Management of “the unaccompanied.” In search of a rights-based approach in the context of Swedish “crisis politics”

This chapter focuses on recent policies adopted by the Swedish government in its management of unaccompanied children, and asks what the implications are for the concerned children’s rights. Focusing on conditions for rights, the chapter identifies three tensions which illustrate spaces for rights claiming: the boundary between who is a child and who is an adult, the division of responsibility between Swedish local governments and the central government, and the tension between residency and deportation. These tensions are essential to understanding the situation of unaccompanied children from a rights perspective in the Swedish context.