Failed asylum, failed asylum seekers and the ‘international’

The purpose of my writing in this Piece is not to present my ‘ ndings’ or even to create a comprehensive analytical framework, which is implemented throughout this collage. Rather the epistemological attitude introduced here is re ected in the Episodes between the Pieces and develops and matures further in each Piece of the work. I aim to sketch a methodologically re ective reproduction or restructuring of my journey into the bodily politics of asylum and where this search has taken me. On the one hand, this signals an endeavour to t political theory together with the material body and, on the other, an attempt to negotiate between my personal feelings and thoughts and the failed asylum seekers’ expectations, hopes and ex-periences.

1.1.1. Failed asylum as a legislative and policy issue in Finland

The political context of Tahir’s story that was presented in the Preface dates back to the year 2004. Then the Finnish Aliens Act (Act 30.4.2004/301: section 51) in-troduced a temporary residence permit (the B) for asylum seekers who could not be returned, although no grounds for asylum or for the issue of a residence permit were discovered during the asylum process. The reasons prohibiting return were the lack of technical connections ( ights) or travel documentation, health prob-lems or that a state refused to take its citizen back.

The B was issued for one year at a time, and it could be given for a maximum of two years. If deportation still was impossible after that time, the person was entitled to a continuous residence permit (the A). In reality, most of the B permit holders got a continuous residence permit, since their countries of origin suffered from protracted con icts. The well-meaning idea behind the permit was, on the one hand, to make sure that all people residing in Finland had a legally de ned place in the society and, on the other, to avoid their total exclusion from the social support networks and systems (interview 9; also Asa 2009)⁷. The permit holders were

en-7 In Finland the basic principle of refugee politics (including asylum politics) is to affect the ground reasons of refugeeness, e.g. human rights violations, poverty and political crises. Finland has adopted

titled to a bed in a reception centre and received social assistance. Administrative-ly, however, the permit was poorly designed. The section left too much room for interpretation, and the permit was used much more widely than rst anticipated⁸. Receiving the B meant limitations on the right to work during the rst year, limited access to education, the impossibility of family reuni cation, and having no right to legal domicile to which many social security rights are connected⁹. All in all this meant prolonged stays in the reception centres (cf. Act 9.4.1999/493).

In 2008 the Aliens Act was reformed, and by the year 2010 the B permit given on the basis of the section 51 was rarely used. Before that a total of 672 persons, mostly from Somalia, Iraq (Kurdistan) and Afghanistan, had received and lived with this status. Yet the reform did not reduce the exclusionary tendency, but mere-ly shifted it. The Finnish policies did not become more liberal, nor did it become easier for arriving asylum seekers to claim their position, establish themselves as political agents or nd alternative ways of playing a part in the society. The ‘prob-lem’ that these bodies presented the Finnish state with was not solved or put to rest.

Instead new restrictions concerning for instance working and the rights to social security and family reuni cation were issued and new, stricter screening practices were erected.

In addition to the B permit holders, rejected and detained asylum seekers repre-sent another ‘group’ of failed asylum seekers in Finland. The only speci c deten-tion unit, with the capacity of a mere 40 people, was established in 2002. When the facility is full or the geographical distance to the unit is long, people are held in police custody at local police stations. In Finland, the three main reasons for deten-tion are: a) a reasonable suspicion that the ‘alien’ might commit an offence, b) that the person might hinder or prevent either the issue of a decision or the enforcement of their removal from the country, or c) if the establishment or clari cation of the

in its politics three permanent solutions to the question of refugees. These principles are voluntary return, local settlement and relocating refugees. (E.g. Työryhmän ehdotus hallituksen maahanmuut-topoliittiseksi ohjelmaksi 2005: 34.)

