Nordic vagabonds: The Roma and the logic of ... - SAGE Journals

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EUC0010.1177/1477370816640141European Journal of CriminologyBarker

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Nordic vagabonds: The Roma and the logic of benevolent violence in the Swedish welfare state

European Journal of Criminology 2017, Vol. 14(1) 120–139 © The Author(s) 2017 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav https://doi.org/10.1177/1477370816640141 DOI: 10.1177/1477370816640141 journals.sagepub.com/home/euc

Vanessa Barker

Stockholm University, Sweden

Abstract In Sweden, control of the mobile poor is often driven by the needs and demands of the welfare state itself and follows a different logic outside the neoliberal paradigm. By examining the case of the Roma, EU citizens who travel to Sweden to ask for money on the streets, we can see the expansion and retraction of the criminal law as the government responds to new forms of migration and poverty in its society. The government’s mixed responses – no to bans on begging, but yes to evictions – are the result of dualities inherent in Nordic welfare states, when their inclusionary ameliorative dimensions collide with their exclusionary and nationalistic tendencies. This article proposes the term benevolent violence to conceptualize this duality. It occurs when coercive means are used to uphold the state’s ameliorative goals and when the state’s ameliorative practices have violent effects. In the case of the Roma, it means protecting them from their own livelihood and it means protecting the welfare state for nationals, keeping it solvent for members.

Keywords Benevolent violence, crimmigration, migration controls, Nordic exceptionalism, Roma, welfare state

Statement of the problem: A Nordic response to the mobile poor Sitting outside supermarkets, sleeping in parks or in make-shift campsites, there are an estimated 4000–5000 European Union (EU) citizens who have come to Sweden to ask for money on the streets (Government Offices of Sweden, 2015a). Although the presence of beggars, mainly Roma from Romania and Bulgaria, has become a familiar sight, Corresponding author: Vanessa Barker, Department of Sociology, Stockholm University, Stockholm, SE 106 91, Sweden. Email: [email protected]

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it is nevertheless deeply unsettling to Swedes. Sweden, like the other Nordic countries, devoted much of the 20th century to eradicating poverty, reducing inequalities, and raising the standard of living for everyone. The presence of poor people on the streets, officially referred to as ‘exposed’ and ‘vulnerable’, has generated a range of public responses, including gestures of solidarity, charity, and protest, but also hate crimes, violence, and evictions from public and private lands. Despite these different, somewhat ambivalent responses, government officials and all the major political parties agree that ‘no one should have to beg’ in Sweden (Government Offices of Sweden, 2015b). In June 2015, the government passed a new reform package entitled ‘Combating vulnerability and begging – no one should have to beg’ (Government Offices of Sweden, 2015b). Introducing the package, the Equality Minister Åsa Regnér explained that begging was indeed ‘undignified’ (ovärdigt in Swedish), and that the government’s longterm goal was to reduce begging in Sweden (Government Offices of Sweden, 2015b). This reform package is noteworthy for its substance, absences, and underlying logic and motivation. It notably does not include a formal ban on begging but it does include public order provisions to simplify evictions from illegal settlements. While it increases reliance on civil society organizations such as charities and non-governmental organizations (NGOs), it simultaneously strengthens the state’s reliance on criminal law provisions to address human trafficking, that is, forced migration for exploitation. It both expands and retracts the reach of criminal law to manage, regulate, and protect the mobility of poor people. But unlike much of literature on crimmigration – the intermeshing of crime control and migration control – mobility control in Sweden follows a different logic outside the neoliberal paradigm. It is neither pervasive nor driven primarily by economic imperatives to maintain a reservoir of cheap labor, whose deportability fluctuates with labor market demands (De Genova, 2010; for a critique, see Lacey, 2013). By contrast, mobility controls in Sweden are often driven by the needs and demands of the welfare state itself. Welfare states, by definition, seek to minimize the precariousness of labor market forces (Esping-Andersen, 1990; Garland, 2015). By extension, it is the migrants’ vulnerability and exploitability that warrants their protection and has driven a key component of the state’s response. The government has sought to protect the Roma from begging, from their ‘wretched living conditions’ (Tobé, 2015), and from forced labor (Government Offices of Sweden, 2015a). At the same time, however, it is critical to realize that this protection – the protection from exploitation and the indignities of a pauper’s life (sleeping rough and begging in the streets) – is realized through both ameliorative and coercive state practices. This article proposes the term benevolent violence to conceptualize this duality, when the two sides of state power ‘meet and mesh’.1 It occurs when coercive means are used to uphold the state’s benevolent or ameliorative goals and when the state’s ameliorative practices have violent effects. In the case of the Roma, it means protecting them from their own livelihood, which subsequently can undercut self-determination, individual autonomy, and free movement. This article asks how and why EU Roma are subject to mobility controls in Sweden and how and why mobility controls operate more generally in society. In pursuing these research questions, this article has three goals:

