In the shadow of temporality. Bosnian Croatian refugees with temporary residence permission in Sweden
In the beginning of the 1990’s Swedish immigration policy, which had been considered liberal and generous, beca¬me increasingly restrictive due to a number of domestic as well as international factors. One of the groups of refu¬gees particularly affected by these new restrictions was Bosnians with Croatian passports who apply for asylum. They were the first group of refugees subject to the new policy regulations and prac¬tices of ‘temporary protection’ (TUT). They were also the subject of experi¬mentation with diverse ideas concer¬ning the development of a new immigration policy emphasizing the notion of ‘repatriation’ instead of ‘integra¬tion’. This article analyses one specific program whose purpose is to prepare Bos¬nian Croats for repatriation and offers a critical picture of how the new immigration policy, as well as its legiti¬mating discourses, looks in practice. Based on in-depth interview with the refugees, the author has also analysed the strate¬gies developed by the refugees themsel¬ves in order to cope with the repressive and delimiting discourses that are implicit in the new repatriation policy.