8 My approach differs signi cantly from Emma Haddad’s (2008: 206–208). According to her in Eu-rope where asylum continues to cause political tension and the number of applications lodged is high, temporary protection can ease the fears of the public “convincing citizens that the arrangement is not permanent and that the refugees will not be allowed to become a ‘burden’”. This way she sees that this status, as it means that the individual will return ‘home’, can “provide a useful link between non-refoulement and a durable solution” (also Kjaerum 1994). The temporary residence permit is not equal to temporary protection, which applies to different kinds of situations of mass ight, but common features do exist. (Cf. Uçarer 2006: 234.) The Finnish case shows that temporary tolerance is not politically sustainable.

9 Asylum seekers are allowed to start working three months after lodging their claim and work during the asylum process. If granted the B one had to stop working, unless an appeal against the decision was made. The second year of the permit did not entail any restrictions concerning work. In 2007, a legislative proposal was launched, which ultimately gave the B permit holders the right to work also during the rst year. (Cf. Sisäasiainministeriö 2006.)

person’s identity necessitates detention (see Act 30.4.2004/301: section 121; also Act 15.2.2002/116; cf. United Nations 1986). Every fourteen days the detention decision is judicially reviewed in the local civil Court (Act 30.4.2004/301: section 128).

It must be emphasised that not all rejected asylum seekers are detained and not all detainees are failed asylum seekers. A ‘typical’ detainee is a single man in his mid-20s from the Former Soviet Union, Nigeria, Ghana or the Congo. The criminality of detainees tends to be highly overstated in the Finnish media, and in reality most are several time Dublin-hits who have travelled around Europe for years. Many people come to the unit year after year. They might be using different names, but a set of matching prints in the Eurodac system gives them away. Over 80 per cent of the detainees are turned back or deported, mostly to other European countries. (Interview 8.) People I interviewed had been detained only after receiv-ing a negative asylum decision, so at the time of the interview they were waitreceiv-ing for deportation/return¹⁰, but yet hoped that their appeals would allow them to stay in Finland. At the time of my eldwork the average detention time was around three weeks. If the detainee was not deported during that time, s/he was usually transferred to a reception centre. The material conditions in reception for detainees are similar to those at the reception centres. Social assistance, however, is given in kind and it includes prepared and served meals and two euros per day as pocket money (Stenman & Scheinin 2007: 40). Limited mobility both within and outside the unit is the most obvious difference between detention conditions and the living conditions in the reception centres.

Having now brie y sketched the legislative context of failed asylum, some policy developments that affected the daily lives of failed asylum seekers – the B permit holders in particular – need to be addressed. This enables me to start shift-ing my thinkshift-ing from the political ‘question’ of failed asylum towards the livshift-ing and struggling body and its political potential (cf. Epstein 2010). In other words, I am now beginning to ground the tweak, to be completed in the next Piece, from the discursive and pre-existing to the experiential and relational.

Finland receives relatively few asylum seekers each year and asylum is rather recent as a noteworthy policy issue (see Saarelainen 1996; cf. Leitzinger 2008).

This and the number of arriving people varying from year to year explain the state of constant turmoil in asylum policies¹¹. New screening practices, legislative

con-10 In order to be deported, a person must at some point of one’s stay have had a Finnish residence permit. Most detainees have never had a residence permit, so in legal terms they are sent back, not deported. In effect these two governmental acts are, in any case, the same.

11 This turmoil is re ected for instance in the development of the reception centre network. In 1994 there were 34 reception centres, but in 2006 only 14 centres remained. During my eldwork, 2006–

2007, the declining number of asylum seekers led to ve more centres and a unit for independent liv-ing beliv-ing closed. Representliv-ing the lowest number since 1998, merely 1505 asylum applications were

ditions and criteria are being developed to contain the number of people arriving and, in the meanwhile, the national policy landscapes are ever-changing. Because the mobility of people causes a ux in policies, I claim that any responses to the ar-rival of asylum seekers are reactive rather than proactive. These policies can never anticipate the scope and direction of bodily movement within the international.

