Permanent residence permits and demands for integration: a genealogical analysis of Swedish immigration policy

ABSTRACT

This article explores the contemporary civic integration policy trend of fusing migration control and integration requirements, by analysing Swedish immigration policies from a governmentality perspective. Through a genealogical analysis, the article focuses on policies on permanent residence permits and explores key concepts which underly contemporary policies on permanent residence permit, and the technologies of citizenship and anti-citizenship produced through them. The material consists of Swedish official documents published between 1951 and 2021. The analysis shows that ‘incentives’ and ‘conduct’ are key concepts which underly contemporary policies, where the permanent residence permit is constructed as part of an assemblage of technologies of (anti-)citizenship, governing non-citizens towards becoming law-abiding and working subjects. Furthermore, both these concepts have been given different meaning over time, especially the concept of incentives. This concept was central in the 1950s, then backgrounded during the late twentieth century and reactivated in 2015. The policies on permanent residence permit once again activated an assemblage of technologies aimed at governing the motivation of non-citizens who require residence permits. This reactivation relates to a wider trend of civic integration within western countries, where policies are recurringly designed to ‘improve’ non-citizens who are portrayed as morally lacking.

KEYWORDS:

• Immigration
• permanent residence permits
• governmentality
• genealogy
• Sweden

Introduction

During the twentieth century, states across Europe developed policies on permanent forms of residence permits as instruments in immigration control through which non-citizens’ continuous right to stay in a country could be regulated (Brochmann and Hammar 2020). Since the 1990s, many European states have added integration-related requirements to these kinds of residence permits, which demand that non-citizens meet conditions that are supposed to improve integration, such as having an income, in order to be granted a secure legal status (Goodman 2010; Joppke 2017). These kinds of integration requirements form part of a larger civic integration trend within Europe, which refers to policy initiatives where the state tries to facilitate integration of non-citizens into mainstream institutions, such as the labour market, through, among other things, the combination of immigration control and integration requirements (Joppke 2017; Kostakopoulou 2010). Civic integration policies are characterised by a strengthened focus on obligations, selection and control of individuals, where non-citizens must demonstrate that they can live autonomously in a country to pass through the national migration control. As Bonjour (2020) argues, this focus on obligations is supposed to stimulate and test non-citizens’ desire to integrate, which at the same time, paradoxically, assumes both a desire and an unwillingness to integrate. According to previous migration researchers, this policy trend has contributed to increased legal obligations, legal uncertainty and temporariness for non-citizens who require residence permits (Ellermann 2020; Goodman 2010; Mouritsen 2013).¹

Recent scholarship has engaged with the civic integration trend from different perspectives, such as comparing the policy development in different countries (see, for example, Goodman 2010; Joppke 2007, 2017; Mouritsen 2013). Others have utilised a governmentality perspective to explore the governing that is produced through the civic integration policies and their policy instruments, such as introduction courses (Fernandes 2021) and civic integration programmes (Blankvoort et al. 2021; Suvarierol 2015). From a governmentality perspective these instruments can be understood as different technologies of government, which means institutionalised practices that govern people towards certain behaviours (Dean 2010; Foucault 2000; Rose 1999). This kind of research has illustrated how these technologies of civic integration policies recurrently govern non-citizens towards values concerning individual responsibility, which have often included being self-governing, self-sufficient and proficient in the national language (Blankvoort et al. 2021; Schinkel and Van Houdt 2010; Suvarierol 2015). In accordance with a governmentality approach, this article explores and problematises how policies on permanent residence permits have been used to govern non-citizens towards integration and values concerning individual responsibility in a Swedish context.² In this article I contribute to previous research by studying these kinds of policies from a historically oriented governmentality perspective. The main question guiding the analysis is whether the aforementioned use of policies on permanent forms of residence permits is something new, or can it be seen as a historically recurrent feature of these kinds of policies?

To answer and discuss the question of the novelty of civic integration policies from a historical perspective, this article analyses Swedish government official reports (SOU in Swedish) and government bills (propositioner in Swedish) regarding immigration policy in Sweden from 1951 to 2021. Departing from a governmentality perspective and adopting the theoretical concepts of problem representations and technologies of government, the analysis identifies key concepts which underly problems that contemporary policies on permanent forms of residence permits in Sweden are meant to solve, and which governing of non-citizen these permits are supposed to produce. In a genealogical exercise, I then trace these concepts back to the second half of the twentieth century and how the meaning of these concepts and the construction of permanent forms of residence permits have shifted over time.

The article is structured as follows: Initially, the context of the study is presented, by giving a historical account regarding the Swedish policies on permanent residence permits. After that, the material and analytical framework guiding my investigation is described. Then, I present the results of my analysis of policy documents from the mid-2010s and early 2020s, where I delineate key ideas which support permanent forms of residence permits in present time. In the following sections – ‘Incentives for lacking subjects’ and ‘Examining conduct’ – I turn my attention to the earlier policy documents and trace the identified key concepts from the mid-twentieth century back to the present. Finally, I discuss connections between historical and contemporary policies on permanent residence permits, when it comes to the ways in which these permits have been used to govern non-citizens towards values concerning individual responsibility and integration.

