EU common border policy is complex, uncertain, polarising, and conflicting. This paper argues that the emergence of the EU common border regime with a multiplicity of actors have created everyday bordering as a rebordering mechanism of control that threatens the idea of a common EU border, especially at the level of nation states. My theoretical approach is based on ‘everyday bordering and the politics of beloninging’. And I applied an interpretative approach in the analysis of official policy documents, academic articles, media reports, advocacy papers, NGO documents, and political speeches.

The purpose of the thesis is to challenge the traditional division between securitization and humanitarian practices in relation to migration, more specifically smuggling of migrants. Based on Nina Perkowski’s study of the relationship between humanitarianism, human rights and security and her theoretical division between paternalistic and emancipatory humanitarianism, these two interpretations have been further developed in this study, substantiated by Agamben, Foucault and Butler (among others), and produced as two idealtypes. These idealtypes give a more nuanced picture of the relation between paternalistic and emancipatory humanitarianism, and how the paternalistic one interacts with securitization to protect Europe as a sovereign entity. Two research-questions are analyzed through idea-analysis as the textual analytic method to make visible the different ideas in the material.  The thesis finds that EU in its problematization of migrant smuggling have a paternalistic approach and how this approach enables for securitization of migrant smuggling and irregular migration to protect human life. But is human life the only thing EU intends to protect? The results for instance show how externalization of borders, cooperation with countries of origin and information campaigns for migrants, all serve security purposes with the European union as the referent-object.

This social scientific thesis is dedicated to the widespread social phenomena of racism. More specifically, I am conducting a critical discourse analysis according to Fairclough’s methodology. The analysis is aimed at analyzing the politics of the Sweden Democrats wherein there is a use of three primary sources. As proposed by previous research on the topic of racism, a multifaceted approach is used, and the analysis is initiated with a variety of theories. As for the background, CERD’s 22/23rd concluding observation on Sweden clarifies for Sweden’s current reoccurrence of racial discrimination/racism. In addition, with ECOSOC’s General Comment no. 20. laying out a definition to the concept of discrimination, and thereon using AHRC’s definition on racism.  The main purpose of the thesis was to lay out: -       How the Sweden Democrats approach migration politics and how this furtherly could be seen as problematic due to issues of racism/racial discrimination/racial differentiation.  As the final conclusion came to; the Sweden Democrats pursue an ethnocentric rhetoric which will de facto lead to both direct and indirect discrimination.

