Court materiality and hostility in the Swedish Migration Court(blog)

The atmosphere of the Swedish Migration Courts is formal, typical of any court in a Scandinavian country. Certain polite and normative behaviors are expected, both outside and inside the courtroom. There’s a certain formality, starting already at the security control upon entry to the building. Then you have the authoritative announcements on the speakers, and the subtle hints disguised as invitations to speak in low, hushed voices, as to not disturb the pervasive quietness of the common areas. 

Over time, I have come to think of the Swedish Migration Court and its courtrooms not simply as a space in which legal decisions are made. But rather as a space in which furniture, bodies, sounds, silences and speech all interact. Legal anthropologist Jonas Bens describes the courtroom as an "affective arrangement" (2018, 2022): a place where people, objects and emotions become intertwined, which creates a particular atmosphere. Similarly, Sarah Klosterkamp (2025) points out that courtrooms are not only sites of law, documents and formal procedures, but also of bodies: people listening, worrying, becoming frustrated, growing tired, or trying to appear composed.  

The physical layout of the courtroom also contributes to creating a certain atmosphere. In a courtroom I observed in, pictured above, a large horseshoe-shaped table connects the litigating officer, seated at one end, to the appellant and their legal counsel, sitting at the other end. On the one hand, this arrangement suggests some degree of communality. Everyone sat at the same table. But it also positions the parties as being opposite one another, so that the same object that connects them, also separates them, and emphasizes their opposing sides in the hearing. At the slightly raised podium at the far end of the horseshoe, the judicial panel sits. Three lay judges, the judicial judge - whose role is signaled with the highest chair - and the secretary.   

The physical space of a courtroom matters. As Halsey and de Vel-Palumbo (2018, citing Vischer, 2008) note, there is an undeniable connection between the design of a space and what happens within it. In courts particularly, physical surroundings shape both participation and people's experiences of justice (Halsey and de Vel-Palumbo, 2018, citing Kennedy and Tait, 1999). For people appealing a negative asylum decision, this point feels especially important. They are likely to carry the weight of the rejection from the first instance and the uncertainty of what comes next. As Halsey and de Vel-Palumbo note, first-time court users are also likely to already be anxious and disoriented by the courthouse environment itself. I recognized some of these feelings from my own first encounters with the courts. Of course, I entered the courtroom as an ethnographer with very little at stake compared to the appellants whose legal status in Sweden was being decided upon. But even so, I found the environment intimidating and disorienting. The courtroom's physical and spatial arrangement therefore forms part of the encounter long before the hearing begins.  

Besides its design and spatial arrangements, the courtroom is also shaped by how people inhabit it. In the Swedish courtrooms I entered, the chairs at the tables, where the two opposing parties of the hearing are supposed to sit, were sturdy and comfortable. With their legs solidly planted on the floor, they were the kind you'd have to make a conscious effort to rock. Nonetheless, what stands out most in my memory are images of the litigating officer from the Migration Agency rocking in their chair while listening to the appellant's story. As the legal counsel of the appellant asked questions that reveal intimate, personal details, the rocking motion of the chair of the litigating officer stood in stark contrast to the gravity of what was being shared. Sometimes, the litigating officer’s rocking was paired with perfectly timed glances and eyerolling directed at the judge and the lay judges, to signal “you cannot possibly believe what you’re being told in this very moment.” It appeared to invite the judges to join in on the assessment of the appellant's credibility.  

Scholars have long argued that asylum decision-making is characterized by a culture of suspicion (Jubany, 2011; Souter, 2011; Bohmer and Shuman, 2018). This means that people seeking asylum are often met with mistrust and are expected to prove that they are telling the truth. More recently, Borrelli, Lindberg and Wyss (2022) have also described suspicion as an institutionalized part of migration control, what they term a "state of suspicion." Part of the reason why the chair-rocking then stuck with me enough to write about it, is that credibility plays such an important and a central place in deciding who is granted asylum and who is not. Appellants are almost always expected to provide detailed explanations for why they need protection. The appeal hearing is one of the spaces in which they are asked and required to tell their story, and the judges are then tasked with deciding whether the rejection from the first instance was correct. Creating and nurturing conditions where appellants feel able to speak freely therefore seems of utmost importance. Watching a representative of the state visibly signal impatience, disbelief and irritation during that process therefore felt incompatible with the purpose of the hearing.   

