The problem of poor people’s mobility – a genealogical inquiry

Abstract

ABSTRACT In recent years, an increasingly visible poverty has been widely debated in Sweden, not least in terms of ‘vulnerable EU citizens’. Issues of EU-internal mobility have gained renewed interest as EU citizens have the legal right to move freely within the EU. The focus in this debate has been on poor EU citizens categorized as ‘Roma’. In many respects, ‘the Roma’ have become a symbol for the mobility of poor people as a problem. The purpose of this article is to investigate contemporary discourses on poor people’s mobility as a social problem, in the light of similar descriptions in the past. Starting with the 2010s, we analyse governmental reports from the 1950s and 1920s in which the mobility of poor people has been subjected to political debate. We draw upon a genealogical approach informed by Michel Foucault, focusing on the categorization of mobile poor people as problematic and deviant, in relation to what is conceptualized as the norm. In line with this approach, we analyse historical formations of particular ‘regimes of truth’ concerning the mobility of poor people. Our results show that the mobility of poor people is a recurring problem, even though in different ways at different times. The political responses to the problems caused by poor people’s mobility range from disciplinary and excluding to assimilating interventions directed at the mobility of poor people – in the 2010s represented by ‘the vulnerable EU citizens’, in the 1950s by ‘the gypsies’ and in the 1920s by ‘the travellers’.