Dissertation: Congratulations Karin Åberg!

In recent years, European migration law has increasingly been shaped by humanitarian thinking. In general, a security-oriented discourse dominates, where migrants are often portrayed as young, healthy men threatening the “weak” in their own groups—women, children, LGBTQ individuals, and the elderly. This dissertation examines how European states treat those described as victims or vulnerable within such narratives.

Three case studies are analyzed in which humanitarian considerations have influenced migration management. The first concerns how asylum seekers at EU “hotspots” are categorized as vulnerable, creating certain exceptions to the specially designed border regime intended to keep migrants out of Europe. The second looks at how credibility is assessed in asylum cases relating to sexual orientation, focusing on the so-called DSSH model and the growing emphasis on shame and internalized homophobia as markers of credibility for gay and bisexual asylum seekers. The third case addresses undocumented workers in sectors such as care, domestic work, and cleaning, and how their exploitation is systematically overlooked by authorities due to Europe’s severe shortage of such labor.

In all three cases, attempts to humanize migration procedures are, in practice, either distorted or undermined. The dissertation applies the concept of absurdity as an analytical lens to highlight the tensions between humanitarian ambitions and the border logic that governs this field. It also shows how these practices are informed by both postcolonial and conservative understandings of care. The result is often that certain “exceptional” migrants are favored at the expense of others, while power and accountability are obscured, as European states are cast in the role of benevolent helpers within this narrative.