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1. It analyzes the case of the Roma in Sweden to identify, describe, and develop the concept benevolent violence. It loosely follows a grounded theory approach by using the empirical material to develop new theoretical concepts rather than test pre-existing concepts in the literature (Swedberg, 2012; Timmermans and Tavory, 2012). This approach offers a fresh perspective on the exercise of state power, particularly at the intersection of crime control and migration control, and may be useful in other contexts. 2. It seeks to explain mobility controls in terms of the welfare state itself, developing an alternative account. First, violence operates differently in welfare states because the state’s legitimacy is based on the provision of social security, that is, protection against the precariousness, vagaries, and insecurities of modern life. Benevolent violence helps to account for this distinctive exercise of state power. Second, it argues that the exercise of coercive power is used to uphold the welfare state rather than dismantle it. It is not that penal power or the ‘carceral state’ has replaced the welfare state, but rather that the welfare state deploys coercive means to protect and reproduce itself. 3. It discusses the implications of this research for broader debates about mobility control. A note on terminology: I use the term ‘mobility controls’ instead of crimmigration to refer to the ways in which the state regulates the access, entry, and removal of noncitizens from its territory. This broader term is used here because it better fits the empirical material not because it is a critique of terminology. There are clearly signs of immigration and criminal law intermeshing in Sweden, particularly around organized crime, forced migration, and public order. Yet there are other measures that are outside the scope of criminal law – such as evictions, forced deprivation, and forced mobility, which impose restrictions on free movement, individual autonomy, and self-determination – that are not solely determined by crime control imperatives. Crimmigration may both overstate and understate the processes of mobility control operating in this case (see the discussion in Stumpf, 2013). Mobility control as a descriptive term is meant to capture these different dimensions.

Research strategy: Case selection and grounded theory Sweden and the Roma were selected for this case study for strategic reasons. Sweden is an understudied site in the crimmigration literature and its inclusion will expand our repertoire of cases by bringing new empirical material into an ongoing debate (also see Aas, 2014; Ugelvik, 2013). Sweden is known for its generous and universal welfare state, classified as a social democratic regime in Esping-Andersen’s (1990) oft-cited formulation, with its emphasis on equality and de-commodification. Sweden has a postwar history of mass labor migration, a multicultural approach to immigration (see the review in Schierup and Ålund, 2011), and a global reputation for its openness towards migrants. Over this period, it has expanded the rights of legal residents, with an emphasis on naturalization for noncitizens (Sainsbury, 2012). In the criminological literature, Sweden is known for its humaneness and penal moderation (Pratt and Eriksson, 2013;

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for a critique, see Scharff Smith, 2012). For these theoretical and empirical reasons, Sweden provides analytical leverage into debates about the criminalization of migration. We might expect mobility controls to work differently in this type of society, with serious barriers to repressive means of control. In less open and less generous societies, it is less surprising to see how quickly they may turn to coercive measures to exclude migrants. Sweden is a critical case then to analyze variation in mobility controls; and it provides a useful platform to assess how mobility controls uphold the country’s dominant characterization in the literature or expose another, perhaps less visible, dimension of this Nordic welfare state. The Roma, specifically Roma from Romania and Bulgaria rather than the indigenous Roma, were selected because they do not easily fit established migration patterns in Sweden. They present an odd case, falling outside the refugee and labor migrant trajectories or family reunification, the main routes of migration into Sweden (Migration Board, 2015a). They travel to Sweden under the EU free movement provision, sometimes staying less than three months, sometimes staying longer, but most often without employment or the means to support themselves (Socialstyrelsen, 2013: 9–10). Because this social group does not fit already existing migratory channels into society, however limited they may be, the government is forced to adopt, adapt, and innovate its response. This disjuncture highlights the government’s agency, activities, and arguments about what to do about the Roma’s situation. Methodologically, it presents a unique opportunity to see the government at work. We can see institutions think (Douglas, 1986). In addition, the estimated number of 4000–5000 Roma EU citizens may seem relatively small in comparison with the estimated 73,000 irregular migrants in Sweden subject to removal (Eurostat, 2015). Yet the largest groups of irregular migrants removed from Sweden come from the Balkans, ethnic minorities from Serbia, Kosovo, Macedonia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina who are seeking asylum (Migration Board, 2015b; Frontex, 2015), groups that may share some of the same experiences of poverty and social exclusion as the EU Roma. Failed asylum seekers (Khosravi, 2009) and seasonal labor migrants such as Thai berry pickers (Wikström, 2015) are indeed subject to mobility controls in Sweden, but the particulars are not taken up here due to space constraints. I do, however, think that similar welfare state dynamics are at work in these cases (on deportations in Sweden, see Barker, 2013b, 2014). Yet it is the EU Roma in their extreme visibility in the nation’s capital that help make welfare state dynamics more discernible and are the main subject here. Their presence has set off a flurry of government activity and public debate, driving reforms on public order. As part of a case study on mobility controls in Sweden, this article relies on multiple sources of data. Because I ask how and why mobility controls operate in Sweden and how they impact the Roma, specifically, I examine government policy proposals and party platforms on the issue but also the political debate around these reforms. The material focuses on key arguments leading up to the June 2015 reform package and the reform package itself, with all major parties weighing in. The documents were selected because they contain the central legislative proposals and statements pertaining to the new regulations on the EU Roma in Sweden. But, perhaps most importantly, the material provides a window into the reasoning of public figures, illustrating their arguments, motivations, and justifications for reforms. They lay bare the deep norms and values that inform social