Policies on permanent residence permits in Sweden

In this article, I will use Sweden as a case study. Sweden has at times been described as an exception in relation to the trend of civic integration policies, where one basis for this outlier position has been that the Swedish government did not link permanent residence permits to legal integration requirements, at least up until the mid-2010s (Borevi 2014).³

Against the background of an increase in labour and refugee migration after World War II, the first policy on a permanent form of residence permit was introduced in Sweden in 1954, at the time called a settlement permit [Bosättningstillstånd]. The reform was intended to strengthen the legal protection for a few well-behaved permanent residents, mostly workers and political refugees, among the approximately 110,000 non-citizens with temporary residence permits in Sweden (SOU 1951:42). The Swedish government represented it as problematic that these non-citizens otherwise risked being denied further residence permits when applying for permit extensions, which created uncertainty among non-citizens residing in the country. When introduced, the only legal criterion for the settlement permit was that non-citizens were assessed as permanent residents in the country, but in practice, the Swedish migration authority required a stay of at least five years and good conduct in the following years.

As a result of the migration authority’s demands, only 157 settlements permits were granted between 1961 and 1965, compared with 47,000–55,000 residence permits being granted yearly, mostly on economic grounds, during the same period (SOU 1967:18). In 1968, the rules for the settlement permit were liberated, by reducing the demand for a certain length of stay in the country from five years to two. The government characterised the migration authority’s demands as unnecessarily restrictive and counteracting the original motives behind the settlement permits. The reform was enacted after a period of practically free economic migration to Sweden since the early 1950s and was adopted in connection with a stricter regulation of non-Nordic labour migration to Sweden. This regulation followed an increase in unemployment and homelessness among job-seeking non-Nordic citizens in the mid-1960s (Frank 2014). Hence, the border control targeting labour migration was intensified, while the monitoring of non-citizens with residence permits in the country was eased.

In 1976, the settlement permit was replaced by a permanent residence permit, which instead was to be granted after a one-year stay in the country, and from 1985 this permit was made the principal rule when non-citizens were granted residence permits (Hammar 1990; Jansson 2023). Both reforms took shape against a change in the character of migration to Sweden since the early 1970s, changing from mainly labour to family and refugee migration. Of the total of 226,000 non-Nordic citizens immigrating to Sweden between 1968 and 1981, 58,000 residence permits were granted on asylum-related grounds and 141,000 for family reasons. The reforms were both described as a means of making the permit process more efficient, as the multiple permit processes were both costly and rarely resulted in denial of permanent permits.⁴ Consequently, a more efficient permit process was seen as beneficial for both non-citizens and the Swedish migration authority. The reforms made Swedish policies on permanent residence permits relatively generous in relation to other European countries, and the Swedish state upheld the standard for permanent residence permits between 1985 and 2016. Although stricter border control measures, mainly targeting non-citizens seeking asylum, have been introduced since the 1980s in Sweden, 16,000–121,000 residence permits were granted annually during this period, a large proportion of which were permanent.

In the wake of the refugee situation in 2015, there was a drastic shift in Sweden’s policies on permanent residence permits, with the government introducing a temporary law in 2016. In the law, they adjusted the rules for asylum and family reunification to the European Union’s (EU) minimum levels, temporary residence permits were made standard, and an income requirement was added to the permanent residence permits. This requirement meant that an income was needed, either from employment or an applicant’s own business – and it was subject to both a time condition such as full-time employment or fixed-term employment of at least 18 months, plus and a monetary condition requiring a certain amount that covered the individual’s accommodation costs and the so-called normal amount for a single adult, which is a standard calculation of ordinary living expenses. The reform was enacted to reduce the number of people seeking asylum in Sweden, with the government describing the generous standard as one of the main reasons for people seeking asylum in Sweden, instead of other European countries. In 2021, these changes were made permanent, while at the same time requirements for three years of stay in the country and good conduct [vandel] were added for permanent residence permits (Prop. 2020/21:191). Following these changes, non-citizens with temporary residence permits are supposed to be monitored and examined by the Swedish Migration Agency, through recurring permit examinations, until they are eligible for permanent residence permits.

In summary, there has been a shift in the Swedish policies on permanent residence permits in the present, compared to the second part of the twentieth century, by increasing, rather than easing, the requirements for these kinds of permits. This shift also entails further monitoring and examining the behaviours of non-citizens with temporary residence permits, who needs prove that they meet the set requirements to be able to stay in the country permanently. This shift reflects the civic integration trend mentioned above, as people with temporary residence permits must become autonomous subjects if they want to stay permanently in Sweden.

Materials and analytical framework

This article is based on empirical material comprising two different kinds of policy sources: Swedish government official reports (SOU in Swedish) and government bills (propositioner in Swedish) regarding immigration policy in Sweden from 1951 to 2021. In Sweden, Government official reports are central in the law-making process and consist of the findings from investigators appointed by the government in relation to specific issues. The reports often contain proposals for policy changes, which are then addressed in the ensuing government bills. These bills consist of concrete proposals that the government presents to the Swedish parliament, the purpose of which is to change policy, and includes statements regarding the proposals from government representatives and referral bodies.

