Presenting absent bodies: undocumented persons coping and resisting in Sweden

Introduction

Irregular, undocumented, illegal, sans-papier, papperslös ¹ – these terms all denote people who live in places where they lack the documents to officially reside. The negation built into all of these words lie at the core of what the undocumented condition is and means, and constitutes a key factor in all its dimensions. In Sweden, the physical presence of an undocumented person produces no corresponding legal or socio-political presence; they have no functional official identity and are effectually excluded from public space, institutions and activities. Officially, they are absent.

Negations are not only imposed upon them from outside. Absenting oneself from view is part of undocumented persons’ everyday tactics. Where detection means detention and deportation, concealment and disguise are necessary techniques to avoid state surveillance and policing. However, undocumentedness is not something visible, a stigma inscribed on the body. By pretending to be someone with a right to place, an undocumented person can hide in plain sight. She ² can be seen, but cannot appear to others as herself. This is, in Hannah Arendt’s words, the same as being deprived of reality itself. ³

Undocumented persons, like the stateless of Hannah Arendt’s writing, are deprived of their political and legal identities – lacking the right to have rights. ⁴ This is the position that arises when a person is no longer a member of any human or political community – paradoxically the very situation for which human rights was intended. ⁵ It comprehends neither power of speech nor of action with which to define social space. However, even in the most subjugated positions, some measure of resistance – and under certain circumstances also political action – is possible. As well as pointing out the fundamental vulnerability of those living outside the political, Arendt also recognized the potential resistance, and the power of such resistance, of the excluded Other. ⁶

This article is concerned with the absent-yet-present condition of undocumented persons in Sweden, how this paradoxical condition manifests itself in people’s lives in various ways, and how that condition is being negotiated and resisted. Presence, in this case, is understood in Arendtian terms as the capacity to appear in front of others. ⁷ Redressing this issue in geographical terms, I argue that being officially absent robs undocumented persons of their capacity to define space, adding paradoxical qualities to the undocumented spatiality. This article also shows how undocumented persons, by using their politically absent yet physically present bodies as vehicles for practicing dissensus, ⁸ can find possibilities for recognition and action in public space.

A note on methods and terminology

This article draws on two and a half years of fieldwork, consisting of interviews and participatory observation with undocumented persons. Participatory observation, in this case, entails participating in demonstrations organized by the network Papperslösa Stockholm ⁹ and ethnographic fieldwork in a convent-run sanctuary for undocumented persons. ¹⁰ Around 35 undocumented persons stay there at any given time. The nuns of the convent accepted me as a general helper-outer and child-minder, with a clear understanding of my double aim of both assisting them in their work and doing fieldwork for my research project. Over the course of my fieldwork, I spent weekends and longer periods up to two weeks there, totalling 60 days. During that time, I had ample opportunities to explain my project, ask questions and hang out with the people staying there, as well as helping out with practical things.

The semi-structured interviews were conducted with undocumented persons in the wider Stockholm and Gothenburg areas. I came in contact with them through non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and activists, and by talking to the members of Papperslösa Stockholm. In a number of cases, I was in contact with the interviewees over long periods of time, which enabled me to have repeated conversations and discussions with them. In total, I have been in contact with 15 undocumented families and 13 undocumented singles. I estimate that I have had in-depth discussions with approximately half of the adults.

In English, the terms available to describe the undocumented position range from illegal and irregular to clandestine, deportable and non-citizen. ¹¹ Despite their varying points of reference such as law, crime, survival tactics or identity documents, they are often used as synonyms. ¹² The focus for this article is mainly their lack of recognized identity and their struggle to acquire one, and I therefore use the terms ‘undocumented person’ and ‘undocumentedness’ to indicate this condition. Undocumented is also the closest English translation of papperslös, which is the preferred term in Swedish. ¹³

Further, I prefer to write of undocumented persons instead of migrants. It is their status as undocumented individuals rather than their situation as immigrants that is in focus here. This concurs with the reasoning of the network Papperslösa Stockholm as well as the sans-papier movement in France, who in their struggles have focused entirely on their irregular status rather than the fact that they once migrated to France. ¹⁴

