Immigration control and the intimate sphere

Organizers: Jaana Palander (jaana.palander@migrationinstitute.fi) and Pihla Siim (pihla.siim@migrationinstitute.fi)

Time: Thursday 7.11., session 1 at 13.00-14.30 and session 2 at 16.15-17.45

In this workshop, we are interested in exploring how immigration control influences the intimate sphere and family dynamics. Private and family life are encroached in many ways, and people must tackle different legal and bureaucratic obstacles to be able to live together in one country. Uncertainty and threat of deportation affect people’s everyday lives and the sense of belonging to society. Temporality is closely intertwined with the immigration control. Changing legislation and long waiting periods make planning for the future difficult and stressful. Sense of displacement continues and making of home is postponed. Changes in immigration legislation and practice can also have unpredictable consequences. In addition, the negative effects go beyond the directly affected foreign citizen also affecting partners, children, extended family and friends. Unsecure situation usually burdens all involved and may affect (power) relations between the family members.

We look forward to hearing of your research that touches upon these questions. Your presentation can be empirical, theoretical or even methodological. We can also include both initial research plans and presentations based on already published work. The language of the workshop is English.

Session 1

Pihla Maria Siim, Migration Institute of Finland: Challenges Faced by Mixed-Citizenship Couples: Navigating Understandings of Genuine Relationships and the Burden of Proof

Research tends to focus on direct subjects of immigration control. However, by defining what kind of intimate partnerships are acceptable, border regime influences also citizens who are in a relationship with a foreigner. This presentation focuses on transnational intimacies of couples where one is of Finnish nationality and the other one of foreign background with an insecure status in Finland.

I will investigate how the ways immigration authorities determine genuine relationship affect mixed-citizenship couples and their possibilities to live ‘normal’ family life. Immigration control recognizes intimate ties rather selectively, viewing mixed-citizenship couples categorically with wariness. The couples are left with the burden of proof to show that they have right kind of relationship, motivated by love. The conceptualisations of marriage and family life thus become part of bordering processes. Couples need to “do their families” in a right way, and represent their relationships as normal and respectable. In this process, it is of great importance not to cross the lines between different immigration categories and to master the right conventions of narration.

The analysis is based on interviews with couples and experts in immigration work. In addition, I analyse negative decisions (76) conducted by the Finnish Immigration Service in 2023 regarding mixed-citizenship couples’ application on residence permit based on their family ties.

This research is done in the framework of the INDEFI project (‘Intimate geographies of bordering: Deportability and its effects on Finnish citizens with foreign spouses and their extended families’, funded by the Research Council of Finland, 2021–2025).

Ella Alin, University of Helsinki: Real and imagined effects of the immigration system in transnational couples’ decision making

It is well recognized that immigration legislation and practice affect family relationships when one (or more) family member has a precarious legal status. Family members often need to make choices that affect their family life, such as deciding where to work and live, or when to marry or separate, according to the limitations instilled by the immigration system. In addition to the tangible ways in which immigration legislation affects the choices made in families, the ways the wider society perceives families where one or more members have, actually or in the outsiders’ imagination, precarious legal status, affects how such families are perceived by the society, and consequently, how they feel about their relationship and choices. For example, a couple’s motivations of being together, or deciding where to live, are often viewed through the lens of immigration, regardless of whether the couple themselves would grant the immigration system any role in their decision making. In my presentation, I draw from interviews I have conducted as part of my PhD research on interracial couple relationships in Finland to discuss some of the ways in which immigration legislation, and its impact as imagined by outsiders, affects family practices in transnational couples, as well as their sense of agency regarding these practices, which from the outside are often perceived through the frame of ‘immigration’.

Teele Jänes, University of Eastern Finland: Authenticity of the intimate – meeting points of personal belief and public administration

In the modern society religion is often considered to be private and mostly separated from the public sphere, in reality the meeting points between the two may appear in somewhat surprising places. One of the places where these two worlds (personal religion and public administration) meet is in the religion-based asylum proceedings.

