The best interests of the child in Swedish refugee law : An analysis of applicable law

In 2020, the Convention on the Rights of the Child was incorporated into Swedish law, with the aim that the child perspective and the best interests of the child would be reinforced in areas such as refugee law. At the same time, the temporary law (2016:752) was introduced in 2016, which limits the child's possibility of obtaining a Swedish residence permit. Using the legal dogmatic method, this study answers the purpose and aim of this thesis that is; what factors determines whether a child is allowed to stay in Sweden or not, how the best interest of the child and child-specific grounds for residence permit are interpreted in applicable law and in cases where children's asylum cases are tried in the Court of Migration, and lastly what conclusions can be drawn from these findings. The thesis achieves this by analyzing and comparing four different judgments from the Court of Migration to examine how the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the Aliens Act and the best interest of the child is applied in the different cases as well as the varying factors that makes them differ. The results in the thesis goes through the applicable law in the field and present child-specific provisions in applicable law such as in the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the Aliens Act and the Temporary law from 2016, combined with the preparatory work of the laws that contributes to how these provisions are interpreted and understood, and praxis in the form of 4 different judgements. The analysis concludes the differences in the judgements and that there are certain aspects and factors in the judgments that seem to have been crucial in the Migration Court's assessment and decision. Finally, the thesis presents the conclusions that can be drawn from these outcomes, as well as an investigation on the limitations of the principle of the best interest of the child in asylum law, which ultimately results in the child's best interests being, in principle, complex and requiring interpretation