The selection of texts to serve as units of analysis has been limited to nine policy texts: two bills and a report produced during the years of 2015/16 and 2020/21, a report and a bill from the 1950s, a report and a bill from the late 1960s, and a report and a bill from the early 1980s. All the reports and bills were initiated by the government. The reports were conducted by different sets of investigators, including legal experts, heads of the Swedish migration authority, members of parliament, representatives of trade unions and government departments. As both the reports and bills are initiated and processed by the government but also reflect the positions of other stakeholders, these texts can be said to primarily reflect the views of the government, while illuminating other established perspectives. The selection of texts is based on the database DEMIG Policy data (DEMIG 2015), in which Swedish immigration policy changes between 1884 and 2013 have been classified from fine-tuning to major changes. Inclusion and exclusion criteria for the selection were: (1) the texts formed the basis for major changes in Swedish immigration policies. (2) Changes in the policies on permanent forms of residence permits were central elements of the major changes. (3) Selected bills were approved and ascended to law. (4) Reports and bills, at respective major change, were linked. (5) Texts concerning changes to specific categories of non-citizens’ conditions for permanent residence permits were excluded. The aim of the criteria was to allow for a tracing of key concepts present in the overall policies on permanent forms of residence permits from the 1950s up until the present time. A further aim was to allow for an exploration of how these concepts have been given different meaning and enabled different constructions of permanent forms of residence permits, at times of significant changes in Swedish immigration policies.

The analytical framework in this study departs from a Foucauldian governmentality perspective and genealogical approach to studying and writing history, which can also be directed towards policy (Gale 2001). The genealogical approach means taking the present as its focal point, seeking to understand and problematise present forms of knowledge and practices, with the help of historical events (Foucault 1998). The idea is to illustrate how the past is present in present time, but also how certain aspects of the past have been relegated to the periphery. A founding assumption for the genealogy is that concepts in the present time came about through a multiplication of processes, rather than following a linear logic, during which configurations of connections were established which are still present today (Foucault 1991). Thus, the genealogy tries to trace and reestablish the configurations and connections of the past, thus enabling present distinctions and actions (Foucault 1998).

To operationalise the genealogical approach, I have adopted two theoretical concepts from the governmentality toolbox: problem representations and technologies of government. In Foucauldian policy studies the concept of problem representations has been used to refer to the problematization of objects, such as ‘irregular migrants’ (Jørgensen 2012), which are understood to be produced through policy (Bacchi and Goodwin 2016). The basic premise is that a policy proposal indicates what people think needs to change and hence how the ‘problem’ is constituted (Bacchi 2012). Thus, analysing problem representations focuses on ‘how and why certain things (behaviour, phenomena, processes) became a problem’ (Foucault 2001, 171), here in relation to permanent forms of residence permits. Bacchi (2012) argues that it is possible to take any policy proposals and deduce how they produce certain ‘problems’. The aim is then to open up this problem representation by questioning the conceptual premises it builds upon, for example by exploring its history and the key concepts which make them thinkable (Bacchi 2009), which is the main focus of the analysis in this study.

Technologies of government are in turn, as mentioned in the introduction, institutionalised practices with, as Rose (1999) highlights, ‘the aspirations to achieve certain outcomes in terms of conduct of the governed’ (52). They are human technologies through which human capacities are to be acted upon by technical and institutionalised means, consisting of an assemblage of forms of thinking, practices, vocabularies, non-human objects, etc., traversed with the same aspirations. Thus, the analysis of technologies of government means a focus on the technical means through which policies are to be implemented (Dean 2010), and what conduct of the governed they are supposed to produce, which in this study concerns the conduct which is disciplined as a means to achieve a residency permit. In the analysis, I discuss two kinds of technologies more closely, technologies of citizenship (Cruikshank 1999) and anti-citizenship (Inda 2006) respectively, focused on governing human beings as (un)ethical subjects. While the former aims to reanimate the autonomous capacities of supposedly unethical anti-citizens, the latter deems this reconstitution as unlikely and instead aims to incapacitate and exclude those who are seen as threats to the social body (Inda 2006, 31). In relation to policies on permanent residence, these technologies contribute to either the inclusion or exclusion of non-citizens who require residence permits, following constructions of them as (un)ethical subjects.

The concrete analysis was performed in three steps. The first step was to identify problem representations in the policy texts, by departing from the proposals regarding permanent residence permits and deducing what was seen as the ‘problem’. The second step was to open up the problem representations, by exploring the underlying key concepts. This step was done differently in relation to the contemporary and the historical policy texts, as the aim was to trace the contemporary key concepts back in time. Thus, in the analysis of the former, I coded the material for underlying key concepts and analysed the meaning given to these concepts. In the analysis of the latter, I coded for the key concepts previously identified and analysed the meaning given to them in the different time-periods. The third step was to explore the constructions of the permanent forms of residence permits, by coding for excerpts considered a reference to these permits as technologies of government, and analysing what conduct of non-citizens they were supposed to produce. Through the analysis, it was possible to identify connections between the past and the present, regarding shifts in the meaning of underlying key concepts and constructions of permanent forms of residence permits over time.

Results

Key concepts in contemporary policies on permanent residence permits

In this section, I analyse problem representations in policy documents from the mid-2010s and early 2020s and delineate key concepts which underly the contemporary policies on permanent residence permits, and the way of utilising these permits as a technology of government. These policy documents were produced in a quite dramatic political context, where the Swedish government made a U-turn regarding Swedish immigration and refugee policies, after 163,000 people sought asylum in Sweden during the year 2015 (Scarpa and Schierup 2018). The Social Democratic government portrayed the situation as a refugee crisis which threatened the Swedish welfare and refugee reception systems, and the supposedly generous Swedish rules for permanent residence permits were represented as the problem (Prop. 2015/16:174). The rules were considered generous because non-citizens could be granted permanent residence permits directly. Following this problem representation, the government adopted the aforementioned temporary immigration law and transformed Swedish immigration policies from being relatively generous to becoming highly restrictive. This U-turn was meant to steer people seeking asylum away from Sweden, towards other countries within the EU (Prop. 2015/16:174).

