Constructing an ‘orderly’ asylum reception in Sweden: child rights governance and governmentality in policy legitimatization of asylum centres

There are currently major debates concerning migration policy in Sweden with politics moving towards changes in asylum policy where welfare rights for asylum-seekers are increasingly restrained. These policy changes include the recent shift in Sweden’s approach to asylum housing. This article analyses the Swedish governments policy legitimization of the instalment of state-controlled asylum centres and shows that in these policies EBO is problematized and asylum centres are romanticized resting on the safeguarding of children’s rights. The results show that the policy legitimizations are embedded in discourses of child rights governance and governmentality. What is revealed is that discourses of care and protection target asylum-seeking children and discourses of discipline and control target asylum-seeking parents. These discourses rest on a paternalistic approach where the state is construed as the protector.These discourses are leaned on to construct a legitimization of increased migration control.