Platser i nationalstatens gränsland - Om asylboendet som rum och diskursiv konstruktion

Sammanfattning: This thesis examines the discursive construction of housing for asylum seekers in Sweden. Housing accommodations for asylum seekers are located within the confines of the nation state, whilst their inhabitants simultaneously are excluded from the nation state figured as political community. This illustrates the ambiguous position of stateless individuals within the international system of nations states and in relation to Sweden specifically. By discussing the relationship between discourse and material spatiality and by framing this discussion within theoretical conceptions of inside/outside and the border separating the two, I argue that asylum seekers defies this very division. Their housing accommodations are discursively framed as both outside and inside the sphere of the nation. This reflects an inability of our political language to make sense of the asylum seeker and the places constructed for this group. Simultaneously, precisely this ambiguity enables the housing of asylum seekers to be controlled by the state.