Now, I must emphasise that it is essential for my argument that the international be here understood as a particularly enacted political project in the world: a project that is based upon a speci c spatiotemporal logic. This project aims to produce a particular political order among states, but it simultaneously carries very concrete material and corporeal consequences for people’s lives. As a project the interna-tional can be conceptualised otherwise, and it is always prone to change. As this

rst Piece will argue, my collage dwells on one potential source of transformation within the international and how we think of its relations and politics.

Furthermore, my approach necessitates separating between the politics of the international and world politics as sometimes in IR – the discipline that theorises and focuses on the international – there is, I feel, a rather problematic elusion between the international and the world (see e.g. Agnew 1999; Jackson 2011: 16;

cf. however Agathangelou & Ling 2004b; Walker 2009). This elusion leads to the view that the empirical focus of IR is and should be on world politics. However, the world and the international are not synonymous, which means that the poli-tics of the international and world/global polipoli-tics are not that either. I draw still a further distinction between the politics of the international and the relations of the international. The former, pertains Rob Walker (2009: 4), expresses simulta-neously an account of the relationship between “a particular form of particular-ism/pluralism in the sovereign nation-state and a particular form of commonality/

universality in the international system of sovereign nation states”. In the politics of the international borders are regarded as sites, which specify rights and be-longings, or “where the remit of justice ends” (Dillon 1999: 156). However, I am not comfortable with conceiving the international simply through asylum political practices, which are connected to the production of boundaries and hierarchies and which classify people into different categories (cf. Mbembe 2003: 25–26)¹². This

lodged in the whole of 2007. However, in the following year 4016 asylum seekers arrived in Finland, and the number was again exceeded in 2009 with a total of 5988 applicants – the highest gure in Finnish history. As a result there was a shortage of reception facilities and new centres were opened in haste around Finland. The increasing number also caused problems in terms of the placement of the accepted applicants within the municipalities. In 2010 the number of applications declined to 3965, so the reception centre network faced new reductions. In this light it does not seem totally unreasonable to claim that the response of the Finnish policies to these changing numbers seems to be ad hoc (cf. Schuster 2003: 145–146).

12 Nevzat Soguk (1999: 97), citing Richard Plender (1988: 72–73), writes that “signi cant in terms of the emergence of the ‘international’ in the nineteenth century was the formulation of a number of

‘exemplary’ nonbinding resolutions on the asylum, extradition, and expulsion of aliens by the

Insti-dissatisfaction of mine brings me to the relations of the international as a means of tweaking our understanding of the nature of borders. In my work, then, borders are understood to suggest relational and shared liminality, not terminal and absolute separation (cf. Walters 2006). Adopting such a stance means that we move from the logic of governance to the sphere of the experienced and corporeal effects that mobility raises.

Indeed, it is worth taking note of the experiential and personal aspects of the asylum politics that begin to take shape in the following interaction between the B permit holders and the reception centre director. These failed asylum seekers (F) question both the functioning and rationale of the Finnish policies and the national project they aim to secure by making the director (D) confess that there are no laws carved in stone:

F: In the last meeting we were informed that, during 2007, 27 or 30 people will be able to move in their own apartments, so they get a continuous residence permit.

Where are these promises? Who are these people? Can you list the names, who those 28 or 30 people, that you promised, are?

D: We were talking about 27 people, who are residents in this reception centre, whom have then had the B permit for two years. Last year’s information was that, the information that we here at the centre, I stress, we in the reception centre had that information that after having had the B permit for two years, one can apply for an A permit. And we also had that information that it is pretty automatically granted.

But now you have heard that the applications will be processed one by one and that new guidelines have been produced concerning Afghanistan. And concerning Somalia and Iraq, but to a somewhat different direction.

