WORKING THE GREY AREA: Street‑Level Refugee Housing Governance in Sweden

Source abstract

Abstract This article explores how refugee housing provision under the Swedish dispersal programme produces uneven pathways to housing stability. Although residence‐permit‐holding refugees assigned to the municipalities are granted the right to housing, there are no stipulations regarding housing type, quality, or duration, resulting in significant local variation. Drawing on semi‐structured interviews with street‐level bureaucrats working with settlement and housing provision for refugees in three major refugee‐receiving municipalities, the article shows how legality is enacted on the ground through everyday administrative practices under conditions of ambiguity. It conceptualizes refugee housing provision as a grey‐area governance landscape and identifies ‘paralegality’ and ‘time politics’ as key mechanisms through which a formally universal system produces conditional, temporary and uneven access to housing. By tracing the logics underpinning different local strategies, the article shows how racialized welfare dualism is produced in practice without a formal dualist policy.