The Swedish context

In an international comparison, Sweden has a relatively small undocumented population; estimates of its size range from 10,000 to 35,000 persons. ¹⁵ These figures should be understood in relation to the total Swedish population of 9.3 million, of which about 14 per cent are foreign born. Undocumented persons in Sweden are either rejected asylum seekers or persons who have come for other reasons – work, studies or family related – and overstayed their visa, or never had one. Historically, the former group has been predominant but this is no longer necessarily the case. Whatever the background and trajectories leading to undocumentedness, it is always initially legally produced. ¹⁶ This section offers a brief background and sketch of how undocumentedness is constructed and produced in the Swedish context. ¹⁷

The stereotyped Swedish Model – comprehensive and generous public welfare provision, high levels of unionization, comparatively small income gaps and expressed high ambitions in all issues humanitarian – is a constituent part of the Swedish image, at home and abroad. ¹⁸ Albeit somewhat different from that ideal image, the Swedish welfare-state is comprehensive and requires complete and accurate population registers to function efficiently. The efficiency of the inclusion of those who are ‘in’ equals the exclusion of those who are ‘out’ and the marked difference between those two positions makes Sweden, perhaps unexpectedly, an unusually harsh place to live off the grid.

In the Swedish context residency is a matter of registry. The most important elements in the anatomy of Swedish undocumentedness are thus the Swedish national population register and the personnummer (civic registration number). Unlike many other countries (e.g. the UK, the US or Spain) it is not possible in Sweden to provide pieces of mail as proof of address. Registry in the population registers is in most contexts the legal definition of residency; the address to which a person is registered is where she resides. The personnummer is issued with registry in the population register, to Swedish citizens at birth and to foreigners when they acquire a long-term residence permit. ¹⁹ Persons who are not considered residents (e.g. asylum seekers, diplomats and visitors) are generally registered with the Migration Board where they are assigned samordningsnummer (coordination number), which can be used as identification in a similar manner to the personnummer.

These digits constitute a numerical interface in all communication between residents and societal institutions. When that interface is displaced or missing, interaction is often made impossible. While the social security numbers of other states are approximate equivalents to the personnummer, there are a couple of important differences. First, the personnummer is obtained automatically at birth and is not tied to employment or insurance and is assumed to be universal. Second, the personnummer as a means of identification has gained a wide public acceptance, unusual outside the Nordic countries. ²⁰ The personnummer is used for identification not only in contact with state institutions. It is also needed in contact with most private and civic actors, such as phone service providers, video-rentals, social networking communities and youth organizations. Thus, the undocumented lack the digits necessary for identification in any formal transaction. For this reason, they are at risk of being exposed in every contact with every institution.

Every individual officially present in Sweden is represented by a digital equivalent in the population registers, while undocumented persons are not registered, have no personnummer and often no valid form of ID. They have no digital identity but exist only in a ‘hard-copy’ version, lacking that numerical interface – the point of connection between the individual and society. The personnummer – literally a ‘person number’ – are key to all practical participation in Swedish society, as well as a symbol of belonging and being regarded as a ‘person’.

Undocumented people’s presence may, despite their apparent absence, be officially recorded somewhere – in the EU-wide register of asylum seekers, Eurodac, or in a register of deportation orders. However, their presence remains indistinct and disconnected as long as they themselves stay out of contact with the authorities. Indistinctly present, they are still subject to the laws of the country in the sense that they can be charged for a transgression. But, these same laws cannot protect a person whose presence is unrecognized. A crime committed against a person who is not officially there, has officially not happened. If the victim cannot reveal her presence, the crime will also remain unrevealed. It is the lack of ‘functional’ identity, one that can be revealed without risking deportation, which makes the state and its borders ever-present in undocumented persons’ lives, haunting their everyday activities and interactions. ²¹ I asked one undocumented woman if there were someplace where she felt safe. She thought for a while, then laughed and said, ‘Well, if I have an LMA-card ²² in my pocket, I will feel safe anywhere’. ²³

Presence as appearance

The spatial dimension of Arendt’s political action is public space, or the space of appearance. In line with her conceptualization of power as process and concerted action, public space is not material, but socially defined and performed by the members of the political community acting together. For politics to occur, the participating individuals must be able to see and speak to one another in public; to meet in public places so that their commonalities as well as their differences come into view and can become the subject of political debate. Deprived of that, she writes, is, humanly and politically speaking, to be deprived of reality. ²⁴ From this, I gather that the Arendtian notion of being present, is appearance.

