"Decolonial Sweden exposes the social and political relevance of European colonialism to Sweden and its place in the world. It is a book that points to why and how Sweden is to be included in global decolonial struggles. Sweden is often displayed as an ethnoracially homogenous country without any colonial history: an open and tolerant human rights champion, anti-racist, anti-colonial and in solidarity with the Global South. For over twenty years, authors Michael McEachrane and Louis Faye have been challenging this account, pointing to Sweden's involvement in colonial histories and legacies, its racialized nationhood, and embedded colonial structures. This important new book reflects a decolonial turn in research, emphasising that coloniality is far from over, and that challenging global injustices remains an unfinished and open-ended process. Chapters in the book consider the resistance of the Sami people to Swedish colonialism, whether Sweden owes the Caribbean reparations for its colonisation of St Barthelemy and involvement in the transatlantic trade, Sweden's involvement in a colonial global economy, and how white European identification is embedded in Swedish politics, nation-building and society. Engaging and insightful, Decolonial Sweden invites readers to reconsider Swedish attitudes towards race, colonialism, and international relations. This book is an essential read for Post- and Decolonial scholars and students of Critical Race Studies, Africana Studies, International Relations, Global Development, and Political Science, as well as for anyone interested in Sweden's place in the world"--

This chapter examines the role of white- and male-dominated unions in shaping the racial capitalism of the so-called Swedish Model. Inspired by Du Bois’ re-writing of US history, where white (and male) trade unions play a central role in producing and reproducing racial labor and social inequalities, the chapter follows the thread outlined by Du Bois argument, on the centrality of labor unions in understanding the preproduction of racial capitalism. It contributes to the growing literature on racial capitalism in domestic labor and welfare relations—while pointing to both a continuity of an ethno-racial Swedish welfare nation-state as well as the recent neoliberal rupture in it. The chapter departs from the transition from a Keynesian labor market in which racial capitalism was relatively hidden by a project of subordinated inclusion toward a neoliberal labor market characterized by exclusionary subordination with a racialized stratification of employees. The chapter ends with a discussion of how trade unions—which are central to the Swedish Model—may challenge racial capitalism.

The chapter argues for the usefulness of the concept ‘racial formation’ for analyses that seek to grasp both historical continuity and change, to combine structural analysis with that of human agency, and to connect the process of racialisation with multiple inequalities. In their view, the concept also provides a way to think through the challenges of knowledge production for purposes of social justice, embedded in a tradition of intellectual activism. Using Sweden as a case study, Mulinari and Neergaard explore the role of silence, denial and forgetting of imperialism, colonialism and racism in mainstream Swedish academia and society. They further identify the central contribution of the concept ‘racial formation’ and elaborate it with the help of post-colonial feminist/queer scholarship. The chapter ends with an examination of how the Swedish racial classification system is constructed and changed; by which institutions; and through which discourses, social struggles and key actors.

In October 2022, a new employment protection regulation, often seen as a core aspect of the Swedish model of industrial relations, was implemented in Sweden. While the debate around the new regulation was heated, one interesting omission was that, in the unions advocacy for maintaining various forms of labour market security, the racialised labour market was never discussed, despite a strong racially segmented labour market with varying working conditions. In this article we explore how three white, male-dominated trade unions representing employees in different class locations positioned themselves around the change in the new Employment Act. Inspired by contributions on racial capitalism, we unravel how trade unions take part in the contestation over industrial relations in a context in which neoliberal and ethnoracial policies are growing. Using the Swedish model as an empty signifier - highly variable in meaning, hence contestable - we find that the unions advance three different positions on employment protection regulation: flexible, skilled and protective, and in doing so contribute to the self-racialisation of white male workers in working life.

In this article, Bojanic, Jonsson, Neergaard and Sauer present a synthetic overview of the five country cases included in the special issue that analyse the emergence of cultures of rejection since 2015. In general, they discuss the conceptual framework of ‘Cultures of Rejection’, elaborated throughout the issue as a more encompassing approach that is sensitive to the values, norms and affects that underlie different or similar patterns of exclusion and rejection in different contexts. These cultures are located in the everyday lives of people. The article, therefore, first identifies contexts, objects of rejection­—often migrants and racialized Others, but also ‘the political’ or state institutions—narratives and components of cultures of rejection that we label reflexivity, affect, nostalgia and moralistic judgement. The contrasting reading of the five cases shows that people struggle for agency under precarious and insecure conditions, and fight against imagined enemies. As Bojanić, Jonsson, Neergaard and Sauer conclude, cultures of rejection mirror ongoing processes of neoliberal dispossession, authoritarization and depolitization that culminate in a wish for agency and resovereignization. Second, and based on this overview, trends in cultures of rejection are detected against different national contexts as well as against common trends of social and economic transformations and crises, such as, for instance, the COVID-19 pandemic. This results, finally, in a discussion of ways of challenging the cultures of rejection towards more democratic and solidaristic societies. One starting point might be the ‘re-embedding’ of the economy in society, that is, a more equal distribution of resources and future perspectives.