A key concept used in the proposed U-turn was incentives. The government argued that an income requirement for permanent residence permits would help to provide an incentive for people with temporary residence permits and steer them towards the labour market. Although referral bodies argued that the income requirement would make people with temporary residence permits more vulnerable in the labour market, the Swedish government saw such an incentive as beneficial both for these people and for Swedish society:

Although the proposal could in some cases have negative effects on the establishment of a foreigner, it could in many other cases be a positive driving force to get a job and achieve self-sufficiency. In terms of integration, great gains can be derived from foreigners entering working life and providing their own livelihood. (Prop. 2015/16:174, 58)⁵

In the quote, the combination of temporary residence permits with an income requirement for permanent permits is meant to function as a ‘positive driving force’ and steer non-citizens towards the labour market. Here, an underlying assumption is that ‘foreigners’ are potentially passive and unmotivated subjects who will not work of their own volition, but who can become motivated if they are subject to stricter demands. This kind of assumption has recurrently been articulated in contemporary nationalist discourses on immigration, in both Sweden and other European countries. In these discourses, ‘foreigners’ have been constructed as passive subjects who lack the desire to integrate and will become dependent on welfare if they are left to their own devices, which is why the state ‘must’ introduce stricter demands to engender this desire (Anderson 2013; Bonjour 2020; Suvarierol 2015). The concept of incentives was also explicated in 2020, in both the governmental report on the future of Sweden’s migration policy, A long-term sustainable migration policy, and in the bill (2020/21:191) with proposals for permanent changes to the Swedish Aliens Act. In both these policy texts, income requirements for permanent residence permits were described as necessary to drive non-citizens towards the labour market, which was a pivotal assumption when passing the law.

In the report, the responsible committee also developed potential solutions to counter some of the negative effects mentioned earlier, such as the concern that the use of temporary residence permits would prevent integration in society. Their proposed solutions were adding requirements for language skills and civic knowledge for permanent residence permits. Although these proposals have not been adopted into law yet, the Swedish government has declared that these requirements are to be adopted at the same time as new rules for citizenship in 2025. When arguing in favour of these requirements, the committee once again refers to the way in which stricter demands can provide incentives for people with temporary residence permits, and promote integration into society:

The Committee estimates that the proposal to introduce language requirements and requirements for social studies for a permanent residence permit can provide new arrivals with incentives to learn Swedish and acquire knowledge of how Swedish society is organised and functions. The introduction of these requirements can thus be expected to improve integration into society. (SOU 2020:54, 431)

Although the policy proposals have not been passed yet, the committee’s reasoning illustrates the recurring connection in contemporary policies on permanent residence permits, between the concept of incentives and the combination of temporary residence permits with integration requirements for permanent residence permits. In the excerpt, this combination is supposed to incentivise non-citizens who require residence permits and steer them towards acquiring knowledge which is seen to ‘improve integration’, such as learning Swedish and civic knowledge. Thus, the stricter policies on permanent residence permits are supposed to activate an assemblage of technologies of government aimed at integration, such as language courses and civic introduction courses, consistent with civic integration policies (Ellermann 2020; Joppke 2017) – technologies which can be understood as technologies of citizenship (Cruikshank 1999), aimed at governing non-citizens towards becoming autonomous, self-reliant, and thus ethical, subjects. In this way, permanent residence permits are supposed to make it possible to govern non-citizens towards integration and values concerning individual responsibility, as they otherwise must live in the country with temporary residence permits.

Another key concept which occurs in the policy documents is focused on the use of permanent residence permits as a means of examining the conduct of non-citizens with temporary residence permits in Sweden. When the government discussed the income requirement for permanent residence permits in the bill of 2015/16, the Swedish Migration Agency was recommended to demand an employment contract from non-citizens, when applying for permanent permits.⁶ This is described as a way of reviewing the existence and terms of employment, where non-citizens need to prove that they are working subjects, to become eligible for permanent permits. The consideration of permanent residence permits was also described as a way of detecting potential rule abuse, where non-citizens potentially presented sham contracts, drafted to help them be granted residence permits.

When processing applications for work permits, the Swedish Migration Agency must be observant that an employment contract is not a sham agreement (…) This should also apply when the agency is considering granting a permanent residence permit due to the provision in question. (Prop. 2015/16:174, 58)

Permanent residence permits are here linked to ideas of fraud, where people applying for these permits are constructed as subjects who will potentially try to deceive the Swedish authorities. Since the 1990s, these kinds of ideas and arguments have been a recurring and growing theme in the discourse about immigration, asylum and welfare, where categories such as ‘immigrants’ and ‘refugees’ have been coupled with ideas of rule abuse, welfare dependency and fraud (Lundström 2013; Pratt and Valverde 2002). Through this way of thinking, where non-citizens with temporary residence permits are constructed as potentially fraudulent subjects, the government legitimises technologies of government targeted towards non-citizens’ conduct before granting permanent residence permits, such as monitoring and reviewing employment contracts, i.e. an assemblage of anti-citizenship technologies, oriented towards the exclusion of presumably unethical and risky subjects, such as law-breakers, who are depicted as threatening towards the society and inimical to improvement (Inda 2006).

