Resistance Stories: An experience-centred narrative analysis of the political biographies of asylum rights activists opposing the post-2015 migration regime in Sweden

Abstract: The autumn of 2015 constituted a major break with the prior migration regime in Sweden, as the government implemented temporary migration laws in order to curb the large-scale arrival of migrants, which had taken the authorities by surprise at the time. Following this, the question of migration has gradually to a greater extent come to be framed as a threat by government officials and the political parties, suggesting that restrictive policies are imperative to maintain the country’s security. The aim of this thesis is analyse the ways in which the mentioned policy turn have impacted asylum rights activists’ conception of the Swedish society, given the presumption that Sweden is a country permeated by a certain brand of ‘moral nationalism’, emanating from the notion that Sweden is an inherently ‘humanitarian nation’. Taking this is a point of departure, the thesis shows, through the experience-centred narrative research method, how five activists, due to the measures undertaken by the government, in different ways have come to question this story, and how they narrativise their decision to get involved in the asylum rights moment after the events of 2015 unfolded. In doing this, the relationship between the stories a community tells about itself and the self-understandings of the members of the community are explored, as well the common denominators in the narratives of the asylum rights activists in terms of how they become politically involved and which events that have shaped their worldviews. Finally, their accounts of the autumn of 2015 provide us with a complement to the dominant narrative of this time, the latter revolving around the necessity of the government to resort to extraordinary measures to protect the Swedish society from the perceived threat posed by the arrival of the migrants.