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action. Here I follow van der Woude et al.’s (2014) broader conceptualization of crimmigration to include political debate rather than focus exclusively on criminal law. The documents are not exhaustive but are representative of dominant themes and arguments discussed in public by political leaders and decision makers, with considerable overlap with mainstream media. A sample drawn exclusively from the media would yield similar debates, but with the addition of ethnographic detail on the lives of the Roma, exposés on policing, and periodic surveys of public opinion on the issue. To fill out the empirical situation of the Roma, I rely on government reports and data from the Migration Board, Socialstyrelsen (the National Board of Health and Welfare), and other secondary sources. The focus on the 2015 reforms inevitably excludes a range of events and arguments that have been going on since EU accession in 2008. I make one important exception to this timeline with the inclusion of a pivotal debate piece on begging that occurred prior to the 2015 reform package but was a trigger for a wider debate and was influential in terms of the various reform proposals that followed. Excluding this piece would not alter my analysis but it does provide a vivid and quite telling perspective on begging in Sweden that serves to clarify and extract understanding. This article is loosely informed by a grounded theory approach to data analysis. It seeks to interpret and explain Swedish mobility controls in the society’s own logic. The emphasis on human dignity, for example, comes directly from the data. I then situate the initial understandings, the importance of equality and membership for example, within a broader theoretical framework, welfare state nationalism, elaborating or revising the explanation. It is by tacking back and forth between data and theory that new concepts emerge, such as benevolent violence, that may better explain the case than previously existing perspectives (on discovery and theorizing, see Swedberg, 2012; on abduction, see Timmermans and Tavory, 2012). This strategy comes with its own set of limitations and risks. It is limited by its relatively small scale and exclusionary tendencies (for example, the focus on the Roma and not all migrants; the focus on debate and legislation and not face-to-face interaction or interviews). But the novelty of the analysis may provide fruitful avenues of research and theoretical insights that we might not otherwise have found.

Literature review: Explaining mobility controls The control of poorer migrants is not unique to Sweden. It can be seen as part of a broader large-scale transformation of late modern societies in which more coercive tools of governance are mobilized to respond to a wide range of social insecurities (Bosworth and Guild, 2008; Garland, 2001; Simon, 2009). Increasingly, affluent democratic societies have come to rely on the tools, practices, and rationales of criminal justice to respond to what the late Nils Christie called ‘suitable enemies’, that is, it stands in for the anxieties wrought by globalization, mass mobility, economic restructuring, and other social dislocations. Migrants, foreign nationals, ethnic and racial minorities, and poor people have tended to bear the brunt of this transformation (Wacquant, 1999; Weber and Bowling, 2008). Yet within this global context, Sweden, like other Nordic societies, follows its own logic, adopting policies and practices that emerge from and fit with its own political realities and cultural sensibilities, many of which act as brakes on penal

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coercion (see Pratt and Eriksson, 2013; Ugelvik, 2013). Current and more general accounts of mobility controls only take us so far even when they provide lucid and persuasive theoretical frameworks for understanding the phenomenon. One of the most powerful arguments to emerge in recent years has explained mobility controls in terms of the political economy, particularly as a function of the economic needs of neoliberalism. Critical border scholars have made direct connections between exclusionary measures such as deportation and labor market fluctuations (De Genova, 2010; De Giorgi, 2010). In a deregulated labor market, mobility controls (for example, temporary work permits, visas, deportation) provide effective mechanisms to keep labor migrants available but vulnerable and exploitable. As Dario Melossi (2015) has shown, capitalist economies have a long history of applying coercive means such as criminal law, penal power, and border controls to regulate migrants, particularly the mobile poor, whom Bauman (2000) called ‘global vagabonds’. In Sweden, we see certain aspects of these trends. Migration scholars have argued that the pressures of neoliberalism and EU integration have eroded some of the protections and claims to citizenship traditionally available to labor migrants in Sweden, creating a new kind of temporary and more vulnerable workforce that did not exist prior to the 2008 migration reforms (Schierup and Ålund, 2011; also see Hansen, 2015). Despite these changes, I would suggest a cautionary stance towards the general applicability of this perspective. The share of labor migrants among new arrivals in Sweden has not increased dramatically since the migration reforms (1.5 percent; Bevelander and Irastorza, 2014: 6); this is a relatively small population to be managed or disciplined. In Sweden, it is failed asylum seekers who are most often subject to ‘removals’ because they do not have legal authorization to remain in the country (Migration Board, 2015b). A substantial proportion of these involve migrants from the Balkans (Migration Board, 2015b), many of whom are seeking asylum in Sweden and the EU and did not enter as labor migrants (Frontex, 2015). And, as noted above, it is the Roma who are subject to heated public debate, legislation, criminal law provisions, and government reforms to address their begging and possible exploitation. Since this group is discriminated against and informally excluded from the labor market (Djuve et al., 2015), it is difficult to see how well neoliberal dynamics can account for their control. Economic issues are certainly at stake here but, as discussed below, they are more likely to be connected to cultural sensibilities about poverty and the limits of welfare state provision to noncitizens. Because the Roma, one of Europe’s largest but poorest ethnic minorities (European Commission, 2015), are subjects of mobility controls – they can be refused entry to Sweden if they lack the economic means to support themselves (Aliens Act 2005, Chapter 8, Section 2.2) – some scholars may suggest that these exclusionary measures are driven by xenophobia and new forms of classism and racism that keep global vagabonds out of the affluent Global North (Fekete, 2001). There is certainly a high degree of ‘othering’ imposed on the Roma, who are fellow Europeans and EU citizens but nonetheless cast as outsiders because of differences in dress, custom, and appearance and historical legacies of social exclusion and stigma (Roth and Hertzberger, 2010). Examples range from social slights to outright violence, including arson and hate crimes (Government Offices of Sweden, 2015a). And it is the case that the Sweden Democrats, the anti-immigrant party, ran an inflammatory advertisement campaign in Stockholm’s