A weakness in research on welfare regimes is that solidarity and deservingness has often been analysed unidimensional in relation to a capitalist class-structured society. Feminist and postcolonial scholars have argued that welfare regimes need to be situated and analysed in an intersectional setting. In this chapter, focussing on Sweden, a central contention is that in analysing welfare provisions, migration and racial regimes are constitutive in structuring citizenship and nation.

Sweden is undergoing a transformation of the welfare regime from a social-democratic, towards a neoliberal regime. At the same time, the Swedish welfare regime is increasingly infused with neo-racism, making it important to locate welfare in relation to the concepts of welfare and racial regimes, but also gender regime. After an introduction, followed by sections outlining the theoretical perspective and a contextualisation of the racial character of the Swedish society, the main part of the chapter explores three competing welfare regimes, with different class, gender, and racial configurations. The chapter ends with a short section exploring the embryonic struggles in the making of a fourth welfare project.

This article offers a collectively developed analysis of the Covid-19 crisis as it relates to contemporary cultures of rejection, i.e. the socio-cultural conditions in which authoritarian and right-wing populist politics thrive, in Europe. We explore how the pandemic and its management reinforces, transforms and/or overrides existing antagonisms and institutes new ones in Serbia, Croatia, Austria, Germany and Sweden. We discuss how the Covid-19 crisis affects the rise of new statisms; gendered patterns of social reproduction; mobility and migration; digital infrastructures; and new political mobilizations.

Det här kapitlet handlar om rasifiering av arbetslivet, med speciellt fokus på hur det påverkar den svenska arbetsmarknaden. Det är ett försök att skissa på en bild som tar hänsyn till två centrala maktrelationer i det svenska samhället - klass och rasifiering. Fokus på en rasifierad arbetsklass lyfter å ena sidan fram hur en allt högre andel av arbetarklassen utgörs av rasifierade och å andra sidan hur delar av arbetarklassen rasifieras. Utgångspunkten är att arbetarklassen aldrig varit homogen och att dess karaktär skiftat över tid. Att förstå den heterogena grupp av människor som definieras som arbetarklass - trots alla svårigheter kring en precis definition - är viktigt, menar jag, av två centrala och förbundna skäl. Det första skälet är kopplat till kapitalismens funktionssätt, och inte minst hur andra maktrelationer samverkar med kapitalismen. Att förstå klasstruktur utan att förstå betydelsen av patriarkat och könsrelationer, såväl som rasism och rasifierade relationer, blir i bästa fall en abstrakt lek och i värsta fall centralt för att missförstå samhället. Det andra skälet är kopplat till kunskap och dess roll i att möjliggöra strategier för samhällsförändring. Här är en intersektionell klassanalys som väver in andra maktrelationer central för att dels få en utvecklad bild hur ojämlikheter skapas, dels för att förstå hur koalitioner och politiska projekt kan byggas som har möjligheter att skapa en större och starkare rörelse för social rättvisa. Det här kapitlet har tre övergripande syften. Det första är att visa på mekanismer och processer som rasifierar arbetslivet. Det andra att skissera en bild på ett rasifierat arbetsliv i Sverige och mer specifikt en rasifierad segemtering av den svenska arbetarklassen. Det tredje och sista är att diskutera effekterna av en rasifierad arbetarklass när det gäller arbetarklassen som ett i bred mening politiskt subjekt. Kapitlet är uppdelat i sex avsnitt. Efter denna inledning diskuterar jag kortfattat teoretiska perspektiv kring klass och rasifiering. Därefter redogör jag för några tendenser kring samhällsförändring som sätter sammanhanget för kapitlets fokus kring rasifiering. I det följande avsnittet diskuteras mekanismer och processer som producerar en rasifierad arbetarklass, för att i avsnittet därefter ge en grov bild kring klassamhällets rasifiering. Innan kapitlet avslutas utforskar jag kortfattat hur den rasifierade skiktningen i klasstrukturen kan påverka klasskampen. Kapitlet avslutas med en summering som försöker foga ihop de olika avsnitten.

