The politics of legal technicalities : an inquiry into the demolition of a Roma EU-migrant settlement in Malmö, Sweden

Abstract

Social conflicts related to Roma – Europe’s most persecuted people – are often mired in discourses of sanitation and framed around garbage, odour, and smoke. What happens when such elements are translated into objects of legal governance? This chapter explores the legal process that led to the expulsion of about two hundred Roma from a squatter settlement in Malmö, Sweden. Highlighting the role of legal tech- nicalities, it suggests that the process hinged on the categorisation of the settlement as trash and on the power of the municipal authorities to supersede private property rights in order to enforce standards of health and sanitation