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public transit system apologizing to international tourists for the begging and calling for the criminalization of organized begging (Radio Sweden, 2015a). Yet I argue that racism alone cannot explain why the Swedish government uses the criminal law to protect the Roma against human trafficking and exploitation. As noted, the country has a history of immigration, expanding rights, and deep belief in equality. Our understanding of how race and ethnicity work in Sweden would make more sense if we connected it to the welfare state, national history, and how perceived ‘others’ are incorporated or not into national identity. Who counts as ‘other’ varies cross-nationally and it varies over time, often within the same society. I suggest we take a closer look at how the welfare state, particularly the rise of welfare state nationalism, can drive perceived ‘others’ out. In contrast to earlier far-right parties that espoused neoliberal economic policies, the Sweden Democrats (along with other neo-nationalist anti-immigrant parties) seek to preserve and uphold welfare state economic policies but do so for members out of national self-interest (Eger and Valdez, 2015). The Sweden Democrats are strong proponents of the welfare state, advocating (Sweden Democrats, 2015) ‘ett samhälle där alla medborgare också garanteras en hög grundläggande nivå av ekonomisk och social trygghet’ (‘a society where every citizen is guaranteed a high basic level of economic and social security’), but this does not extend to noncitizens. In the debate about Roma beggars, the Sweden Democrats make clear that Sweden is ‘not the whole of Europe’s social services… Romania should take care of Romanians and Sweden should take care of our Swedish citizens’ (Molinder et al., 2015), a sentiment later echoed by the highest echelons of power: native countries bear the ultimate responsibility for them (Löfven, in Radio Sweden, 2015b). If we define mobility controls as a function of racism, although this is certainly a factor, we are not grasping a significant structural barrier that stretches across the entire society and is not confined to far-right parties. Welfare nationalism entails the preservation of the welfare state for nationals. Here, in contrast to neoliberal accounts, coercive tools are used not because the welfare state has been hollowed out (Wacquant, 2009) but rather to keep the welfare state solvent for members. The centrality of membership is emerging as a key factor in influential accounts of mobility control (Aas, 2014; Anderson, 2013; Bosworth, 2012; Stumpf, 2006), where much of the sorting, classifying, criminalizing, detaining, punishing, and expelling hinges on questions of membership. This dynamic is particularly salient in Northern Europe, where the welfare state and social rights are wrapped up in legal residence and citizenship in the nation state. Noncitizens without legal residence, including irregular migrants and poor EU citizens, are routinely denied access to social benefits (Civil Rights Defenders, 2015), exacerbating their economic insecurity. EU citizens, for example, enjoy free movement to Sweden but, without health insurance from their home country, they cannot access the Swedish health care system without paying upfront or in full. Without residence permits, homeless EU citizens cannot access city-run homeless shelters (Löfstrand, 2010) and they remain dependent upon civil society organizations, charities, and the Church (Socialstyrelsen, 2013: 10). In Norway, Nicolay Johansen (2013) has shown how welfare state restrictions have facilitated the ‘voluntary’ exit of irregular migrants from the country. Peo Hansen (2015) has argued that fears of ‘welfare tourism’, however unfounded, are driving a wedge between more affluent EU member

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states and their poorer cousins, increasing internal border controls with the EU, and undermining free movement across the union. In Sweden, it is important to realize this is not only a conflict over resources but a conflict over how social membership is linked to those resources. Historically, the Swedish welfare state, referred to as Folkhemmet (‘The People’s Home’ in English), developed two axes of membership that were based on two meanings of the folk: demos and ethnos (Schall, 2012; Trägårdh, 2000). The dominant axis is one based on equality, in which the people (demos) are all free and equal and equally worthy of security (trygghet in Swedish) and equally expected to contribute to society. In The People’s Home, everyone is expected to contribute, to work as arbetsmyra (worker bees) to build the nest so everyone will benefit (see Tham, 2005). On the other axis sits ethnos (a people), who are linked by blood ties, cultural affinities, and a shared national identity. It is the ethnocultural axis of membership that underpins recent neo-nationalistic developments, nostalgia for the past (Andersson, 2009), and pushes nonmembers out. In this configuration, the Roma are considered outsiders on two dimensions, first as beggars who are considered not to be legitimate workers but potential drains on the welfare state, and second as foreigners with limits on solidarity as fellow citizens (see Barker, 2013a). We could stop there and have a fairly accurate sense of how and why mobility controls work in Sweden. But I think it would miss a crucial link between poverty and equality that drives much of state intervention and public policies, including mobility controls on the Roma. Poverty is deeply disturbing in the Nordic context, in part because it undermines equality. The exclusionary dimensions of The People’s Home are moderated by the dominant axis of equality, structural factors that cannot be easily dismissed or set aside. As Prime Minister Per Albin Hansson once explained at the founding of The People’s Home: ‘the good home does not consider anyone as privileged or unappreciated; it knows no special favorites and no stepchildren … [N]o one tries to gain advantage [at] another’s expense, and the stronger do not suppress and plunder the weak’ (Hansson in Pratt, 2008: 127). He continued, emphasizing equality and a duty to care for others: ‘In a loving home exists equality, concern for others, cooperation and a helping hand’ (Hansson in Arnáson, 2008: 155). It is this principle embedded in institutions and public policies that helped to create one of the most generous welfare states designed to protect against the vagaries of capitalist economies and minimize social and economic inequalities. As noted above, Sweden spent most of the 20th century wiping out poverty within its society and, despite recent increases in economic inequality, the country is still considered one of the most equal societies in the world and maintains one of the highest rates of labor market participation (OECD, 2015). The return of poor people on the streets is an affront to its cultural sensibilities and undercuts its accomplishments. As one Member of Parliament from the Moderate Party put it: ‘Many people feel provoked and feel bad when they see people begging outside the shops’ (Magnusson, quoted in The Local, 2014). The public nature of the begging has been found to disturb the public’s sense of equality and high quality of life, according to a major study on the Roma in three major Nordic cities (Djuve et al., 2015). In the words of the leader of the Christian Democrats: The plight of the many primarily Roma EU citizens from Romania and Bulgaria, which in recent years has taken them to Sweden to beg, has grabbed hold of the Swedish people and