I kapitel 9 ställer Anders Neergaard frågan om barns och ungdomars deltagande i föreningslivet kan minska samhällelig ojämlikhet. Utgångspunkten för Neergaards kapitel "Kan barns och ungdomars deltagande i föreningslivet minska samhällelig ojämlikhet?" är att den samhällsvetenskapliga forskningen idag förefaller vara enig om att föreningsdeltagande har en positiv effekt på barnsoch ungdomars utveckling – men att den nästan uteslutande fokuserar deindividuella effekterna av barns och ungdomars deltagande i föreningslivet,utan att studera vad det innebär i ett bredare samhälleligt perspektiv. I sittkapitel vill Neergaard därför diskutera i vilken utsträckning deltagande i föreningslivet kan minska samhällelig ojämlikhet, med utgångspunkt i Richard D. Stanton-Salazars begrepp kontrastratifiering. Baserat på en teoretisk diskussion,en mindre fallstudie i en skola samt en analys av ett längre samtal och berättelse, resonerar Neergaard kring kopplingen mellan ungdomars deltagande i föreningslivet och samhällelig förändring.

Using quantitative and qualitative methods, this study investigates inequalities in occupational status and wages between native-born and foreign-born employees in elderly care institutions in Sweden. It finds that employees from Africa, Asia and Latin America - the "Global South" - are disadvantaged in both respects. Combinatory explanations of the inequalities are needed. The shorter work experience of foreign-born workers in the care sector plus the lesser value given to educational credentials obtained outside Sweden are among the factors related to human capital theory. Access to less-valuable resources in the workplace social networks of foreign-born employees is related to social capital theory. The processes that result in exclusion from powerful social networks, in turn, are found to be affected by discrimination in the workplace.

Right-wing, xenophobic and racist parties have enjoyed immense successes in Europe in recent decades. In Sweden, the third-largest party in Parliament is the Sweden Democrats (SD), with 13% in the 2014 general election. Sympathy for the SD among foreign-born Swedish citizens, both women and men, is far lower than among Sweden-born men, but an increasing number of Swedish citizens with migrant backgrounds support the party. The aim of this article is to explore the subject positions open for citizens with migrant background in the Swedish public space with special focus on the identities and worldviews developed by migrant activists who have joined the SD party and are, to differing degrees, racialised and perceived as non-Swedish. Using the concept of migrant respectability, this research is intended to understand why and under what circumstances migrants chose to join and represent a xenophobic and racist party.

This special issue seeks to investigate and understand the various experiences of asylum-seekers, beneficiaries of subsidiary protection and refugees in accessing labour markets across the EU and EEA countries. The first section of this introduction provides an overview of the three groups of people who are the focus of this special issue and their relationship to the labour markets in the EU Member States and EEA countries. The second section provides insights into how the essential features of their labour market integration may be understood by using Levitas’ discourse analysis. The third section explores a range of different labour market access dimensions by focusing not only on the human capital aspects of migration in general but also on the contextual factors of civic stratification; the broader societal context, including public opinion and civil society; the background and situation of earlier migrants, especially asylum-seekers and refugees with respect to national/federal laws; and the countries of origin of migrants as well as demographic trends across the EU. The fourth and final section explains and justifies the focus of this special issue and emphasises the relevance of this topic.

Europe is in crisis. In recent years, there has been a rise of xenophobic parties in a number of European countries. While arguing that there is indeed a European crisis, this article focuses on the Swedish take on the crisis. The aim is to contribute to the understanding of migration, from a Swedish vantage point. This orientation has particular significance since Sweden has traditionally been extolled as defending human rights and multiculturalism by opening its doors to refugees – the so-called Swedish exceptionalism. Reality, however, is quite different and former policies are contested, raising the question whether this signals the end of this exceptionalism. In Sweden, ongoing processes are transforming the core social fabric of what was previously known as the Swedish model. It is potentially a bellwether for the transformation of a previously inclusive democratic society into something quite different, in which ‘the Other’ increasingly plays a defining role.

This chapter offers a systematic review of the literature on educational inequality and school attainments of immigrants’ offspring in Sweden. The review covers research conducted between 1990 and 2015 and critically examines how different research traditions explain this inequality. The chapter begins by mapping the key characteristics of the Swedish educational system together with Swedish immigration patterns. Thereafter, five major research traditions that explain educational inequality and ethnic background in Sweden are presented. These perspectives include (1) political arithmetic; (2) racism and discrimination; (3) language proficiency tradition; (4) school choice and school segregation; and (5) cultural and social capital and socio-historical contexts. The ‘political arithmetic’ tradition, which starts mainly from a positivistic approach and employs large-scale, quantitative research strategies, has focused on the individual and demographic characteristics of pupils. The main assumption of the other research clusters is that there are important contextual circumstances (beyond individual factors) which decisively affect the educational achievements of the descendants of immigrants. While often dominated by qualitative approaches, these types of research do sometimes include quantitatively designed studies. These research traditions take a more critical stance on government policies, which have produced an extremely segregated school system, and show the consequences of a concentration of children of families from vulnerable groups (economically disadvantaged and immigrant groups in marginalized neighborhoods) in schools with limited resources.

