Swiss Asylum Law; The Urban Informality Machine How Does Swiss Asylum Law Produces Urban Informality in Switzerland? Shahin Haghinavand 1 The University of Basel Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences Urban Studies Department Critical Urbanisms ___________________________________________ Swiss Asylum Law; The Urban Informality Machine How Does Swiss Asylum Law Produces Urban Informality in Switzerland? __________________________________________________ Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Kenny. R. Cupers Advisor: Prof. Dr. Sophie Oldfield Author: Shahin Haghinavand [email protected] November 20, 2020 The thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the MA in Critical Urbanisms 2 Content Acknowledgments………………………………………………………………….…4 Who is the reader of this thesis? ……………………………….…………………..…5 Abstract…………………………………………………………………………….….6 Chapter. 1: Introduction……………………………………………………………….7 Chapter. 2: Methodology………………………………………………………….…12 Chapter. 3: Literature review………………………………………………………...17 Theme 1. Informality and the notion of urban informality…………………..….17 Theme 2. Waiting and temporariness……………………………………………23 Theme 3. The right to the city and citizenship……………………………..……27 Theme 4. Space, illegality and the politics of space………………………….…30 Chapter. 4: Swiss Asylum Regime……………………………………………...……33 Chapter. 5: Narratives……………………………………………………………..…43 Chapter. 6: Critiques and Policy Revision Recommendations………………………60 Chapter. 7: Conclusion……………………………………………………………….68 References……………………………………………………………………………71 3 Acknowledgments I would like to express my appreciation for the time and compassion of those asylum seekers who shared their life stories with me without having any expectation that they would benefit from my research. I learnt so much from their honesty, invaluable friendships and the ways they overcame obstacles. I would like to extend my gratitude to Prof. Dr. Sophie Oldfield, who during my semester at the University of Cape Town, taught me so many lessons about the epistemologies of urban studies and the social sciences, since participatory observation played a focal role in understanding my urban questions. I would also like to thank the president, the head, and the manager of Theological Alumni Basel, Prof. Dr. Jenni, Hanna, Dr. Benedict Schubert-Prack and Sabine Schubert-Prack for their unbelievable kindness. Special thanks to the editor of the text Alexa Barnby and Alexander Crawford for the final revision of the text. Additional thanks to Linda Wermuth for the illustration on the cover page which expresses and reveals the entire thesis in a schematic sketch. Finally, my sincere gratitude, however, goes especially to Prof. Dr. Kenny R. Cupers, whom, without his endless supports and advice this research would have never been successfully implemented. He has not just been my professor, but one of my best friends since I began this master’s degree in Critical Urbanisms. 4 Who is the reader of this thesis? A major concern of mine has always been to establish a connected platform on which academia and the public can negotiate in a logical and productive way. Writing and publishing the scholarship, to my mind, may be a remarkable step in this process to shorten the gap between the public and academia. I have therefore attempted to illuminate a sophisticated, complex, interwoven urban issue sequentially. Indeed, I have not merely assessed the issue in an abstract way or contextualized it in such a way that only a certain group within a specific discipline can engage with it. On the contrary, I have strived to make this text readable for those who have an interest in contemporary urban issues in society. Since the entire thesis is based on an entire thread, different sections try to illustrate the issue from various angles. Therefore, even if a reader skims or even skips a chapter, the conclusion will still be comprehensible. Representing social issues and even identifying answers to them is not the entire process. To my mind, the true meaning of academia is to dedicate, describe and scrutinize the issue but its implementation depends on public acceptance and public support. Society does not belong to a certain class or a tiny group of people, and social problems cannot be addressed without the participation of all members of society. I recommend that the lay reader of this thesis read the narrative (chapter 5) after the introduction. The entire text would then make more sense and be easier to understand. 5 Abstract This thesis presents a critical analysis of the socio-spatial marginalization of asylum seekers in Switzerland, and the urban spaces they inhabit and shape as they cope with this marginalization. The guiding question is: how does Swiss asylum law through the process of marginalizing asylum seekers produce urban informality in Switzerland? The thesis answers this question by means of four layers of analysis. First, it reviews academic literature on migration studies which focus on; asylum and politics of the space; migrants, the space of waiting and temporariness; asylum seekers, citizenship, and right to the city; refugees, illegality and production of urban informality; to foreground the issue into both an academic and geo-political context. Second, the thesis analyses the new procedure of Swiss asylum law (accelerated in March 2019) and considers its impact on the Swiss asylum regime. Third, the thesis portrays everyday life of a group of rejected asylum seekers over a period of eighteen months in Switzerland and in particular in the city of Basel (Basel-Stadt). To narrate and illuminate their everyday life experience, the thesis utilizes a range of qualitative social science methods and techniques, e.g. participatory observation, in depth and semi structured interviews. Narratives are used to understand their practices to live anonymously as a form of “urban informality”. Finally, the thesis critiques the Swiss asylum regime and presents suggestions for policy revision. 6 Chapter. 1 Introduction 7 Introduction A group of asylum seekers applications have officially been rejected and they are supposed to leave Switzerland. However, they remain in the country due to challenges, returning to their home country is impossible. As a result, they are forced to live in anonymity, act anonymously and shape urban spaces as illegal asylum seekers and with illegal activities. They are an invisible part of the society; they do not want to be recognized. Rejected asylum seekers live in a precarious situation, often invisible in the eyes of the society. Despite this, the Swiss asylum regime attempts to keep it invisible by applying and tightening the laws, regulations and measures, such as reducing the period of time in which processes of rejection, immediate expulsion, and the other similar policies can occur. The present study provides a picture, which reveals the failures of the Swiss asylum regime which produces (what I have called) ‘‘Swiss urban informality’’. This is a consequence of the Swiss asylum regime’s attempts to marginalized and immobilize rejected asylum seekers, who responded against that marginalization with informal practices. To understand and illuminates its complexity, as well as answer the question; “to what extent can we understand their practices as a form of ‘urban informality’; I have employed southern and northern urban theories and scholarships. These have been divided into four themes. Theme 1. Informality and the notion of urban informality The purpose of this theme is to cover the main aspects concerning informality and in particular urban informality in the global North and South by focusing on both scholarships. The core foundation of the first theme is based on AlSayyad study (2004) and a few other such as Hodder’s study (2016) which tries to answer the questions of ‘why informality matters?’ and where informality is burgeoning? I have taken advantage of Portes and Schauffler’s study (1992) to classify the notion of informality as an inter-systemic and a widely analysed phenomenon. Moreover, Jaffe & Koster’s research (2019), as a critique against Dutch governance and the illusion of formality in the global North, could perhaps help me to confidentially build my criticism on Swiss governance. Harris (2017), also follows the same critique and attempts to represent the same mistake that many other scholars have. In his view, informality is a global phenomenon which, as a concept, has never been understood correctly and has mostly been applied to the other disciplines like economy. I have reviewed the study of Shin and Park (2019), to understand how informality as a conceptual notion crossed the borders among disciplines, subfields and subjects to deal with unplannable issues and dilemmas ahead of contemporary society. Borrowing from Roy (2009), she embodies informality on three principal features as an analytical framework which foregrounds my theoretical precipitations based on a ‘geography of theory’ in the 21st century as well. In another study, Roy (2005), presents a more profound and epistemological understanding of urban informality. Reviewing this scholarship enables my research to highlight urban informality as an exception not only to the formal sector of urbanization but also to planning mechanism in an inclusive sense. Theme 2. Waiting and temporariness Waiting embodies the notion of urban informality in a way that accurately resonates the essence of temporariness. Waiting, not as an object, but as an abstract and in particular a subjective abstract, portrays the