Living in transit: A longitudinal ethnographic study of mobility, agency and emotions among young people following asylum rejections in Sweden

This project analyses individual agency and structural constraints among young people who have engaged in ‘secondary migration’ following rejections in Sweden.

The aim is to illuminate and analyse their predicaments and opportunities for mobility and (re)settlement by investigating the resources they acquire during a life ‘in transit’.

The project is distinctive in that it connects and develops theories on emotions and social/cultural capital to analyse mobility and agency in precarious contexts where actors are often seen as inactive victims of circumstances.

A longitudinal design creates a unique opportunity to capture and analyse individual agency and mobility under precarious circumstances interwoven into processes over time.Using multi-sited ethnographic methods such as recurrent interviews and participant observations, 20-25 young people will be followed over more than three years in cities and towns across Europe.

We will render analytical edge by focusing on how they navigate in relation to structural constraints, the possession and acquisition of ‘mobility capital’ to facilitate mobility and the significance and embeddedness of various types of emotions for agency and movement.

There is an urgent need for understandings and innovative analyses of the agency, resistance, and precariousness, that follows in the wake of half a decade of asylum law and praxis restrictions affecting young people who sought asylum in Sweden.