Navigating the physical and ethical aspects of accessing the Swedish Migration Court

I get through security quickly at the entrance. I ask at reception if it’s alright for me to proceed to the floor where the hearing is taking place. I wonder if I should tell them that one of their colleagues informed me via email that the hearing would be open, as opposed to behind closed doors, which often happens with asylum hearings. But they don’t even ask, and signal for me to proceed without hesitation. They have a screen in the lobby with all the hearings of the day, both migration-related and non-migration-related hearings. I locate the hearing on the screen and take the elevator up to the correct floor. When I step out of the elevator onto the floor, it is, contrary to my expectations, so quiet that you can hear a pin drop to the floor.  

I am unable to locate the room of the hearing, and the surface material of the flooring combined with the lack of any noise whatsoever make my steps unreasonably loud. The minutes are passing, and the scheduled starting time of the hearing is fast approaching. I end up running up and down the corridor, and my trainers are making copious amounts of noise. I try to move around in a manner that doesn’t make them SQUEAK..to absolutely no avail.  Less than 60 seconds before the scheduled starting time of the hearing, I finally find it. I am new to basic court layouts, evidently. The legal counsel and appellant have been sitting right around a corner. They have undoubtedly heard my running around. Upon seeing them, I freeze and just go and sit somewhere close by. It’s too awkward for me to walk up there, to introduce myself to them. And it feels way, way too intrusive. I expected more people, more noise, but there’s only these two people present, on the entire floor. Where is the other part in the hearing, the litigating officer  from the Swedish Migration Agency? Why aren’t they waiting outside?  

A few minutes pass. A loudspeaker sound disrupts the silence that fills the floor as they are called into the court room of the hearing. It’s way more formal than I expected it to be. As the door closes behind them, I still don’t move. I hadn’t pictured it like this in my head: so here I am, sitting outside. It says on the rooms that the public can observe open hearings, and there is an indication on each door whether the hearing is open or closed. This one isn’t closed and I could perhaps walk right in. But stunned by the mismatch between my expectations and reality,  I am unable to comprehend the conundrum of being able to enter a potentially sensitive hearing in this type of laissez-faire-manner. I feel it would cross boundaries. Theirs, as they saw me outside and know I failed to take the opportunity to introduce myself when given the chance, and my own, as it feels awkward and intrusive. I hadn’t considered how to do this part.  

After this first encounter with the court, I often wondered if and how I could have prepared better. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that I had taken advice and words at face value that I perhaps shouldn’t have. And a very important lesson, that I think every new-in-the-game ethnographer needs to learn, arose from that: to trust my gut as a researcher, and to not treat every gatekeeper the same. The vignette above is made of field notes that I frantically scribbled down whilst trying to make sense of the physical, emotional and ethical aspects of this space that I had set out to observe in.  

As evident in my notes, I had certainly not imagined walking into a huge corridor and the appellant and their legal counsel being the only ones on the entire floor. “The courts are open to everyone, and you are very welcome to come: no need to ask permission beforehand”, I was told by multiple people across the different migration courts. They made it seem like it was an everyday occurrence: to come and enter hearings of sensitive nature concerning people who are strangers to me. I was even told, at some point, in response to my question of how it’d make the most sense to secure consent beforehand, that it might ‘confuse’ the legal counsel if I contacted them prior to the hearing.  

After my experience that day, I was determined to ask all sorts of different people how to approach them in an attempt to avoid a repetition of that day: fellow researchers, legal experts, clerks, asylum lawyers, judges. Naturally, the responses would differ between different categories of people - but there were also tangible variations within the groups. Most outside the court setting encouraged me to get in touch with the person seeking asylum, the central person of the hearing, through the legal counsel. But some of the people that I regarded as representatives of the courts – judges, clerks, administrators - often told me, time again, that I was very much welcome to just show up – even after I voiced my ethical concerns to them.  

Advice that I learned not to follow. 

I was, in many ways, a blank slate in the Swedish legal context, which has undoubtedly influenced my initial meetings with the field and the courts in particular. But once I found a way to approach the intricacies of the courts’ “openness” in a manner that didn’t make my stomach twist and turn, my presence at some of the hearings I inquired about was consented to. The key to this was putting in the time and effort to communicate my need for information well in advance to the courts, asking them to assemble lists of hearings so that I was able to contact the appellants and their legal counsel beforehand. This allowed me to explain the premise of my research and establish a solid base for informed consent. 

Author: Sofie Skovfoged Gregersen