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affected many of us deeply. One type of poverty and exclusion we have not seen in Sweden in generations has quickly returned to large parts of the country. (Busch Thor and Eclund, 2015)

As the recent government reform package clearly states: ‘No one should have to beg in Sweden’ (Government Offices of Sweden, 2015a). This Nordic perspective, however limited (as discussed below), is nevertheless a far cry from the normalized poverty and homelessness we see in other affluent societies such as the US, where people living in subway stations or out of cardboard boxes becomes an accepted feature of urban life. It is unacceptable in Sweden. By taking this view on poverty seriously, we can begin to understand the state’s response to begging in the society’s own terms. The dualities inherent in the Nordic welfare state are key to explaining its approach to mobility control, especially features that may seem inconsistent or contradictory. Being open and closed or being harsh and mild at the same time make sense in this context, even if it goes against our own preferences as social analysts to fit cases into one box, to place them on one side or the other. I will go on to argue that these dualities are not innocuous: they have material effects on public policies and the individuals subjected them. Specifically, I argue that, when the welfare state’s ameliorative tendencies collide with its exclusionary undercurrents and inclusionary demands, benevolent violence is likely to ensue. Benevolent violence may result when the state seeks to protect the Roma from begging. The government’s reform package, for example, uses coercive means such as evictions to uphold the state’s ameliorative goals to reduce begging. And its ameliorative practices, such as giving to charities, NGOs, and the home country, may have violent effects by denying the Roma a livelihood in Sweden, infringing individual autonomy, undermining self-determination, and constraining free movement.

Data analysis: Debate and reform on begging In June 2015, the Red–Green coalition government introduced a comprehensive reform package called ‘Combating vulnerability and begging – no one should have to beg’ (Government Offices of Sweden, 2015a). What follows is an analysis of key moments in the public and parliamentary debate and details from the reform package itself. Here we can follow public officials, party leaders, and public figures as they struggle to find ways to address street begging without resorting to the criminalization of the mobile poor. Yet, some of their efforts to reduce begging may result in forced deprivation even as they target the structural roots of poverty. We can see both the expansion and the retraction of the criminal law to control, regulate, and protect the mobility of poor people, particularly as the government seeks to protect the ‘vulnerable’ from exploitation and the indignities of street life. It is in these moments when the two sides of state power align that we can see the emergence of benevolent violence. As noted, efforts to regulate, control, and protect the Roma migrants in Sweden have been debated since the expansion of the EU in 2008 with the inclusion of Romania and Bulgaria. There were several noteworthy episodes in this period but, given space constraints, I want to highlight one such proposal that became a touchstone in the debate: ‘Därför bör vi göra det förbjudet att ge till tiggare’ (‘Therefore, we should make it forbidden to give to beggars’; Rothstein, 2013). This influential piece succinctly captures the

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distinctive logic, tone, and substance of the arguments and policies in the Nordic context. Its emphasis on human dignity, for example, contrasts sharply with the treatment of the homeless in US cities, who are more often subject to indifference or ‘banishment’ (Beckett and Herbert, 2009). But its call to end almsgiving can lead to forced deprivation, suggesting how ameliorative aims can have violent effects on the individuals subjected to them. Specifically, the Op-Ed, posted by one of Sweden’s most well-known political scientists, rejects a ban on begging but sought to criminalize almsgiving. Based on the principles of equality and dignity, the author explains how giving money to beggars is demeaning and humiliating because it lowers the status of those who ask for money, creating inequality. He argues that those who give money to people on the street degrade them rather than help them. They are not met as equals, he argues, as ‘fellow human beings’, but instead are being used to ‘numb their [giver’s] social conscience’ (Rothstein, 2013). He advocates the use of the criminal law against almsgiving to protect the Roma from exploitation and inequality, drawing parallels with the prohibition on the purchase of sex in Sweden. At the same time, he rejects the use of criminal law against begging itself, citing its ineffectiveness against the structural roots of poverty that propel migrants into begging. He explains how reliance on criminal or penal sanctions against the most destitute and ‘suffering people’ goes against our humanity and sense of justice (Rothstein, 2013), a sentiment that would resurface throughout the debate. There are strong brakes on the criminalization of the mobile poor in Sweden but equally strong drivers to respond to the situation. Building on the exploitation factor, the debate author makes a connection between begging and organized crime, motivating legal action against begging for crime control purposes. In Sweden, there is a common belief that the Roma are forced to migrate to beg and possibly are victims of human trafficking (see the survey in Djuve et al., 2015). The Swedish National Police Board has confirmed the presence of a foreign ‘itinerant criminal gang’ that has forced people, mostly other family members, from Central and Eastern Europe to come to Sweden to beg and commit other crimes (Swedish National Police Board, 2012: 23). Following the prostitution analogy, the debate author explains that the ban on buying sex was motivated by crime control efforts to disrupt organized crime and human trafficking. The same approach could be used for begging. This protective concern is generated in part by the equality principle and a fundamental belief in human dignity: no one should be coerced against their will or exploited for profit. We should note that the EU similarly penalizes trafficking as a violation of human rights and human dignity (European Council, 2010). The possible link between begging and organized crime motivated much of the debate across the political spectrum in Sweden and would end up in the government’s reform package. Again, I highlight that the dominant concern is that the Roma beggars may be victims of criminal coercion rather than perpetrators of crime, a distinction that may not resonate in other political contexts in which petty theft, robbery, and other forms of mobile banditry may be more widespread or subject to public debate. In Stockholm, a relatively small number of Roma beggars, 1 percent, have been fined for theft, drugs, or violence in the past year (Djuve et al., 2015: Figure 4.5). Here crime control does motivate certain aspects of migration control but not by criminalizing poor people themselves.