The concept of conduct was also present in the proposal for permanent changes to the Aliens Act in 2020, which then included a formal conduct requirement for permanent residence permits. This means that non-citizens with temporary permits must live a diligent [skötsamt] life, which was described as an important part of a long-term sustainable migration policy. This was motivated from a moral standpoint, where the government presented it as not being

reasonable that a person who, during his time in the country, (…) has committed a crime or some other misconduct (…) should be able to be granted a permanent residence permit without any assessment of the appropriateness of this being made. (Prop. 2020/21:191: 69)

Once again, permanent residence permits presuppose technologies of monitoring and examining the behaviours of non-citizens with temporary residence permits, to ensure that no persons who commit crimes or other misconduct get to stay in the country permanently. Through these technologies, non-citizens who require residence permits are made visible as potentially risky and non-integrated anti-citizens, who can be excluded from a secure legal status if they do not prove that they are good citizens – an exclusion which is not possible in relation to Swedish citizens, who gain what Schinkel (2010) calls a ‘dispensation of integration’, by being assumed as a neutral, already integrated category and non-excludable category. In this way, permanent residence permits contribute to the differentiation between Swedish citizens as the norm, and non-citizens who require residence permits as potentially deviant anti-citizens, in need of the state’s monitoring and control.

To sum up, the arguments for the stricter rules for permanent residence permits in the mid-2010s and early 2020s are based on key concepts of incentives and conduct. The concepts contribute to creating an image of non-citizens seeking a residence permit as potentially problematic subjects, in need of motivation and social control to fit into Swedish society. When linked to these concepts through policies, the permanent residence permit is constructed as part of an assemblage of technologies of government, where some are aimed at inclusion of non-citizens into a Swedish order, by governing towards integration and individual responsibility, and others are aimed at exclusion of those deemed undesirable. These technologies are activated through the combination of temporary residence permits and requirements for permanent residence permits, making it possible to differentiate between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ non-citizens.

In the following section, I will turn my attention towards the twentieth century, more specifically the early 1950s, late 1960s and early 1980s, and explore how the concepts of incentives and conduct were given meaning in relation to historical problem representations in policies on permanent residence permits. These key concepts should not be understood as new or novel within the context of immigration policy, but rather as components of recurring government strategies (cf. Hanson 2010), given different meanings and focus at different times in history.

Incentives for lacking subjects

Already in the policy proposal to introduce the first permanent form of residence in the 1950s, the settlement permit, the concept of incentives was linked to the problem representation produced through this proposal. As mentioned earlier, the settlement permit was introduced at a time of high labour demands after World War II and was to solve a problem of uncertainty among a few well-behaving and permanently residing non-citizens in the country. In the official report and government bill in which the policy proposal was discussed, this uncertainty was depicted as contributing to rootlessness among non-citizens, and a permanent form of residence permit was meant to counteract this and instead influence them to observe a proper way of living. As the immigration policies of the time were based on an implicit assimilationist ideology, this meant following the law and fully adapting to the cultural norms of the Swedish majority society (Wickström, 2013). As it was described by the investigators in the 1951 government official report, where the introduction of a settlement permit was discussed in length:

Well-behaved foreigners are among those who would benefit from a residence permit that is valid until further notice, always guaranteeing a right to remain in the country. For the others, the awareness that their stay in the country depends on how they behave should influence them in that direction, encouraging them to make an effort to exercise impeccable behaviour […] They could, in a different way than now, prepare themselves to stay here for the future, and the fact that essentially only misconduct on their part could cause them to be deported […] should be a strong driving force to persuade them to observe a proper way of life. (SOU 1951:42, 62–64)

A permanent form of residence permit is here constructed as a means of differentiating ‘foreigners’ from each other and rewarding the ‘well-behaved’ with a guarantee to stay in the country, while influencing those without a permanent permit towards exercising ‘impeccable behaviour’. In the quote, the definition of impeccable behaviour or misconduct is not explicated, but in other places, it is described as a question of to what degree a ‘foreigner’ is able to adapt to the Swedish order, which at the time was founded on a dominant social democratic discourse, in which the good citizen was supposed to be a wholesome worker. This included being a responsible, working, disciplined, rational, class conscious and law-abiding subject (Trägårdh 2018). ‘Foreigners’ with residence permits are thus portrayed as potentially lacking, or lacking the motivation to uphold, a proper way of life according to Swedish norms, but with the potentiality to become responsible and self-governing subjects. A permanent form of residence permit was to function as a reward, aimed at developing this potentiality. The idea of utilising rewards to cultivate desirable behaviours is an integral part of technologies of government with a disciplinary modality, according to Foucault (cf. 1975/1991), where these rewards illustrate the norms that are desirable in a social order and towards which subjects should strive. Hence, the combination of using temporary residence permits with a permanent residence permit can be seen as an assemblage of technologies of citizenship, with a disciplinary modality, aiming to govern non-citizens towards becoming good, responsible and assimilated citizens who fit the ideal of wholesome workers.

