Stability of Status in Sweden. Exploring Juridical Time in Asylum and Citizenship Law

The project combines legal philosophy, citizenhip/migration studies and international law to better understand some contemporary legal challenges in Sweden today in relation to the stability of legal status in the field of citzenship and asylum law. Statuses are not immutable but can be acquired or lost, often based on time-related criteria.

Stability of status, however, matters: legal certainty suffers when a status may be continuously scrutinised and/or modified by the State.

This is why the control of individuals by regulating time in relation to their legal status - temporal governance - matters. There have been changes in the temporal governance of asylum and citizenship law in Sweden, and more are expected. We ask: Is there a turn to ´temporariness´ away from ´permanence´ in status recognition?

Are statuses in these fields of law destabilising? If so, with what consequences?

Sweden offers an interesting case study: while it follows a general trend towards restrictive policies, the policy shift has been drastic and pervasive, making the trend and its consequences easier to identify.

Our contribution is the first systematic study of a state´s temporal governance regime in asylum and nationality law, relevant for exploring the use of time in law generally and understanding how time-related criteria are used in asylum and citizenship law; specifically in Swedish law. Ours is a novel approach in legal research in general and in migration and citizenship law in particular.