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By early spring 2015, after growing unease with street begging and the doubling of Roma migrants in 2014, the Moderates, the opposition party, began pushing for stronger criminal laws to penalize organized begging, linking the mobility of the poor Roma to forced exploitation. Picking up the protection and exploitation themes, former Justice Minister Beatrice Ask (MP) and Tomas Tobé (MP) argue that ‘we will never accept that vulnerable people are exploited’ (Ask and Tobé, 2015). The Moderates are strong advocates against organized begging, citing police surveys linking begging to organized crime networks. Although recent social science research questions this view, because most of their Roma respondents freely migrated to be with and work in family groups (Djuve et al., 2015), the possible link between begging and organized crime is readily put forward as a justification for state action. The Sweden Democrats, the third-largest party in Sweden, similarly support this position. Despite their more restrictive stances on immigration, their own rationale for supporting the criminalization of organized begging is couched in a protective rather than a simply reactive stance: The Sweden Democrats have for some time wanted to forbid organized begging… Reports from authorities and testimony from people begging shows that the beggars are often tricked or in the worst cases, forced [to go to] Sweden; the Sweden Democrats cannot do as the other parties and allow this to continue. No one in Sweden should have to beg for their livelihood. (Molinder et al., 2015)

The Sweden Democrats, like all the political parties, assert quite clearly that no one should have to beg in Sweden. I take up their more nationalistic position below, but for now I highlight their position against exploitation: ‘The idea is to make it difficult for those who want to exploit people’ (Molinder et al., 2015). Formally asked to respond to the Moderates’ challenges on the government’s begging policy, the Justice and Migration Minister Morgan Johansson (Social Democrat) explained the current policy and proposals for reform in Parliament during an Interpellation debate in June 2015. The Justice Minister explained: ‘it is unacceptable that people who are vulnerable, not least because of poverty or discrimination, be exploited or victims of crime in Sweden’; and continued: ‘the exploitation of vulnerability or recruiting or transporting a person in order that he or she be exploited for begging is guilty of human trafficking’ (Johansson, 2015). Therefore, the government would strengthen criminal protections against human trafficking, ‘including effective investigations and increased prosecutions’ (Johansson, 2015). Here the government supports the expansion of criminal law against organized begging but rejects the criminalization of begging itself. The reform package included further inquiry into how well the criminal law would protect against human trafficking. In Sweden, the government is willing to extend the reach of criminal law to offer protection against exploitation but is unwilling to criminalize poverty itself. ‘We should not criminalize begging in Sweden,’ stated the Justice Minister, a position repeatedly backed by the Prime Minister, Stephen Löfven: ‘Legislating against poverty won’t do anything’ (Löfven, in Radio Sweden, 2015c); a ban is no solution. The Green Party, the junior partners in the Red–Green governing coalition, forcefully rejected a ban on begging, citing solidarity and human rights: ‘by allowing begging, we show our humanity’

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(Green Party, 2015). The Green Party sought ways to address the Roma situation in Sweden to ‘lift up their dignity’ and ‘help them take advantage of their human rights’ (Green Party, 2015). Although the Moderates have been vocal critics of the government’s responses, they reject a national ban on begging (Moderates, 2015), as does the Liberal Party, coalition partners in the center-right Alliance: ‘no to a ban on begging’ and ‘yes to free movement’ (Liberal Party, 2015). The police, we should note, similarly reject a ban on begging but see this as a waste of resources, ‘chasing poor beggars in our cities’ (Ahrlin, in The Local, 2015). Despite these constraints on criminalization, the Red–Green government would go on to support the use of the Public Order Act to evict Roma from unauthorized settlements, just as the Moderates had been advocating. During the Parliament Interpellation, the Justice Minister explained: The government is concerned that persons staying temporarily in Sweden are living in inhuman conditions… They have miserable conditions in their home countries. They think that it is better to sit in a snowdrift in the north and warm their food over open flames than to be at home in their home countries. That says a lot about how miserable it is there. (Johansson, 2015)