It could be argued that the eidetic understanding of presence as appearance is deficient, given the upsurge of scholarly interest in the touchy-feely qualities of existence. ²⁵ I will conversely argue that it fits the present context. State control and governmentality is to a large extent based on visual tools and the tactics employed by the undocumented are moulded on the strategies of the state. ²⁶ While the tactics answering to state surveillance are clandestinity and concealment, the tactics of the excluded and ignored, by the same token, is dissensus and struggle for recognition. ²⁷ As will be shown in this article, undocumented persons in Sweden engage in both of these kinds of tactics.

In her treatise on the human condition, Arendt remarked on the super-portability of public space, quoting the watchword of the Ancient Greek colonization: ‘Wherever you go, you will be a polis.’ ²⁸ The polis, here, doesn’t refer to the city state itself, but denotes

. . . the organization of the people – as it arises out of acting and speaking together, and its true space lies between people living together for this purpose, no matter where they happen to be . . . It is the space of appearance, in the widest sense of the word. ²⁹

To act is to take part in, and be a constituting part of, the human community. Without the capacity to appear in front of others and be recognized as an acting subject, one’s presence is ineffectual, providing no options for political action or for claiming rights.

Being undocumented is to live alongside citizens, unable to appear, act, speak up or claim rights. A citizen ‘is a polis’ wherever she goes; her presence marks the potentiality of public space. In the same way that the citizen is a polis, an undocumented person is not a polis – public space warps at her touch. Susan Coutin touches upon these characteristics of undocumentedness when conceptualizing the undocumented spatiality as a ‘space of non-existence’ – a ‘borderland [dividing] the legal and the illegal, the legitimate and the illegitimate, the overt and the clandestine. Legality is spatialized in that those who do not exist legally are imagined to be “outside”, in an “underground”, or “not there”.’ ³⁰ However, undocumented persons do not inhabit these spaces, but constitute them. In a particular legal, political and administrative context that renders a person officially absent, it is her own physical presence that constitutes the non-polis and conjures up the space of non-existence.

The non-polis of the undocumented is not a position straightforwardly dichotomous to the polis of the citizen, however. Rather, they are opposites on a Möbius surface (Figure 1), paradoxical and fleeting, where ‘spaces that would be mutually exclusive if charted on a two-dimensional map – centre and margin, inside and outside – are occupied simultaneously’. ³¹

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Figure 1.

A Möbius surface. Photo: David Benbennick, licensed under Creative Commons license: <http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en>.

Undocumented paradoxical spaces

It is not like living in the real world, but beside it. And it conditions everything. ³²

The need for concealment in undocumented persons’ interaction with ‘proper’ spaces and properly present people is reminiscent of being in the closet, inserting paradoxical qualities to space and distorting a person’s interaction with the world. Notwithstanding its bounded imagery, however, for queer and undocumented alike, the world may become much more closed after coming out than from within the closet. ³³

I exemplify the distortion of the rules of social interaction by the need for concealment, by recounting an event during my fieldwork. I accompanied an 11-year-old undocumented boy to the dentist (Figure 2). He had a bad cavity, and the dentist, who provided dental care to undocumented persons pro bono, had decided to remove the tooth. The boy was terrified of this prospect and this was a first visit to plan the procedure, and for him to look at the dentist’s ‘things’. We sat in the waiting room and my charge was nervously talking about the fish in the aquarium opposite us. He liked my recorder and we made little recordings about what we were about to do, about being nervous, about dentists.

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Figure 2.

At the dentist. Photo: Author.

A woman entered and sat down across from us. She started talking to him, no doubt because she could see that he was nervous, and she kindly wanted to distract him. She asked the usual questions: What was he about to do at the dentist? Surely, it is going to be all right, she said. And what grade are you in? He looked at me, and after a pause he said that he was going to start third grade after the summer. In fact, he didn’t go to school but was taught by the nuns and the parents in the sanctuary, and there weren’t really distinct grades there. The woman continued talking to him. What school do you go to? He repeated that he was going to start third grade and looked at me again, begging for help. I didn’t know what to say, I knew no names of primary schools there and I couldn’t think of a way to make her stop talking without it sounding very strange. She mentioned the name of a school and asked if it was that one. He nodded. Who is your teacher? He only looked at her, mute. At least his nervousness is understandable, I thought, after all, we are in a dentist’s waiting room. After a while he said a name. Perhaps you know my son, said she, he is your age, and she showed him a picture in her wallet. No, he didn’t recognize him, he said, and quickly rose and came to sit by me again.

