Paper long abstract:

The welfare of asylum-seeking children in the shrinking space of asylum has been a topic of intense political debate in Sweden in recent years. The issue is framed by the tension between immigration and asylum policy on the one hand and human rights conventions such as CRC on the other. The case of children who develop severe devitalisation as they fear deportation have raised particular political and scientific controversy, in the absence of a recognised diagnosis and without parallel cases in other receiving countries. The issue has spurred images of refugee children as vulnerable victims, but also raised questions about the authenticity of their suffering. The issue forms part of a wider problematic of changing terms of asylum in Europe today. Ill health is a expression of, as well as an imaginative resource in, a situation of severely limited options.