The rationale for imposing the Public Order Act could be seen as a crass use of state power: to reduce begging in Sweden, simply evict beggars. Restricting the mobility of poor people can be accomplished without resorting to criminal sanctions. But we should also pay attention to the government’s and other political parties’ concern about degrading conditions and desire to protect the most vulnerable from these indignities. This is a different dynamic than the removal of homeless people in many US cities to make way for gentrification, where the homeless are pushed down the block, out of sight, but live in the same conditions. This contrast does not mean that the evictions are not coercive in Sweden – they are – but the logic is wrapped up in the language of reform. This is how benevolent violence works: the state seeks to improve conditions, to ‘lift’ the homeless out of poverty, but it does so through the infringement of individual autonomy, free movement, and self-determination and forced deprivation. The government’s June 2015 reform package places heavy emphasis on this kind of logic. Although it does not criminalize almsgiving, the government asks the public to stop giving money to people on the street and instead donate money to charities. Two of the three reforms seek to channel funds directly to charities and NGOs in Romania and Bulgaria as a way to create incentives for the Roma to stay in their home countries (Government Offices of Sweden, 2015a). Designed to tackle the structural roots of poverty, a push factor for migration, the reforms also seek to siphon off the pull factor to Sweden, people giving money directly to the Roma. The Equality Minister, in explaining the reforms, made it clear that Swedes were obviously free to give money to the Roma and their ‘solidarity and generosity’ were ‘great assets’ to the country (Regnér, in Dagens Nyheter, 2015) but they should be encouraged to funnel these donations to aid organizations, pointing to Sweden’s long history of humanitarian work outside the country. The Christian Democrats, although a relatively small party but members of the centerright Alliance, voiced a strikingly similar position, proposing to give money to charities and relief organizations and to channel European social funds directly to NGOs in

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Romania and Bulgaria (Busch Thor and Eclund, 2015). Ebba Busch Thor, the leader of the party, and Annika Eclund (MP) note the importance of showing solidarity with the Roma as fellow humans in need, but advocate a ‘long-term perspective on how poverty is broken’ (Busch Thor and Eclund, 2015). Supporting the diversion of funds from the Roma to Romania, they state: ‘it is better to give the money to relief agencies [here and abroad] than a banknote in the beggar’s cup’ (Busch Thor and Eclund, 2015). They too seek to discourage almsgiving: ‘We must never help to encourage people to turn to begging’ as ‘there is no solution, no future, and no dignity in begging’ (Busch Thor and Eclund, 2015). Instead, they strongly support local solutions to development and discrimination: ‘There is no shortage of examples from the aid organizations that are active in Romania and Bulgaria on the fact that, despite the circumstances, can improve the situation by fostering the right conditions’ (Busch Thor and Eclund, 2015). They seek to strengthen civil society in Romania to solve its own problems. These long-term goals are laudable, but in the short-term they create difficult living conditions for the Roma in Sweden. They are faced with growing restrictions on their mobility and residence, greater restrictions on their livelihood, greater restrictions on self-determination as they are told repeatedly that their life is undignified and unworthy. ‘Since the beggars themselves are well aware of being in a demeaning and undignified dead-end alley, their faith in the future also dies’ (Busch Thor and Eclund, 2015). The Roma come to Sweden to make a living as self-identified labor migrants and send muchneeded resources back to family in their home country (Djuve et al., 2015). Yet, the state’s efforts to protect the Roma insist on their vulnerability, exploitation, and unequal status and seek to take away their immediate means to make a living. This is benevolent violence, a type of forced deprivation brought about by good intentions. The Roma migrants are also forced out by the nationalistic strains within the welfare state. These nationalistic strains are clearly in tension with the society’s deep commitment to equality and human dignity but are present nonetheless. If we look at the government’s reform package, we can see the state moving to place an increasing amount of responsibility for the Roma on the home countries, Romania and Bulgaria. As noted above, the government seeks to channel Swedish donations and European Social Funds not to the Roma themselves in Sweden but to the government of Romania and various NGOs, charities, and other relief agencies that work with the Roma in Romania. It seeks cooperation with Romania to ‘develop welfare, children’s rights and gender equality’ in Romania to improve the Roma’s living conditions so they will be less likely to migrate. The Swedish government seeks to reduce the push factors out of Romania. The Equality Minister explains: ‘I think the effect will be to support the sound development of the homeland and that people really get the opportunity to choose a good life in Romania and Bulgaria’ (Regnér, in Dagens Nyheter, 2015). When asked by reporter if she thought these measures would work, she stated: ‘yes, I think that begging and vulnerability [would] reduce and cease’ (Regnér, in Dagens Nyheter, 2015). The opposition parties concur with this view. The Christian Democrats, for example, agree: ‘There is a future for the Eastern European Roma in their home country by lifting them out of poverty and vulnerability’ (Busch Thor and Eclund, 2015). The Liberal Party similarly states that ‘the solution is the home country’ but agrees to provide ‘acute means to alleviate suffering’ in Sweden (Liberal Party, 2015). Yet we should note that the

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Liberal Party proposed blocking access to education for the children of EU citizens. They argued it was in the child’s best interest not to have their education disrupted in Romania or Bulgaria by traveling with their family to Sweden. And perhaps it is not too surprising that it is the Sweden Democrats who articulate this position most forcefully: Other EU member countries must take responsibility for its citizens. Sweden is not the whole of Europe’s social services… Romania should take care of the Romanians and Sweden should take care of our Swedish citizens. (Molinder et al., 2015)