He snuggled up in the sofa and whispered in my ear that he had been lying, but that he had to! He couldn’t trust her, and maybe she would call the police if she knew. I whispered back that it is ok to lie sometimes, that it was ok, but that he need not be afraid of the woman, she seemed very nice and she couldn’t possibly know, and even if she did, she wouldn’t call the police. At this moment, a nurse came by and took us to a smaller waiting room especially fitted up for nervous children. We were very relieved to leave the very nice woman by the aquarium. ³⁴

Being simultaneously present and absent renders communication crooked. Having to hide, not one’s identity, but the fact that one doesn’t have one, upsets the notions of benign and harmful, right and wrong, up and down, left and right. What is said by one person, intended as a friendly question, can paradoxically become a threat and a question of life and death for the other. In the remaining sections of this article, I discuss different configurations of presence and absence, and the ways undocumented persons deal with those situations.

Abiding by absence – ‘Have you anywhere to hide?’

When undocumented persons are visible in the Swedish media, they are often portrayed cowering in shadowy rooms, as dark silhouettes behind drawn curtains. These images draw on an established discourse where rejected asylum seekers staying in Sweden without permits have been called gömda (hidden), reproducing the notion of ‘they’ never being visible among ‘us’. Gömda are construed as victims of war, abuse and an unfair asylum system, completely victimized; they are not hiding, but hidden by someone. ³⁵ The template ‘hidden’ person does have some reality behind it, but many undocumented persons don’t recognize this way of living at all. The absence and presence of the undocumented condition configures in a variety of ways, and hiding is merely one of them.

I accompanied an activist to a small Swedish town. It was summer, hot and dusty. We were going to visit a family whose last appeal to their asylum application had recently been rejected. They lived in a sparsely furnished but orderly apartment with their name neatly printed on a sign on the door. We had lunch with them and discussed their options. It was clear from their state of mind, their stress levels and introvert panic, that repatriation was not an option. The police had visited them after their rejection, but had refused to give a fixed date for their deportation; they had simply said that they would ‘come to fetch them when it is time’. My activist companion asked whether they had anywhere to hide. Yes, there is somewhere to hide, they said, they had made some preparations. ‘We can hide in our friend’s house for a while, and then we’ll see.’ ³⁶

‘Hidden’ generally means this: not leaving Swedish territory when receiving a final rejection on their asylum application, but disappearing through a loophole for a parallel existence. The name on their door would be removed and the family retreat into someone’s spare room, second home or an apartment sublet in a fake name.

Some of these undocumented persons hiding dare not leave their often-changing homes for fear of detection: ‘We had to sit in his flat, and it was ‘shhh shhhh’ all the time’. ³⁷ When they do venture out, many avoid contact with other people. One woman who had been undocumented for two years explained:

I was terrified someone would start talking to me. They would always ask many questions, questions that are perfectly normal to ask – where we were from, where we live and other things. But I was terrified. And in the laundry room, if someone came, I got scared to death, they were maybe going to ask something, and I had no idea what to answer. ³⁸

This manner of absenting oneself from society is employed by some, sometimes, and is, in a way, to abide by the imposed absence, albeit in another way than suggested by the authorities. Removing oneself from other people’s gaze – delimiting one’s life world to enclosed, uncomfortable spaces and minimizing one’s interactions with other people – is to absent oneself from the world. It is a last resort, a desperate survival tactic in a negotiation where one participant, the state, has a near total domination, but it is also a weapon of the weak. It is a kind of resistance without coordination or planning; a situational self-help tactic that avoids any direct confrontation. ³⁹

However, the dominant discourse of hiding and being hidden can in some measure facilitate certain kinds of interaction and mobility for undocumented persons. Although many undocumented persons describe how they feel their lack of permit advertised in their movements, on their foreheads and in their clothes, undocumentedness is not a visible feature of a person’s look. Walking down a street, they can walk and talk as if with someone else’s body and permit, frailly protected by the assumption that no undocumented person would ever be in view. ⁴⁰

