It is widely acknowledged that migration policy traditionally has been a political field characterised by broad consensus in Sweden. Throughout decades it was guided by the overarching principle that generous policies of entry should be combined with comprehensive inclusion in the welfare state. However, it is the argument of this paper that this was a policy guided by implicit nationalism in the sense that welfare ambitions was undisputedly framed in a national context and, first and foremost, reserved for the community of present residents. Lately, this consensus has been abandoned and migration policy has turned into one of the more contested political issues. Furthermore, I contend, it is possible to identify a widening cleavage between on the one hand those who call for a stricter priority of the welfare of the national community and on the other hand those who call for a denationalization of rights that has historically belonged to the privileges of (denizen- and) citizenship. The first trend is manifested in the 2010 electoral success of the explicitly nationalist Sweden Democrats that advocates a substantially harsher migration policy. The second trend is linked to the ‘discovery’ of irregular migrants and their precarious circumstances. It is manifested in the calls for access to health care and schooling for this group which, in a Swedish context, constitutes a significant break with previous policy. I argue that notions of citizenship are at the centre of contemporary debates on migration which circles around the scope of rights and the access to them. The paper is based upon a qualitative textual analysis of parliamentary debates on migration policy during the 2000s. It takes its starting point in the inherent duality of citizenship and uses it to shed light on the simultaneous implications of inclusion and exclusion inherent in the national welfare state.
