Struggling over Rights of Romani EU Migrants - An Inquiry into Biopower in the Case of the Eviction of the Sorgenfri Camp in Malmö, Sweden

Sammanfattning: In 2015, local authorities in Malmö, Sweden, evicted an informal settlement, the Sorgenfri Camp, in which mostly Romani EU migrants were living. No housing alternatives were offered. Critics saw this as a human rights violation, but the municipality found that the people were not entitled to the rights in question. This thesis explores these different rights discourses by tracing their underlying power relations through a Foucauldian discourse analysis. Foucault’s understanding of biopower, rights, and subjectivity is applied. The findings suggest that the municipality saw the camp residents as not entitled to housing rights because they were seen as occupants threatening private property and foreign EU citizens burdening the local welfare system, while critics resisted such rights denial by highlighting the persons’ humanity and vulnerability as Roma people. All actors where thus concerned with the biopolitical responsibility of the municipality to protect the life of the population, but saw this realized either through denying or granting rights to the camp residents, depending on what kinds of subjects they were seen as. This study exemplifies the power struggle through which people’s entitlements to rights are constantly produced, reproduced, and challenged as they are placed into different subject positions.