People‐Processing Capacity: The Origins and Development of Institutions to Render Forced Migrants as Cases in Canada and Sweden

ABSTRACT States have invested heavily in controlling forced migration for decades, with mixed results. Research often focuses on deterrence, leading to a neglect of bureaucratic boundaries within borders. This article unpacks the unrecognized importance of people‐processing capacity: a state's ability to render forced migrants legible by categorizing them as cases and selecting those perceived as desirable victims. Due to the heterogeneous nature of claims and the agency of migrants, rendering migrants as cases is a deeply complicated process. Using a historical‐institutionalist framework, the article explores the role and historical development of people‐processing capacity through a comparison of the evolution of modern migration control in Canada and Sweden, two states with similar trajectories of capacity‐building but different guiding ideas for migration policy. The results trace the institutional roots of deservingness, reveal different ideals of vulnerable and adaptable refugees, and theorize how persistent governance problems emerge from classification systems intended to order migration.