By the fall of 2015, this more nationalistic stance had hardened in Sweden. The national coordinator on ‘vulnerable EU citizens,’ charged with providing guidance to local and public agencies on how to respond to the Roma, began condemning illegal settlements and introducing a ‘zero-tolerance’ policy designed to speed up evictions. He explained that, in Sweden, ‘we have no national roof-over-your-head guarantee’ (Valfridsson, in Radio Sweden, 2015d), suggesting that the responsibility for housing poorer EU citizens lay outside of Sweden. He continued to build his argument on the equality principle. But, in this case, it is an argument based on equal treatment under the law rather than concerns about equality of outcome: ‘You can’t give special treatment to any group in society’ (Valfridsson, in Radio Sweden, 2015d). The law must apply equally to everyone so neither rich or poor will be allowed to ‘sleep under bridges’, to invoke Anatole France’s well-known critique of the rule of the law. Shortly after, the police razed an illegal settlement in Malmö, evicting about 200 Roma residents, most of whom returned to Romania, though some joined a public protest at city hall. With new border controls imposed between Sweden and Denmark in the wake of the refugee crisis, it is unclear how many Roma will be able to return. As previously noted, the Swedish Aliens Act does allow for the refusal of entry based on economic means regardless of EU status (Aliens Act, Chapter 8, Section 2.2). Although it was controversial, Roma have been previously refused entry on these grounds (Justice Ombudsman, 2011/12). In this last example, we can see how good intentions – upholding the rule of law – can result in forced mobility and quite possibly forced deprivation while serving national interests.

Discussion and conclusion: How this case matters for mobility control The case of the Roma in Sweden may seem limited or parochial – what other country would go through such legislative gymnastics for 4000–5000 people? But the government’s effort here is precisely what makes this case so important and useful for understanding how and why migration is subject to such control and regulation, even in the context of free movement. The presence of poor people on the streets asking for money in one of the world’s most equal and affluent societies (OECD, 2015) has touched a nerve in Sweden. It gets to the core of deeply held values and beliefs and exposes the structural configurations that both enable and constrain state action. It is extractive of the logic of welfare states in response to perceived problems of order. It shows how state power can be both ameliorative and coercive at the same time: it shows how upholding

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dignity and upholding ‘humanity’ can have violent effects on those subjected to it. This case has helped to define and illustrate benevolent violence, a form of state power that has not been previously identified as integral to mobility control. Despite the limited nature of case study research, this case has implications for a number of academic debates about the nature and character of mobility control across affluent democratic societies. By adding new details and conceptual clarity, this Nordic case may begin to challenge some of the taken for granted assumptions about the underlying dynamics of mobility control. Further research and systematic comparisons are needed to bolster these claims. Yet the present study does offer new sets of questions and potentially productive lines of research for future investigation and debate. Below I outline the key findings and point to areas for further inquiry. First, we see both the expansion and retraction of criminal law to both restrict and protect the mobility of poor people. The equality and human dignity principles in Sweden have dual effects on the use of criminal law. On the one hand, a strong belief in equality does seem to moderate the criminalization process, including the Swedish rejection of bans on begging, as would be predicted by the Nordic exceptionalism literature (Pratt and Eriksson, 2013) and by the principles of human dignity embedded in European penality, which tend to limit excesses of penal power (Van Zyl Smit and Snacken, 2009). Yet cultural intolerance for inequality and indignity is a strong driving force behind the state’s response to begging. In this context, calls to uphold dignity and equality are used to justify state intervention that can have violent effects. Giving money to charities instead of to the Roma themselves, for example, or removing people from poor living conditions – none of these is a criminal law sanction but they infringe individual autonomy, self-determination, and free movement. Here we do not need the prison or detention to take away liberty; benevolent violence is enough. Second, this type of violence is mobilized not because the state has no other means of control – Nordic welfare states have been restructured not retracted (Van Kersbergen and Hemerijck, 2012) – but to protect the welfare state itself, to keep the state solvent for members and members only. This is a crucial distinction and one that is underappreciated in the literature on crimmigration and punishment and society. It has long been assumed that generous welfare states are immune to the excesses of penal power and that neoliberalism has been the driving force in coercive controls. This way of thinking about welfare states and penal power means that we are not fully grasping the ways violence is used within these societies on their own terms. Benevolent violence can help us think through these distinctive forms of state power. It also means we need to pay more attention to the power of nationalistic tendencies to shape penal power (also see Kaufman, 2015). Welfare nationalism drives penal nationalism, in which perceived outsiders, nonmembers, and especially noncitizens are subject to increased controls in the name of national interests, including the preservation of national identity and social security. This dynamic may be highly relevant for many other welfare states outside the United States. And finally, speaking more along the lines of public criminology (Loader and Sparks, 2010), I do think these types of mobility control in Sweden pose serious problems for free movement and solidarity within the EU. As EU member states block entry of fellow members, treat poorer members as potential crime problems rather than as fellow citizens, limit solidarity within their national borders, and justify their actions in terms of good

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intentions, then this historical period of transnationalism may have reached its upper limit, with serious and negative implications for human rights and human security. Acknowledgements I would like to thank Maartje van der Woude and Joanne van der Leun for inviting me to participate in this project and for their editorial comments on previous drafts. I also thank Mary Bosworth, Hilde Tubex, the anonymous reviewers for useful feedback on earlier versions, and Marie Provine for comments on the preceeding LSA presentations

Funding The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Note 1.

I use Loic Wacquant’s (2001) apt terminology, ‘meet and mesh’ to invoke the interconnection between ameliorative and repressive sides of state power. Wacquant uses meet and mesh to capture the continuum of racial social control from ghetto to prison.

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