“A temporary respite within the Swedish refugee reception’’ : A critical discourse analysis of the Swedish asylum legislation between 2015-2021 

The idea of this study is based on the legislative process of the Swedish temporary asylum law. Due to an increasing number of request for asylum in 2015, the parliament appointed a temporary asylum law to create a more restrictive migration policy. This measure was criticized by several parliamentary committees which were emphasising different negative aspects that could possibly affect the refugees. The government responded to the critics by referring to the EU minimum level and by comparison with other EU countries. In 2019 the parliament decided to extend the temporary law even though the number of asylum seekers had decreased. The main argument for this extension was to prevent an increasing amount of asylum seekers as soon as the migration policy in Sweden were to become more generous again. Previous research has shown that not long after the first proposition of the temporary asylum law the law was implemented, indicating a rushed decision made by the Swedish parliament. Thus is our purpose with this study to examine the political negotiations of the legislative process regarding the temporary asylum law and its extension. In addition to that the aim of the study is also to research if the extension of the law contributed to different discourses. Through a critical discourse analysis our main conclusion is that the underlying negotiations of the legislative process cover four main areas: economy and resources, EU, the asylum system and consequences. Within each field we discovered discourses that could be applicable in both the legislative process of 2016 and in the process of extension 2019. Nevertheless the result of the analysis also presented two discourses that became important parts in relation to the extension. These discourses were convention on the rights of the child and EU. Even though these discourses could be found in the first legislative process, they reach a remarkably higher state of importance in the extension of the asylum law and therefore are appointed as new since they did not held the same level of relevance before