(Meeting 4, taped, my translation)

At this point it is not necessary to go into the details of this discussion. What is noteworthy is that the de nitions about who can be included or cannot be accom-modated in the Finnish society are revealed to be in ux. Because it involves a reading of the spatial and bodily relations between people, the international, in this work, is ultimately about the possibilities of political life. Sovereignty, then, becomes understandable as a spatiotemporal practice of discrimination between bodies that are entitled to lead a political life within a given society and those who cannot be granted such a right (for a more detailed account see Piece II). The line of separation is uid and subject to change. The described lack of rm foundations perhaps explains why most public and political debates around the institution of asylum focus on security risks and problems caused by uncontrolled migration.

tute of International Law, which served as a common platform for the formalization of the control of people’s movements and activities within and across borders”. Hence, the sphere of the international was and in asylum politics at the European level still is seen as a sphere of practicing statecraft be-tween nations.

The other and unfamiliar become conceptualised as threatening and frightening.

This represents the inter-national, a world divided by borders, which Tahir’s ac-count in the Preface subtly and implicitly articulated. But more importantly for my present purposes, I claim that this imaginary refuses to engage with the thought that foreignness and otherness readily reside within us, in the ‘I’ (see Nancy 2008:

161–170).

The international and the bodies exposing and exposed to it are in a constant process of formation. They are never nished, complete or nal, but always un-folding in relations that evolve, on the one hand, between people and sovereign practices and, on the other, among people as they all move in relation to one an-other. In terms of ‘doing’ IR this is to suggest that, for once, we might refrain our-selves from asking: “what do lines do” or “how are boundaries drawn”. Instead, we might, just might, question how boundaries have become so central to our understandings of identity and political existence. This means asking: “How have we come to think about ourselves as separate in the rst place” (Edkins 2005b) and

“what does it mean to be many” (Nancy 2000)?

1.1.2. Fieldwork and interviews

So far I have introduced ‘failed asylum’ from a problem-oriented standpoint. Let me now approach the issue from a more personal perspective and introduce my sites and methods for data collection. As mentioned in passing already, this work draws on participant observation and interviews with B permit holders and detain-ees.

The interviewed ‘B people’ lived in the reception centres in Punkalaidun, Tam-pere and Turku, and the detainees in the Metsälä detention unit in Helsinki. The reception centres were selected based on an estimate of where I would be able to meet with the greatest potential number of B permit holders (interviews 1 and 10). Another consideration was that the Tampere centre operated a unit for inde-pendent living, mostly inhabited by B permit holders. Punkalaidun, again, was a rural centre, but the municipality is known for its exemplary work in terms of inclusion of migrants in schools and working life, as well as building good social relations between migrants and Finnish residents. The Turku centre operated by the Finnish Red Cross included also reception facilities for minors, some of whom had received the B. The Metsälä detention unit was a ‘natural’ choice, as the only designated detention centre in Finland, and thus it was the only place in which de-tainees were at all times ‘available’. The centres in Tampere and Punkalaidun were closed during the administrative changes of 2006–2007: the Punkalaidun centre and the unit for independent living at the end of 2006, and the rest of the Tampere

centre a year later.

‘Entering’ the eld was not as easy and straightforward as it may sound. I had to rst make sure that the directors would permit my access, and after that I needed to apply for an of cial research permit from the social services in Tampere and Helsinki. This included providing a research proposal and a plan for disposal of the material collected after the completion of this work. The ethical requirements to which I had to conform meant among other things that I was under no circum-stances allowed to use my interviewees’ real names, even if some of them in our encounters later asked me to do so. This made me ponder to whom I was actually ethically responsible, and how to negotiate the potentially con icting ethical as-pects and sensibilities.

Due to my commitment to guarantee the anonymity of the interviewees, all names that are used in this work are pseudonyms. This applies equally to the failed asylum seekers and the employees of the centres. Behind each name there is one person, except in the case of Nasir, which is a composite voice based on a group interview with ve men who all had the B permit. The reason for using a single pseudonym in this case is that one of the men interpreted the views and answers of

Due to my commitment to guarantee the anonymity of the interviewees, all names that are used in this work are pseudonyms. This applies equally to the failed asylum seekers and the employees of the centres. Behind each name there is one person, except in the case of Nasir, which is a composite voice based on a group interview with ve men who all had the B permit. The reason for using a single pseudonym in this case is that one of the men interpreted the views and answers of