In the late 1960s and during the 1970s, the use of policies on permanent residence permits to create incentives for a wholesome way of living was not addressed explicitly in the policy texts. However, that did not mean that the Swedish government stopped its efforts to govern ‘foreigners’ towards this way of living. At this time, demand in the Swedish labour market had decreased, which led to restrictions regarding labour migration and stricter border controls. At the same time, the social and economic security of ‘immigrants’ residing in the country became a major policy issue, coupled with a growing concern regarding so-called adaption difficulties within a large proportion of this group of people. Difficulties, such as criminal or other asocial behaviour, were described as an effect of deficient housing conditions, lacking knowledge about the Swedish society and Swedish language skills. Thus, finding measures to ‘make it easier for immigrants to adapt in our country’ (Prop. 1968:142, 102) became a key policy goal. Consequently, integration practices were established in the 1960s, such as language education, and an official multiculturalist integration policy was adapted in the mid-1970s. As with contemporary immigration policies, Swedish citizens were at this time constructed as already adapted subjects, thus gaining a dispensation from integration, while ‘immigrants’ were constructed as different and potentially non-integrated subjects, in need of integration efforts. Thus, while the focus on utilising permanent residence permits to promote individual responsibility was backgrounded in the 1960s and 1970s, a new set of technologies aimed at governing non-citizens towards this value and integration was activated.

The concept of incentives and that permanent residence permits should be used to promote good behaviour was addressed once again in 1983, in the official report Immigration Policy: Suggestions (SOU 1983:29). The concept was actualised in relation to the proposal of making permanent residence permits the principal rule if non-citizens were granted residence permits, as a solution to a problem which was represented as concerning inefficient permit processes. Following international crises during the 1970s, this problem was articulated during a period of increased neoliberal elements in Swedish politics, with a greater focus on efficiency within Swedish government authorities (Belfrage 2008). The proposal was later adopted in law, but in the report, its previous function in an incentivising structure was illustrated when presenting an argument for keeping the earlier system. At this time, the current requirement of a year’s stay in the country was described as having a preventive function:

An argument that has emerged for the current system is that there is a psychological value in an applicant whose conduct is doubtful knowing that a trial remains. It is thus a question of a preventive function. This is probably the main argument that has been made against abolishing the repeated examination. (SOU 1983:29, 172)

As we can see in the quote, the use of multiple trials is ascribed a psychological value, where the one-year rule is seen as a way of making people with temporary residence permits uphold good conduct. Keeping an order with repeated examinations is then seen as a way of governing these people’s interests and motivations, to prevent possible misconduct. In this way, it is still possible to identify the concept of incentives in the policy text from 1983, where permanent residence permits are still understood as a technology, which can be used in combination with temporary residence permits, to govern non-citizens who require residence permits towards demonstrating good conduct. Meanwhile, this concept was still present in the early 1980s, with the fact that permanent residence permits were made the principal rule illustrating that this way of thinking had now taken up a more peripheral position.

In this section, I have illustrated how the first kind of permanent residence permit in Sweden was constructed with close links to the concept of incentives, and the aim of governing non-citizens towards being good citizens. I then showed how the importance of this concept shifted during the latter half of the twentieth century, where the concept was backgrounded in the late 1960s and basically overridden in the mid-1980s, when permanent residence permits became the principal rule.

Examining conduct

In contemporary policy texts, the permanent residence permit is conditioned by practices of monitoring and examining non-citizens’ conduct. The link between a permanent form of residence permit and the concept of conduct is both similar and different to the problem representation in the early 1950s, when the settlement permit was expected to solve the issue of uncertainty among well-behaving and permanently residing non-citizens. Produced in the context of xenophobia and the Cold War, the problem representation rested on a notion that it was necessary to examine non-citizens’ conduct in the country – a notion closely connected to issues of national security.

It is also in the nature of the matter that there should be a requirement of wholesomeness in order for such a favour as the residence permit to be granted to the foreigner. […] Care should be taken to ensure that foreigners who may be unreliable from a security point of view do not receive a settlement permit. A thorough examination of the foreigner’s circumstances from this point of view must precede the granting of a settlement permit, and if there is any uncertainty as to the foreigner’s reliability, a settlement permit should not be granted. (Prop. 1954:41, 85)

In the quote, the consideration and granting of settlement permits is predicated on a thorough examination of ‘foreigners’ in relation to the values of ‘wholesomeness’ and ‘reliability’, where the latter is given meaning from a security point of view. The concept of reliability is here related to a discourse on espionage that characterised the beginning of the Cold War period, where certain, mostly Russian, ‘foreigners’ were suspected of staying in the country to gather information on behalf of other states (Burch 2014). By linking the settlement permit to these kinds of conduct and a ‘thorough examination’ from a security point of view, the permit construction enables an assemblage of practices focused on policing, monitoring and examining conduct. These practices, which can be considered anti-citizenship technologies, are aimed at the ‘abjection (that is casting out) and exclusion of particularly troublesome individuals and populations’ (Inda 2006, 127), here in terms of undesirable ‘foreigners’ who are deemed unethical and irresponsible subjects. Hence, ‘foreigners’ are constituted as potential anti-citizens, and to be thoroughly tested before being allowed to stay in the country permanently.