Religion is one of the five grounds for granting asylum, according to the 1951 Refugee Convention. Current research argues for a practical need to understand and explain the decision-making processes and judgement arising from immigration officials determining the authenticity of an asylum claim based on religious affiliation. The question about the immigration authorities’ competence in religious matters and in evaluating the genuineness of personal beliefs and practices remains relevant, addressed by an ongoing academic discussion. This research joins the discussions regarding the meeting points of the personal, the intimate and the state, bringing new information from the Baltic region. In 2023-2024, in-depth interviews with the Baltic asylum authorities and other relevant stakeholders (courts, policymakers, religious organisations) were conducted as well as training-related focus-group discussions. The diversity of religion-based claims and overall unstable migratory situations challenge the asylum processes. By exploring the everyday reality of state officials in their legal and institutional environment, their perspectives, knowledge and preconceptions regarding religion in the context of asylum as well as collecting emerging training needs, the study aims to practically contribute to regional asylum training development.

Rashida Abbas, University of Lahore: Migration Control in Pakistan: Legal Challenges and Their Impact on Familial and Personal Relationships

Migration is a multifaceted phenomenon with profound social, economic, and legal ramifications on refugees personal and familial dynamics. This study offers a critical analysis of the legal framework governing migration in Pakistan, exploring domestic legislation, international conventions, and their implementation to assess the efficacy of Pakistan’s migration management approach, particularly in light of its non-signatory status to the 1951 Refugee Convention. Refugees in Pakistan are frequently categorized as illegal immigrants under the Foreigners Act, raising serious concerns regarding their protection and rights, as well as their impact on family structures and personal relationships with immigrant and wider social communities. Using policy document analysis, I examine Pakistan’s domestic laws, including the Emigration Ordinance, 1979, and the Foreigners Act, 1946, which predominantly regulate emigration rather than immigration. Moreover, how such reductionist laws hinder in regulating normal familial and social relationships nationally and transnationally. The study highlights the absence of comprehensive legislation addressing immigration, which presents significant challenges to effective migration management, with far-reaching consequences on family cohesion and the intimate relationships of those affected. Instances such as discrimination, arbitrary detention, and inadequate access to basic services underscore the gaps in the effectiveness of the existing legal framework, exacerbating the vulnerability of families and intimate relationships among refugee migrants. This study offers policy recommendations aimed at enhancing governance and ensuring better protection for migrants and refugees.

Session 2

Paula Merikoski, University of Helsinki: Everyday struggles of living with a precarious or irregularised status in Finland

This paper examines how irregularity influences the everyday lives of irregularised or precarious migrants and their families in Finland. It begins by outlining how the Finnish migration regime and (anti-migration) policies create particular obstacles for irregularised migrants in Finland, focusing on the perspective of migrants’ intimate and domestic lives. Irregularity is a politically and legally produced situation, resulting from state policies and politics that restrict access to residence permits, asylum and fundamental rights while simultaneously creating a precarious labour force (e.g. de Genova 2004; Sigona et al. 2021). Moreover, irregularity is not merely about having a residence permit or not. Migration regimes leave many people in a situation of administrative precarity (Näre, Palumbo, Merikoski & Marchetti 2024), in which a person may hold a temporary and conditional residence permit or visa, and thus be at risk of falling into irregularity. Moreover, in this situation, uniting with one’s family and building a stable future is often impossible. In analysing how irregularity and administrative precarity influence the lives of migrants and their families, including situations where family members hold different statuses, this empirical paper draws from findings from thematic policy analysis and semi-structured expert interviews, workshops with experts and preliminary data from ethnographic fieldwork with precarious migrant workers in Finland.