Disguise – hiding in plain sight

An undocumented worker may buy, forge or borrow a work permit in order to pretend to exist. Similarly, in a subtler manner, any undocumented person can pretend to exist by taking on the guise of someone officially present. By acting in a manner as not to draw attention or to show fear, an undocumented person can blend in and move relatively freely. What Erving Goffman called impression management ⁴¹ – paying attention to how one appears to other people and making efforts to manipulate those impressions – is something that everyone, to some degree, practices in their everyday lives. A common critique of this model of understanding human behaviour is its exaggerated emphasis on monitoring and management of our appearance. However, in the case of deportable persons, whose continued existence in a place is contingent on their ability to hide part of their identity, this understanding of impression management may be well suited. To constantly make efforts to pass as someone with a right to place is a full-time endeavour. ⁴² When I ask a representative of the network Papperslösa Stockholm what their tips are for staying under the radar, their response is centred on looking ‘normal’:

Wear nice clothes, don’t look worried, look happy, and smile all the time . . . Never travel on the metro without a valid ticket. Never linger in a public spot. Don’t loiter in Sergels torg, Medborgarplatsen, ⁴³ places like that. If you have an errand there, go and do it and then leave . . . Keep your eyes open. Learning the language is most important. ⁴⁴

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Figure 3.

Sergels Torg. Photo: Author.

Whether it is possible to ‘look normal’ or ‘pass’ as someone with a right to place depends to some extent on a person’s cultural and social origins and colour of skin, as well as on context. Barak Kalir noted in his ethnographic research among undocumented Latinos in Israel that they, who by their skin-colour often can pass as Israelis, were less prone to demonstrate for undocumented migrants’ rights, than were the more conspicuous groups from African countries. Because of their ability to pass, they had more to lose on outing themselves as undocumented. ⁴⁵

The Swedish Aliens Act states that a ‘reasonable suspicion’ ⁴⁶ of a person lacking residence permit must exist in order for a police to engage in internal border control, and that suspicion must not be based solely on skin-color. Research on the practices of internal border policing has shown, however, that a ‘foreign look’ often serves as a first profiling tool and, in practice, it is often enough to constitute such a suspicion. Thus, deportability should be understood as a racialized condition. ⁴⁷ Undocumented persons with less of a ‘foreign look’ are less at risk of subjugation to internal border control protocols, as the suspicion of being undocumented is conditioned on a prior categorization as ‘immigrant’. ⁴⁸

‘They can’t see that I don’t have documents’

A person’s undocumented status can be concealed by avoiding certain places and situations where identification is asked for and by managing one’s appearance and behaviour in order to blend in. The situations to be avoided are numerous, walling the possibilities for interaction available to undocumented persons.

In the sanctuary where I did part of my fieldwork, I often went cycling in the evenings. One time, on a small road with virtually no traffic, I met one of the young men living there. We stopped to talk for a while and suddenly a police car swished past us.

For a moment we stared at each other and after the initial shock, we both started laughing. I asked if he got scared. ‘No’, he said. ‘Or, well, a little, but not like before. They often drive past me when I’m out biking, but they never stop, they can’t check everyone. I do get a little adrenaline rush sometimes when I meet them. But it is better now after I talked to them, you remember?’ He was referring to another discussion we had a couple of months ago, where he told me of a dark and cold winter evening in Stockholm. He had visited friends there and got lost on the way to the Metro station. There were few people out and he couldn’t find anyone to ask for directions:

Then I saw a police car standing in a street corner, just in front of me. I got scared and almost started to run, but then I thought, No! They can’t see that I don’t have documents, I should ask them. And so I did. I knocked on their window and asked for the nearest Metro station, and they pointed me in the right direction. As easy as that. No one can see that I’m undocumented, I can walk around like everybody else.

He admitted that being out on the roads is a bit risky, but always being indoors makes him sick: ‘Always being in one place, always being passive.’ Sometimes he went biking to the small town close by, just to walk around among people (Figure 4):

That gives me some strength. The first time I biked there, it was as if two tons of garbage fell off my back . . . It’s good to be able to go there, maybe once a week. At the same time, it is difficult to approach or talk to people. But . . . that’s secondary. ⁴⁹

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Figure 4.

Biking. Photo: Author.

