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Between a rock and a hard place: Undocumented migrants in Norway Amanda Haugen Thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the Master Degree in Philosophy Department of Social Anthropology University of Bergen June 2012 Acknowledgement First of all I want to thank my informants for trusting and letting me be part of their lives. Thank you for sharing your experiences with me. Very special thanks to my supervisor, Tone Bringa, thank you very much for your supervising and your productive and detailed comments. I want to thank the initiators of the project “Provisions of Welfare to ‘Irregular Migrants” (PROVIR), especially Christine Jacobsen for her guidelines I want to thank my very good friend for her encouragement, her support and for putting up with me while I was conducting fieldwork and writing the paper. I would like to thank all my fellow students in the program, thank you for our conversations and feedbacks. I want to thank those who read my paper and gave me comments, thank you very much for that. Amanda Haugen Bergen, June 2012 i Table of Contents Chapter one .......................................................................................................... 1 Introduction ............................................................................................................................ 1 Who are the undocumented migrants? ................................................................................... 1 Terminology ........................................................................................................................... 2 Research of undocumented migrants ...................................................................................... 4 Studies of undocumented migrants in Scandinavian countries .............................................. 5 Undocumented migrants in the media .................................................................................... 6 Living conditions and rights of undocumented migrants ....................................................... 7 Previous studies in Norway .................................................................................................... 8 Chapter outline ....................................................................................................................... 9 Ethical considerations ........................................................................................................... 10 The fieldwork setting and the methodology ......................................................................... 12 Language and the role of my background ............................................................................ 13 Chapter two ........................................................................................................ 15 Implications of being without residence permit ................................................................... 15 Introduction: ......................................................................................................................... 15 The construction of “the refugee” ........................................................................................ 15 Problematisation of movement ............................................................................................. 17 Society’s perception of undocumented migrant as experienced by migrants themselves: ... 19 Criminalisatio .................................................................................................................... 19 Police ................................................................................................................................. 20 The lack of identification as source of unknown .............................................................. 21 Role of media in criminalising undocumented migrants .................................................. 21 ii Undocumented migrants as homo sacer: .............................................................................. 24 Who am I? ......................................................................................................................... 24 Disempowerment .............................................................................................................. 27 Exclusion ........................................................................................................................... 29 Self-esteem ........................................................................................................................ 30 Privacy .............................................................................................................................. 30 Re-empowerment by undocumented migrants ..................................................................... 31 Other forms of re-empowerment .......................................................................................... 32 Chapter three ..................................................................................................... 34 In search of home ................................................................................................................. 34 Introduction .......................................................................................................................... 34 Place, identity and home ....................................................................................................... 35 Home and mobility ............................................................................................................... 37 Making home or re-making home ........................................................................................ 38 Home and violence ............................................................................................................... 41 Norway as a temporary shelter or a transit: .......................................................................... 43 Home without rights ............................................................................................................. 45 The reception centres ............................................................................................................ 46 “Return” to where? ............................................................................................................... 47 Chapter four ...................................................................................................... 50 The exercise of power on undocumented migrants and the possibilities of resistance ........ 50 Introduction .......................................................................................................................... 50 Power relations and undocumented migrants ....................................................................... 50 Resistance by undocumented migrants ................................................................................. 53 Invisibility: a strategy to avoid deportation ......................................................................... 55 iii Visibility as a resistance: ...................................................................................................... 59 The Palestinian camp ........................................................................................................ 59 The organisation and management of the camp................................................................ 61 The location of the camp ................................................................................................... 64 The asylum march ................................................................................................................ 65 Concluding Remarks ......................................................................................... 69 Bibliography ....................................................................................................... 71 iv Chapter one Introduction In this chapter I will give a brief account of the categorisations of undocumented migrants and their numbers globally, in Europe and eventually in Norway. Then I will move into the conceptualisations of this group of migrants in the academic studies and researches. I will write about ethical considerations in researching undocumented migrants. I will review and summarise previous research conducted of undocumented migrants in Norway and other Scandinavian countries, and the contribution of my study within this body of work. I will then outline the chapters of this thesis and proceed to describe the fieldwork setting and the methods I used in conducting the fieldwork. Finally I will discuss the roles my particular background and language skills may have played in facilitating access to people and establishing trust. Who are the undocumented migrants? Undocumented migrants are people who live in Norway without legal residence permits. (Ottesen:6) points out that there are several groups of people with different legal statuses who live in Norway without legal residence and they can be categorised as:- 1. People who entered Norway with a valid visa but has overstayed and their visas have expired. 2. People who have been granted residence permit based on so called “false information”, and therefore it has been withdrawn from them. 3. People who entered Norway without a valid visa and have not registered in the National Population Register1 or have not asked for asylum. 4. And finally asylum seeker who have received final rejection of their asylum applications but have decided to stay