A BERTopic Exploration of Immigrant Narratives on Swedish Bureaucracy in an Online Immigrant Forum

This thesis investigates the nature of bureaucracy in the immigrant journey in Sweden through an analysis of online discourse from the r/TillSverige immigrant forum. The central objective is to identify the most common bureaucratic and administrative obstacles reported by the forum participants and to interpret these using a critical theoretical framework.Methodologically, this study adopted a two-stage Computational Content Analysis approach. Initially, a Natural Language Processing technique, specifically the BERTopic algorithm, was applied to an anonymized dataset of r/TillSverige forum posts to identify recurrent thematic bureaucratic challenges. This quantitative phase was followed by a qualitative critical interpretation of the computationally derived themes, analysing the identified obstacles through theoretical lenses.The study identified challenges that were primarily categorized into "bureaucracies for thriving" (encompassing issues such as personnummer, banking access/BankID, and the fiscal system) and "bureaucracies for arriving, staying, or leaving" (involving procedural complexity, long processing times for visas and permits, and difficulties with appeals and official interactions). The qualitative interpretation further revealed these barriers as tangible manifestations of temporal control, instruments for producing internal borders, promoters of differential inclusion, and as reflections of the exercise of discretionary power, all of which significantly shaped the immigrant experience. This research highlights an innovative use of Natural Language Processing to systematically analyse and give visibility to these shared experiences.