Abstract:
Over the past decades, European states have increasingly limited irregular
migrants’ access to welfare services as a tool for migration control. Still, irregular
migrants tend to have access to certain basic services, although frequently of
a subordinate, arbitrary, and unstable kind. Drawing on in-depth ethnographic
fieldwork conducted in Norway, this book sheds light on ambiguities in the state’s
response to irregular migration that simultaneously cut through law, policy, and
practice. Carefully examining the complex interplay between the geopolitical
management of territory and the biopolitical management of populations, the
book argues that irregularised migrants should be understood as precariously
included in the welfare state rather than simply excluded. The notion of precarious
inclusion highlights the insecure and unpredictable nature of the inclusive
practises, underscoring how limited access to welfare does not necessarily
contradict restrictive migration policies. Taking the situated encounters between
irregularised migrants and service providers as its starting point for exploring
broader questions of state sovereignty, biopolitics, and borders, Migration Control
and Access to Welfare offers insightful analyses of the role of life, territory,
and temporality in contemporary politics. As such, it will appeal to scholars of
migration and border studies, gender research, social anthropology, geography,
and sociology.