By not drawing attention and concealing any signs of being undocumented – not doing or saying anything except what is expected and normal – it is possible to pass for a person with a right to place. In this way, one becomes overtly camouflaged. ⁵⁰ This inconspicuous presence bears the features of tactics in de Certeau’s sense of the word. Operating incognito on territory where one is not recognized can never yield any crops for future struggles or long-term goals. ⁵¹ Wherever an undocumented person goes, public space is locally annihilated, leaving her presence as ineffective as a cut-out silhouette.

As long as the guise of someone with the right to place can be upheld, the undocumented person can enjoy some freedom of movement. That freedom is, however, in one sense, a mere illusion – it is just as much a forced movement. The undocumented position offers no right to residence; also when at rest she is not settled. ⁵² Some agency and some choices are available within the constraints of this disguise, but appearing to others is not among them. An undocumented person can be seen, but as soon as she opens her mouth to speak – speech in Arendt’s meaning – the borrowed guise shatters.

Joint, anonymous presence

Despite their official absence and dependence on concealment, Sweden’s undocumented population have become more visible in the public debate in the past few years. They are discussed but do not discuss – in the same way as they are hidden, not hiding. Most commonly, they are mentioned in the plural indefinite form, ⁵³ to the extent that the terms gömda and papperslösa are being used about single individuals, at least by many undocumented persons struggling with the Swedish language. Several undocumented persons I have met refer to themselves and others with the plural terms: ‘I am papperslösa’; ‘She has become gömda’. Undocumented persons are present in the public debate as an indistinct group, indicative of the impossibility for undocumented individuals to be visible as themselves. Only a joint, anonymous presence is possible.

While they themselves cannot employ this indistinct presence to act or speak, NGOs and activists may make use of it in their opinion building. The convent-sanctuary of my fieldwork has continuously hosted undocumented people for over 30 years. By the parking lot stands a large sign saying ‘Alsike Convent is a Safe Haven for Refugees in Need. Genesis 4:15 Matthew 25:35’ (Figure 5). ⁵⁴ The nuns emphasize that they are not hiding people: ‘This is a sanctuary. We have made the decision to be open about what we do, that way we can participate with credibility in the debate about asylum policy and the situation for undocumented persons.’ ⁵⁵

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Figure 5.

‘Alsike Kloster is a sanctuary for refugees in need’. Photo: Author.

In the early 1990s, this transparency precipitated a police raid and the people staying in the sanctuary were detained. However, the nuns were prepared and contacted the media early on. Several journalists reported on the rather violent police raid. The public outcry that followed eventually forced the police to retreat and return almost everyone that they had removed from the sanctuary. After that, the nuns and the police negotiated a kind of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy. The police agreed not to make investigations into who is staying in the sanctuary and as long as they don’t know their identities, they will not attempt to detain or deport anyone. If they leave the convent’s premises, however, they also leave the relative protection of this agreement.

When interviewed in the media, the nuns usually speak of their activities in vague temporal terms – perhaps undocumented people are living under their roof at the present time, perhaps not. There are no identifiable undocumented individuals, only an anonymous undocumented group in an unspecified temporal setting. ⁵⁶ The undocumented persons living there cannot speak, act or interact in public themselves, but can lend their joint presence, albeit unspecified, as legitimation for the nuns’ in the migration debate.

Individuals acknowledged as present are identifiable, approachable, detainable and deportable. Groups of undisclosed individuals, however, can be acknowledged as present, yet remain nameless and diffuse. Claiming their joint presence, or rather having someone else claim it for them, can be done without disclosing the identity of any individual. Accordingly, they remain nameless – uncertain in space, time and number – in the opinion building of NGOs, in the media and in articles like this one. This may not much strengthen their individual options for action or interaction, but it is the basis for an ‘activism by proxy’, in that the acknowledgment of their group presence allows others to act and speak for them.

Gaining appearance

The ultimate embodiment of the gap between law and practice, ⁵⁷ undocumented persons’ tactics depend on other gaps – loopholes formed by distortion and erosion of the official strategy. Options for recognition and action, if only ephemeral, can be created by using their politically absent, yet physically present bodies as vehicles in struggle and resistance. Despite being detainable and officially absent, unable to interact or speak as themselves, acknowledgement and recognition of undocumented presence happens. Political actions by the politically excluded constitute what Rancière calls dissensus, actions charged with the explosive power of the conscious pariah. ⁵⁸

Demonstrating presence

Inspired by the French sans-papiers movement, a number of undocumented persons got together in Stockholm and formed the network Papperslösa Stockholm. In 2006, they started demonstrating once a week outside the parliament building in Stockholm. Initially, their main issue was general amnesty for undocumented persons. A secondary aim, tightly conjoined with the first, was to raise awareness of undocumented persons’ presence and conditions, and to establish papperslösa as the term used for all undocumented persons. Papperslösa Stockholm is not a registered organization and they could therefore not themselves apply for demonstration permits. Instead, various local and national politicians supporting their cause took turns applying on their behalf.

