ABSTRACT
Journalists accused Hessle of planting the seeds of doubt in the public mind and encouraging hostility towards asylum-seekers. In Sweden, interviews are normally used to try and assess the correct age whenever the immigration authorities have doubts. Although the number of Swedish cases of apathetic children fell to 169 for the period 2015–2016, the phenomenon has not disappeared. The ingress to his article provides a clear indication of where his train of thought is leading: "In the inhuman machinery that creates apathetic refugee children, every cog is morally unimpeachable. A legal obligation to pay back a loan might reduce the threat of a negative reciprocity that adversely affects the welfare state, but it might also reinforce public suspicions about the veracity of asylum-seeker claims as well as make refugees. In certain respects, the apathetic children appear to be the perfect refugees. To begin with they were children, and therefore assumed to be innocent by de fault.