Martta Myllylä, University of Helsinki: Parenting while waiting – Asylum-seeking families’ struggle for meaningful participation in reception centres in Finland

Research on families in forced migration situations emphasizes the consequences that restrictive migration regimes have on families whose members are forcibly detached from each other. However, less attention has been given to the struggles of asylum-seeking parents living in reception centers with their children. In this presentation, I examine how families cope and how parents negotiate parenting and participation in the context of Red Cross reception centers in Finland. The study is based on a qualitative analysis of interviews with asylum-seeking parents and ethnographic observations in reception centers. The results indicate that current reception services, especially the lack of child-care services, overlook the needs of families. In addition to the challenges the circumstances create for parenting, they deepen the marginalization of families in multiple ways, affecting both the present and the future. Instead of a therapeutic and individualistic approach, parents require material support and structural changes to the reception system to live a meaningful everyday life, practice good parenthood, and participate in local communities. Moreover, the limited services that confine parents, often single mothers, within the premises of reception centers are in contradiction with both Finland’s self-image as a model country for gender equality and with public and policy discourses that demand migrant integration. The results support the notion of reception services as a form of humanitarian government wherein asylum seekers are reduced to victims with biological and psychological needs, while their political and social rights and agency are ignored.

Gorana Panic, University of Oulu: Ukrainian families with children under the Temporary Protection in Finland: Relationalities as hopeful engagements in navigating (in)securities in cross-border situations

This study addresses a pressing issue of forced displacements following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. In immediate responses, Finland demonstrated a welcoming culture, tremendous voluntary efforts, and solidarity with people fleeing Ukraine. By the end of 2023, more than 60,000 people from Ukraine sought temporary protection (TP) in Finland (Eurostat). As beneficiaries of TP, they have unrestricted rights to work. Since March 2023, Ukrainians who lived in Finland for a year can apply for a municipality residence and become customers of the services provided by municipalities and wellbeing services counties. Meanwhile, the Finnish government aims for social security cuts and tightening immigration policy.

In growing research interest concerning the influx of migrants from Ukraine, and at the intersection of migration governance and social protection, this qualitative exploratory study examines how Ukrainian families with children are situated in shifting arrangements of cross-border living. Based on the personal experiences of Ukrainian families, we are interested in exploring families’ efforts to navigate unfamiliarity, (un)certainty, and (in) security in cross-border living, and the family’s emerging relations with various actors and networks involved in providing protection.

This presentation is focused on relational modalities as hopeful engagements in navigating (in)securities experienced by Ukrainian parents in cross-border situations. Empirical data consists of semi-structured interviews with 13 parents/guardians collected across Finland between October 2023 and February 2024. The study’s theoretical contribution is discussing the empirical data using the relational approach of statgraphy (Thelen, et al. 2017) and its three analysis domains: relational modalities, boundary work, and embeddedness. This is a sub-study of a broader research project Transnational Child Protection funded by the Finnish Ministry of Social Affairs and Health (2022-24).

Riikka Era, Tampere University: Where are the most vulnerable? Searching for small children in the legislative proposals of Finnish government and debates in parliament concerning Aliens Act and Act on the Integration of Immigrants and Reception of Asylum Seekers

Finland has stated that it is willing to help the “most vulnerable people” referring to children and families with children. This willingness can be tracked for example back to the 1920’s, it has been stated out loud in the case of the refugees from Vietnam in the 1970’s and again concerning the intra-European “burden sharing” of asylum seekers in the 2000’s.

How is the imagined, vulnerable child portrayed in the debates of Parliament and in the legislation proposals of Government? In this paper I turn to legislative processes from 1990’s to 2010’s and try to sketch out the figure of the child. I am interested in the role that is offered to the child who is seeking international protection in Finland. I focus on the small children, the ones who are not yet attending schools or other educational institutions.

This paper is part of my PhD research which concentrates on the lived realities of small children who live in Finnish reception centers. I am analyzing their everyday lives with the deleuzian concept of assemblage. The discourses used in the legislative processes are part of the macro level assemblage of these children and by that they bring affective forces and concrete effects to the children’s daily lives.

Abstracts

Session 1

Session 2