The effort to rock a chair that was clearly not designed for it required genuine, intentional effort.  When I discussed it with friends and fellow researchers in Sweden, their response was often, 'Did the judge not intervene?’ If they did, I was none the wiser, as they hid it well – and I have, unfortunately, yet to experience that a judge has seemed to notice the disruption, and much less put a stop to it, in the hearings that I have attended so far.   

The rocking of their chairs, at least, was silent for the most part. But the tapping of their fingers or nails on the table was not. You know the kind: tapping to signal boredom, in a manner clearly designed to leave no doubt that others hear and see it. Sometimes the officer would click or tap their pens incessantly, a clear signal of frustration, impatience, and a desire to be done. Telltale signs of someone who is openly irritated, “almost offended at even having to be in court for such a ridiculous matter”, as stated by one of the legal counsels that has helped me make sense of the atmosphere of the courtroom.   

Something that perhaps made these moments even harder to wrap my head around was the process that I, as a researcher, had gone through to gain access to the hearings themselves. Throughout my fieldwork, judges and other gatekeepers would stress the importance of ensuring that appellants felt comfortable enough to tell their story freely. However, after witnessing some of the behavior of the litigating officers during hearings, I sometimes found myself wondering why certain ‘disruptions’ appeared to matter more than others. I was often reminded that my presence could potentially influence the atmosphere of the hearing, and that this was a central concern in allowing researchers to observe. The litigating officer, however, could apparently move freely, without judicial intervention. The officer is an active participant in the hearing, as they represent the agency that made the initial decision on asylum, whereas my role is simply to observe. Yet, despite these differences, both of us have the potential to influence the atmosphere of the hearing. It has therefore been difficult not to wonder why my presence as a researcher has so often been treated or framed as a potential disturbance, while other forms of disruption have seemed to pass without comment.      

Looking back at these hearings, I think what affected me so deeply was not simply the ‘hostility’ itself. It was the gap between what I imagined a Swedish courtroom to be, and what I sometimes observed in practice. As an ethnographer, I entered the courtroom as an observer. I have no formal role in the proceedings and very little at stake. If I felt distracted by the tapping, rocking or the eyerolling, what effect might these have on someone trying to recount potentially painful or deeply personal experiences while their credibility is being ‘put on trial’?   

These gestures do not hold a formal role in the legal record, and they rarely appear in documents. But they shape the atmosphere in which the hearing unfolds. And if credibility is central to asylum decision-making, then the conditions under which people are asked to tell their stories matter. What I witness in the courtrooms is a tension between the care and efforts to create a space where appellants can speak freely and tell their stories, and the behaviors and gestures that may make doing so more difficult.  

References:   

• Bens, J. 2018. “The courtroom as an affective arrangement: analysing atmospheres in courtroom ethnography”, The Journal of Legal Pluralism and Unofficial Law 50(3), pp. 336–355 
• Bens, J. 2022. The Sentimental Court: The Affective Life of International Criminal Justice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 
• Bohmer, C. & Shuman, A. 2018. Political Asylum Deceptions: The Culture of Suspicion. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan 
• Borrelli, L. M., Lindberg, A. & Wyss, A. 2022. ”States of Suspicion: How Institutionalised Disbelief Shapes Migration Control Regimes”, Geopolitics 27(4), pp. 1025–1041 
• Halsey, M. & de Vel-Palumbo, M. 2018. ”Courts as empathic spaces: reflections on the Melbourne neighbourhood justice centre”, Griffith Law Review 27(2), pp. 182-201