Im/Mobile Commons and Trans/National Claims-Making: The Phenomenon of Swedish Afghans in Paris

Abstract

Responding to asylum seekers’ relocation from Sweden to France, migrant solidarity groups have started to share resources and information relevant to the process of deciding about and going through with the journey, and, on arrival in Paris, providing advice on how to make it through sleeping rough and the asylum process in France. The relocation of Afghan asylum seekers to France, has gained a specific form of visibility and presence, in media and in migration rights networks, that we claim has placed the route on the Swedish landscape of migration and border debate. The purpose of this article is to develop the conceptual discussions of mobile commons through an analysis of the networks of and around ‘Swedish Afghans in Paris’. The article explores the ways in which national bordering scapes are both reinscribed, expanded and destabilized by migrant networks and claims. Further, we analyze the phenomenon of ‘Swedish Afghans in Paris’ with attention to the tensions and contradictions in regard to the politics of belonging and mobile commons. The phenomenon of Swedish Afghans in Paris forms a productive starting point for analyzing the conditions of commoning in the context of the Swedish bordering scape; of the ways in which belonging and nationality are claimed in complex and shifting ways; and of the ways in which these commons bridge different places transnationally. The article contributes to scholarly discussions on migrant struggles by developing a nuanced understanding of mobile commons as contestations and entanglements of bordering and claims to national belonging. Thus, we emphasize the ambivalent elements of mobile commoning.