The purpose of this study was to analyze Swedish Twitter users participation in Swedish migration politics in an online setting by examining the interactions and discussions between users on the platform the day before the Swedish election of 2018. The potential insight into political views that social media presents gave us an opportunity to explore how Swedish citizens, politicians, or members of other social and professional roles involved themselves politically and how they interacted with others on Twitter. We did this by examining the hashtag “#Migpol” (short for “Migration politics”). We collected and analyzed a total amount of 328 tweets and an additional 400 replies to these tweets where users had included the hashtag. This was done in order to construct our network which consisted of the platform functions @mention and @reply. It was through these we analyzed users interactions with other users and organizations. To perform our study, we chose a mixed method approach of network analysis and a secondary method inspired by discourse analysis. For our analysis, we applied a theoretical framework consisting of Erving Goffman’s dramaturgical theory and Alessandro Pizzorno’s ideas on political participation. Pizzorno’s ideas from 1970 were reworked and adapted in order to fit for research on social media. The result of the network analysis was displayed as a visualization that revealed how multiple users obtained various values of centrality due to the interaction rate between users, it also revealed that the total number of mutual relationships in the network was low and instead there was a prevalence of clusters of smaller networks inside the much larger network. The tweets containing the hashtags were then analyzed with the method inspired by discourse analysis as we wanted a deeper insight into how the users expressed their opinions. This was also done in order to find dominant topics and whether or not the discourse was affected by the actor’s centrality value. The result of this showed that an anti-immigration party and the party leader public debate on the 7th of September held a great focus while there was a third subject emerging which showed signs of nationalism. The discourse was not affected by centrality value but an indication that some actors were more known inside the hashtag than others. / Syftet med den här studien var att analysera svenska Twitter användares deltagande i svensk migrationspolitik online genom att forska kring interaktioner och diskussioner mellan olika användare på plattformen en dag före Riksdagsvalet 2018. Den potentiella insynen i politisk åskådning som sociala medier kan bistå med gav oss en möjlighet att utforska hur svenska medborgare, politiker, eller medlemmar i andra sociala- samt yrkesroller involverar sig i politisk aktivitet och hur de interagerade med andra på Twitter. Forskningen i detta arbete har skett genom att granska hashtagen “#Migpol” (kort för migrationspolitik). Vi samlade och analyserade totalt 328 tweets samt ytterligare 400 svar på dessa, där användarna inkluderat hashtagen. Det var med dessa vi konstruerade vårt nätverk som består av @replies och @mentions och det var genom dessa plattforms funktioner som vi också analyserade användarnas interaktioner samt diskussioner med andra användare och organisationer. Vi använde oss utav en metod blandning bestående av nätverks analys och en sekundär metod inspirerad av diskurs analys. Som underlag för vår analys, använde vi oss utav ett teoretiskt ramverk bestående av Erving Goffmans dramaturgiska teori samt Alessandro Pizzornos idéer om politiskt deltagande. Pizzornos idéer från 1970 var återskapade och anpassade för att de skulle kunna bli applicerbara för forskning på sociala medier. Resultatet av nätverksanalysen visade att många av de svenska användare fick olika värden av centralitet på grund av att dom integrerade i stor utsträckning med varandra, dock visade det sig att ömsesidiga förhållanden i nätverket var väldigt få. Resultatet visade också att det fanns flera mängder av mindre kluster av nätverk inom det större nätverket. Vi analyserade också de tweets som innehöll hashtagen med metoden inspirerad av diskursanalys, detta då ville få en insikt i hur användarna uttryckte sina åsikter i diskussioner som uppstått. Det var också på så vis vi kunde urskilja vilka ämnen som dominerade inom diskussionerna samt huruvida centralitet påverkade diskussionerna. Resultatet av denna analys visade att ett parti med antimigration åsikter och partiledardebatten som ägde rum den 7:e September var i fokus men att det även fanns spår av ett tredje resultat som indikerade en viss nivå av nationalism. Resultatet visade också att centralitet påverkade inte diskussionerna, dock fann vi en indikation på att vissa användare kan vara mer kända inom hashtagen än andra.

Denmark has one of the toughest immigration laws in Europe and legislation has become even tighter. Amid this political climate, a gleam of hope in the form of a refugee and asylum-seeker community centre was established. This centre is called Trampoline House and works to provide refugees and asylum-seekers a place of refuge, hope and community. Inside this centre, we find an art gallery, Centre for Art on Migration Politics (CAMP) dedicated to exhibiting artworks discussing questions of displacement, migration, immigration and asylum. The gallery, in partnership with Trampoline House, hosts events, workshops and talks that encourage cultural exchange between artists, users of Trampoline House and others.Focusing on a particular exhibition, Decolonising Appearance, curated by Nicholas Mirzoeff, that deals with migration and decolonialism, this study attempts to unpack the art gallery’s communication approaches in order to identify strategies for transformative dialogue and social change. Issues of how political and artistic practices intersect are discussed within the framework of voice and appearance (Appadurai 2004, Couldry 2010 & Arendt 1958). By focusing on appearance and re-appearance, this paper examines how notions of voice and capacity may inform the gallery’s decolonial artistic practices.The study finds that while CAMP has ambitions to create dialogue through strategies of artistic interventions, art events and an art gallery guide programme where participants are recruited from Trampoline House, there is a disconnect between what it strives to be, and what it is. Although the vision of CAMP is to build bridges and create cultural exchanges these are only successful to varying degrees. In order to succeed in this vision, the approaches must be more inclusionary and embrace a wider segment of society.