In the policy proposal to ease the requirements for settlement permits in 1968, the question of the concept of conduct was once again linked to a problem representation concerning these permits.⁷ The problem was produced through a critique of the migration authority’s requirement of at least five years of residence before granting a settlement permit, which the authority argued was necessary for a proper examination of conduct. Against the background of previously mentioned ambitions of making it easier for ‘immigrants’ to adapt to the Swedish society, the ‘problem’, which was described in the bill of 1968, consisted of these requirements being unnecessarily restrictive. Instead, a requirement of two years of residence in the country was proposed:

[T]wo years of residence in Sweden […] should normally be sufficient to assume that the foreigner intends to stay here for a longer period of time and that he has become familiar with Swedish conditions. It should also be sufficient for there to be enough evidence to assess the foreigner’s conduct and his reliability. (Prop. 1968:142, 117)

In the quote, the settlement permit is still linked to the concepts of conduct and reliability, but we can see a difference in the importance given to these issues compared to the 1950s. People who require residence permits must still prove that they are loyal and well-behaved subjects, but now a two-year requirement is seen as enough to conduct a sufficient examination. In this time frame, ‘foreigners’ are allowed some time to understand and adapt to ‘Swedish conditions’, and the migration authority is allowed to gather sufficient ‘evidence’ regarding their character. Thus, rather than making wholesomeness and reliability into decisive values and stressing the need to remove all ambiguities as in the 1950s, it is only necessary for the authorities to be sufficiently sure regarding the individual’s conduct and reliability in the 1960s. While the construction of the settlement permit still enables a set of anti-citizenship technologies, including monitoring and examining conduct, the importance ascribed to the concept of conduct has decreased – a decrease which can be interpreted in relation to the emerging discourses on the adaptation of ‘immigrants’ adaptation in the 1960s, and their integration in the 1970s. Discourses which included a focus on making ‘immigrants’ into autonomous and ethical subjects through welfare and integration measures, may be construed as citizenship technologies, rather than the abjection and exclusion of those deemed unethical.

Moving forward to the early 1980s, the analysis shows that the meaning of conduct changed again. A main argument for the proposal of making permanent residence permits the principal rule was that the examinations of conduct rarely resulted in denial of permanent permits. Thus, the proposal would contribute to solving the problem of inefficient permit processes, by making it possible to reallocate resources from the recurring examinations to other priority areas (SOU 1983:29) While the proposal was largely supported, the decrease in options to monitor and deport criminal or misconducting non-citizens who require residence permits was seen as problematic, and it was described as necessary that ‘corresponding needs are met in other ways’ (Prop. 1983/84:144, 87). As a result, different solutions were designed to counteract the risk of criminality or misconduct. One solution was to allow the revocation of permanent residence permits due to reasons of conduct within a year from the point when the individual was granted the permanent residence permit, as a kind of probation period. Another solution was to maintain the opportunity to grant temporary residence permits instead of permanent permits, for example, if there was ‘doubt about the individual’s conduct or ability to support himself’ (Prop. 1983/84:144, 114). Hence, the concept of conduct was once again given meaning within the policies on permanent residence permits and enabled technologies aimed at monitoring and excluding non-citizens who required residence permits, but now only in exceptional cases. Subsequently, there was a further decreased focus on examining the conduct of non-citizens with residence permits in the country, in comparison with earlier in the twentieth century. It should be said that this decrease in focus occurred at the same time as the state began to direct a sharper focus on border control, to deter and prevent non-citizens from seeking asylum in the country without valid reasons. Thus, it is possible to talk about a shift in the infrastructure around the permanent residence permits, where these permits were pre-conditioned by a new assemblage of technologies focused on border control, rather than examinations of conduct in the country.

In this section, the analysis has shown how problem representations in policies on permanent forms of residence permits have been linked to the concept of conduct historically. I argue that this link has been continuously present within the policies studied, but that the concept’s meaning has shifted over time, from being a highly significant concept in the early 1950s, to being given less and less prominent importance in the 1960s and 1980s. This change in meaning has also contributed to changes in the constructions of the permanent forms of residence permits over time, when it comes to the assemblages of technologies being activated through these permits. While continuous monitoring and thorough examinations, targeting non-citizens with temporary residence permits, were activated through the first settlement permit construction in the 1950s, these kinds of technologies were made into exceptions in the 1980s.

Discussion

The aim of this article has been to engage with the civic integration trend from a governmentality perspective, by exploring how the use of policies on permanent forms of residence permits to govern non-citizens towards integration and values concerning individual responsibility can be understood genealogically. Through the analysis, I have been able to identify two key concepts which underly problem representations in contemporary policies on permanent residence permits, incentives and conduct, through which the permanent residence permits are to enable the governing of non-citizens in accordance with civic integration policies. I have then traced these concepts back in time and illustrated that links between them and problem representations regarding permanent forms of residence permits have been present since the early 1950s, in the proposal of the first permanent form of residence permit. Both then and now, permanent forms of residence permits have been used to make it possible to examine the conduct of non-citizens with temporary residence permits and on the one hand reward those who have adapted to the Swedish social order by becoming well-behaved, responsible, and working subjects – and on the other hand, to sort out non-citizens deemed undesirable and threatening to this order, such as criminals. Subsequently, answering the question I posed initially, it is possible to argue that the use of policies on permanent forms of residence permits to govern non-citizens towards integration and individual responsibility is not new, at least in Sweden. It is rather a historically recurrent feature of these kinds of policies, which has not been highlighted in scholarship on Swedish immigration policy previously. Hence, the analysis illustrates how the Swedish government’s political solution of introducing temporary residence permits as standard and integration requirements for permanent permits, in the wake of the refugee situation in 2015, can be understood as having historical roots.

