Deportation limbo

Annika Lindberg is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the School of Global Studies, University of Gothenburg

‘Annika Lindberg has provided an essential piece of scholarship that analyses Nordic migration regimes. For people who have experienced European migration and asylum regimes, and scholars who research semi-carceral systems of border regulation, Lindberg’s theorisation of a “Deportation limbo” is compelling and convincing in equal measure. Moreover, it is underpinned by exhaustive ethnographic research with people on the sharp end of Nordic immigration control. Their stories and testimonies are written up with compassion and grace. The book is indispensable reading for scholars of migration and asylum – but also for those seeking to understand how racism works its way through contemporary European states, constructing the lives of migrant others as exploitable, disposable and deportable.Arshad Isakjee, Senior Lecturer in Human Geography, University of Liverpool‘In a world where borders are increasingly becoming sites of violence and death as well as of resistance and contestation, Deportation limbo provides a thorough analysis and a powerful critique of the daily operation of states’ mobility control regimes. Taking us on a journey through the landscapes of the Swedish and Danish detention and deportation systems, Lindberg’s book unveils deportation as a form of state violence, which suspends people’s lives and traps them in indefinite, deadly, limbo. This violence, which stems from fantasies of controlling human mobility, is being normalised and concealed, as Lindberg brilliantly demonstrates, making visible the racist infrastructures of nation states’ projects and the political prioritisation of some lives over others. Lindberg’s compelling book is ultimately a call for us all: to bear witness to state sanctioned border violence and to envision alternative futures that can allow us to “be in the world together”. This is essential and timely reading for anyone interested in a complex understanding of state violence and border regimes, and their multiple, devastating effects on us all.’Francesca Esposito, Lecturer in the School of Social Sciences, University of Westminster and Associate Director for Community Engagement and Activism at Border Criminologies, University of Oxford'Lindberg’s work appears at a time in which deportation studies is of paramount importance. The dismantling of the “myth of Nordic innocence” to reveal a critical mishandling of state powers that has disillusioned many of those participating in its systems is of pressing concern, both politically and academically. Of particular significance is Lindberg’s straddling of multiple fields of academic study, the major voices of each of which areaccounted for in this text; this ethnographic dimension may well be applied to other regions and political contexts to great effect.'Lewis Ebert, Aigne: Journal of the College of Arts, Celtic Studies and Social Sciences

• PrologueIntroduction: deportation fantasies1 The politics of deportation and the Nordic welfare state2 What you get is a prison: detention in Denmark3 Deporting with care: detention in Sweden4 Politics that kill, slowly: the Danish deportation camps5 The idea is to exhaust them: minimum welfare provisions in SwedenConclusion: state violence and its effectsEpilogue: Abolfazl’s death and other afterlivesIndex