Abstract
This article examines Swedish asylum deliberations regarding families with children with severe apathy, a condition where the child gradually loses all bodily functions. The article outlines the political context and medical evidence that has evolved since the beginning of the 2000s. It uses case studies and frequencies drawing from a case-file inventory covering 24 families, many with minority belonging. The asylum process, case law and the decision makers' role in reiterating and interpreting the families' asylum narratives are explored, analysed and discussed using discourse analysis and interpreted using intersectional theory. Findings suggest that the asylum narratives are greatly reduced and reformulated in a way that seems detrimental to state obligations towards, for example, rape victims. Findings also suggest that political persecution should be taken more seriously by Swedish migration authorities. Finally, evidence indicates a need for a feminist perspective, and an overall strategy, at authority level that does not discriminate.
Highlights
This article explores the asylum process in Sweden
It raises concerns with regard to the rejections on asylum and protection, access to a just process and impact on mental health and social exclusion, in particular for vulnerable persons1 and ethnic minority groups. This is important because if the systems and institutions fail in their duties to provide protection for forced migrants who have already been victims of serious state crime, this can disempower victims and become secondary victimization
Following the Swedish Migration Board (SMB) decision, the mother’s/family’s lawyer submitted several supplementary documents repeating that the mother is a single mother with two small children from a state known to abuse human rights, that her ethnic belonging and political activities put her at risk, and that
Summary
This article explores the asylum process in Sweden. It raises concerns with regard to the rejections on asylum and protection, access to a just process and impact on mental health and social exclusion, in particular for vulnerable persons1 and ethnic minority groups. The empirical data reviewed incorporate a total of 58 decisions included in the 24 families’ case files with at least one child with apathy.23 The files were revisited during two brief periods in 2012.24 These official documents are, analysed retrospectively.25 At the core is the assessment of asylum and protection, how fear of persecution is verbalized and interpreted and how this relates to other information, used by the migration authorities, to validate this.
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