The historical roots of the policies on permanent residence permits involve constructing these kinds of permits as part of an assemblage of technologies of (anti-)citizenship. That is, a combination of citizenship technologies aiming to ‘reinsert the excluded into circuits of responsible self-management’ (Inda 2006, 19), such as rewarding non-citizens who become self-sufficient, and anti-citizenship technologies focused on confining and excluding non-citizens deemed unredeemable, for example, monitoring. This combination of technologies makes non-citizens who require residence permits visible as (un)ethical and (non-)integrated subjects. Thereafter, the permanent residence permit makes it possible to determine who is considered to belong to the respective category. Thus, when designed in this way, policies on permanent residence permits can operationalise a strategy of civic integration policies, in terms of fusing measures meant to further the integration of non-citizens and measures for their selection and control (Joppke 2017) – a strategy which works to limit and control the inflow of non-citizens who require residence permits, where only the ethical and ‘good citizens’, who become autonomous and contributing agents in society, are perceived as deserving their belonging (Ahlén and Boräng 2018; Goodman 2010). Hence, the analysis contributes to the understanding of why policies on permanent residence permits have become a key instrument for enacting civic integration policies in countries such as Sweden, France, Germany and the Netherlands (de Waal 2017; Goodman 2010) – because they make it possible to differentiate and govern non-citizens in relation to values of individual responsibility and integration.

While the analysis illustrates historical roots to contemporary policies on permanent residence permits, these policies are also contingent on more contemporary societal shifts since the 1990s, in Sweden as well as internationally, regarding both welfare and citizenship. Against the background of comprehensive welfare reforms in the early and mid-twentieth century, recurrent political reforms have then tried to solve issues of so-called social exclusion and welfare dependency, through neo-liberal workfare reforms emphasising active citizenship (Goodman 2012; Schierup 2010). These have made access to welfare services conditional on mandatory work requirements, to govern populations who are subject to social exclusion towards becoming ethical, autonomous, and active citizens – a kind of governing which is based on an assumption that ‘the poor’ need to be activated through stricter demands to participate in the labour market, as the ‘problem’ is their supposedly dysfunctional lifestyles and lack of work ethic (Peck 2001). Linked to the establishment of anti-immigrant ideologies in European politics (Boréus 2020; Joppke 2007), this assumed problem has particularly been linked to ‘immigrants’, who have been ascribed the lack of desire to be a part of both the labour market and society (Bonjour 2020). Thus, the contemporary policies on permanent residence permits have taken shape in relation to problem representations of ‘immigrants’ and a more comprehensive focus on governing towards active citizenship within broader societal welfare systems. But while this kind of governing targets citizens and non-citizens alike, I would argue it is intensified for non-citizens who require residence permits, when temporary residence permits are combined with integration requirements for permanent residence permits. This is because their right to stay becomes characterised by ‘conditionality’, which in the words of Goldring and Landolt (2013) denotes the ‘contingency surrounding an individual’s ongoing presence in a legal status category and jurisdiction’ (15). Since non-citizens without permanent residence are subjected to a legally precarious position, due to contemporary policies on permanent residence permits, this conditionality entrenches a loss of autonomy. Consequently, these non-citizens must demonstrate that they deserve a secure legal status, autonomy and belonging to the society, by becoming personally integrated (cf. de Waal 2017). In this way, the contemporary policies on permanent residence permits produce conditionality and a ‘need’ for autonomy and integration, in accordance with civic integration policies. This can only be met if non-citizens who require residence permits become active citizens – thus, intensifying the governing of these non-citizens, while reproducing the assumption that, as part of the aggregated category of ‘immigrants’, they would otherwise lack the desire to be part of the society.

Finally, I would argue that studying contemporary immigration shifts towards civic integration from a genealogical approach, such as the government’s complete reversal of Swedish immigration policy in 2015, provides a complementary understanding of these shifts. This is achieved by illustrating connections between key concepts and technologies of government in the past and the present. At the same time, the particularities of civic integration policies need to be understood in relation to the wider societal shifts mentioned above. Hence, it is possible to conclude that the policies are facilitated by the contingent combination of events in the past and the present, making them open to further shifts in the future.

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Frida Petersson, Marcus Herz and the anonymous reviewer for valuable comments and suggestions to improve the quality of the article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 In this article, I will use the term non-citizens who require residence permits to refer to people who need a permanent form of residence permit to stay in the country on a permanent basis. I therefore delimit myself from other categories of non-citizens, such as EU citizens, whose right to stay permanently is regulated by other means.

2 Previous research on policies on permanent residence permits has mostly departed from Marshall’s (1950) traditional theory of citizenship (e.g. Goodman 2010; Hammar 1990), where permanent forms of residence permits are seen as extending legal status and rights at different levels of state membership. The governmentality perspective instead focuses on citizenship as a way of governing, through which subjects such as ‘citizens’ and ‘foreigners’ are produced through complex and shifting links between thought and practice (Cruikshank 1999; Hindess 2000; Procacci 2004).

3 See, however, Joppke (2017) for a critique of the notion that Sweden has been an outlier in relation to civic integration policies.

4 According to an assessment by the state’s migration agency (Statens Invandrarverk), approximately 5–10 out of 10,000–15,000 extension applications were denied each year due to misconduct (SOU 1983:29).

5 All translations from Swedish are my own. My aim has been to keep the translations as close as possible to the original sources.

6 The need for non-citizens to present an employment contract is similar, but stricter than, when applying for a work permit, where the applicant only needs to present a job offer (Prop. 2015/16:174).

7 The proposal in 1968, regarding the settlement permit, was delimited to non-Nordic citizens, as all Nordic citizens were exempted from permit requirements in 1954, following an agreement between the Nordic governments.