Their impact on public and political discourse has been substantial, despite the limited scale of these demonstrations. Ignoring the risks of exposure, they defined and entered into public space, taking active part in the categorization and naming of themselves. Papperslösa Stockholm, supported by a number of NGOs, established papperslösa as an officially present category, forcing their surroundings to acknowledge their existence in Swedish society. Most Wednesdays at 5 p.m. outside the parliament building, they could be seen and heard presenting themselves (Figure 6): ‘This is our 147th demonstration – we are Papperslösa Stockholm; we are still here!’ ⁵⁹

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Figure 6.

Papperslösa Stockholm demonstration. Photo: Author.

The people showing up for the demonstrations were a mix of undocumented persons, former undocumented persons, activists and politicians. Some passers-by also stopped to listen. Politicians in the national parliament, representatives of various advocacy organizations, as well as the undocumented people themselves, took turns to speak. At the demonstration quoted above, the speaker of the day was a Green Party parliament politician. She updated the crowd on the latest from the parliament immigration policy group, finishing off with the following:

‘And by the way, Tobias [The Minister of Migration and Asylum Policy] has invented a new name for you guys. ‘Tillståndslösa’! ⁶⁰ He is quite an inventive guy, don’t you think!?’ ⁶¹

She was not the only speaker at these demonstrations who spoke to the undocumented people in the audience, rather than about them, as is so often done in other fora. By speaking to them, their presence was acknowledged and reasserted in public. Undocumented became, for a moment, the local norm.

For a short window of time, standing together under the Papperslösa-banner, their presence as undocumented individuals ceased to be a secret. By engaging in political action, speaking and interacting in public, they appeared as themselves – as political subjects – casting off the invisibility cloaks of borrowed semblance. Their present bodies, albeit legally, politically and administratively unrecognized, became vehicles for dissensus, for ‘breaking out’ of their silhouette-shaped non-polis and appearing in public space. Only with acknowledgement of their presence could they claim their rights. It remained a fragile, ephemeral presence, however. When the time-slot for the demonstration was over, the undocumented members usually disappeared quickly, while members with permits packed up the gear. Still legally and digitally absent, the public realm closed around them as soon as they disbanded – until 5 p.m. the next Wednesday.

Conclusions

This article has investigated the absence-presence nexus of undocumentedness and how it manifests itself in undocumented people’s lives. I have argued that undocumented persons embody the gaps between law and practice, and that they can be understood as officially absent. This conditions their whole existence, tangling the relations between visibility and clandestinity, centre and margin. It renders the undocumented spatiality paradoxical and Möbius.

The tactics available for resisting and maneuvering in this paradoxical position are moulded on the structures and strategies creating their position. State surveillance and policing is countered with concealment and disguise, the official absence imposed by the authorities with a struggle for visibility and recognition. Through these various acts of resistance, the interrelations between absence and presence are configured in different ways. Struggling to obscure their presence, undocumented persons may conceal themselves altogether through ‘hiding’ or by taking on the guise of someone with a right to place. In public debates, undocumented persons are generally present as an indistinct and anonymous group, never speaking, but spoken of by others. When it comes to individual action and speech, however, these kinds of presence are ineffective.

The debates in geography concerning the relationship between absent and present have generally focused on its spatio-temporal dimensions. What is absent is understood as that which was there – the dead, or buildings now derelict. ⁶² Also the so-called spectral turn and the growing interest in haunting build on assumptions of a temporal relationship. ⁶³ As a spatial relationship, absence has also been discussed implying displacement or removal. What is absent is that which is not here, but over there. ⁶⁴ I have in this article suggested an understanding of presence as (potential) appearance and absence as the lack of it. This allows for simultaneous presence and absence and has profound spatial consequences calling for further attention from geographers.