Sverige har länge betraktats som en demokratisk förebild och ett öppet och solidariskt välfärdssamhälle. Under 2000-talet har social ojämlikhet och boendesegregering ökat, åtföljd av rasism och en allt mer restriktiv flyktingpolitik. Sverige är en nation i ombildning. Åtstramningspolitik och högerpopulism har fått bred förankring i partipolitiken. Samtidigt uppstår motrörelser, där civilsamhälleliga aktörer kräver en fördjupad demokrati och social rättvisa. Vi står inför ett skifte. Kommer en nyliberal ekonomisk politik att smälta samman med en auktoritär, rasistisk populism? Eller är de nya rörelserna en öppning mot ett mer inkluderande, jämlikt och rättvist samhälle, där visionen för framtiden byggs på hopp och optimism — inte rädsla och hot?

Across a crisis-stricken Europe battles rage for post-neoliberal hegemony, with“race” and “austerity” as central signifiers. One of the places where thefrontlines are most pregnant is Sweden; long perceived as a role model for itswelfare state, cultural equity and social equality. Sweden is, however, facingsocial conflicts following in the tracks of a deep transformation in terms ofwelfare cuts, racialization and growing social polarization, targeting inparticular a disadvantaged migrant and post-migrant population. On thatbackground, the paper focuses on the upsurge of mutually antagonistic popularmovements – “racist” and “anti-racist”. We use Sweden as an exemplary case ofEurope’s present Polanyian moment, reminiscent of the 1930s. Yet, currentupheavals expound, the authors claim, a different configuration of crisis andracism as well as a dissimilar utopia for the imagineering of nation and community.

Den här rapporten redovisar resultat från en studie på ett antal äldreboenden i en större svensk kommun. Syftet har varit att undersöka hur jämlikhet mellan olika grupper av anställda – i första hand mellan personer i befattningarna undersköterska och sjukvårdsbiträde – kan gynnas.

Studien har genomförts av fyra forskare och bekostats av det statliga Vetenskapsrådet. Den är alltså varken beställd eller planerad av kommunen ifråga. Forskarna är helt ansvariga för alla delar av studiens uppläggning, genomförande och resultat.

The article has two aims. The first is to illuminate the contributions of antiracist scholarship and feminist studies to an understanding of the upsurge of extreme-right-wing cultural racist parties throughout Europe. The second is to explore how women active in the Sweden Democrats (SD), a Swedish version of these parties, name and act upon their identities as members of what many citizens and a growing number of scholars define as a racist party. We argue that the SD, despite its efforts to include women in the party, is confronted by two contending nationalist narratives: on the one hand that of a gender-equal Sweden and on the other the need for traditional gender roles to be treated as vital for the maintenance of the nation.

Controversies over citizenship and belonging have lately become pivotal to swedish politics. the growing strength of the extreme right party, the Swedish Democrats' reimagination of Sweden, indicates, the authors argue, Sweden's shift from being "racial" to a "racist" state. Analysing women and migrants within the party, the chapter highlights the paradoxical politics of a political programme that is anti-feminist and racist, but seek support from (some) women and (some) migrants.

While for long being known as an international role model of tolerant multiculturalism and ethno-national diversity, Sweden is presently characterized by restrictive refuge policies, growing right wing populism but also resistance among civil society actors spearheaded by a variety of social justice movements. This first chapter introduces and contextualises the following 13 chapters of the book. They discuss Sweden's current transformation from varying, but complementary, perspectives. Their authors set focus on the present crossroad in the country's development, in terms of labour, citizenship racism and social exclusion, gender and immigration policy.

Motstånd - valet mellan protest, sorti och tystnad för invandrade och infödda anställda i äldrevården

This timely book analyses the relationship between trade unions, immigration and migrant workers across eleven European countries in the period between the 1990s and 2015. It constitutes an extensive update of a previous comparative analysis – published by Rinus Penninx and Judith Roosblad in 2000 – that has become an important reference in the field. The book offers an overview of how trade unions manage issues of inclusion and solidarity in the current economic and political context, characterized by increasing challenges for labour organizations and rising hostility towards migrants. The qualitative analysis of trade union strategies towards immigration and migrant workers is based on a common analytical framework centred on the idea of ‘dilemmas’ that trade unions have to face when dealing with immigration and migrant workers. This approach facilitates comparative analysis and distinguishes patterns of union policies and actions across three groups of countries, identifying some explanations for observed similarities and differences. In addition, the book also includes theoretical chapters by expert scholars from a range of disciplinary fields including industrial relations, migration studies and political economy.This comprehensive comparative analysis is an essential resource for academics across a range of disciplines as well as policy-makers, practitioners and organizations involved in trade unions and migrant inclusion and integration. 

Sociologists Bonilla-Silva and Baiocchi (2001) assert that sociologists, protected by a myth of neutrality and objectivity, follow the understandings of racism in their analysis of inequality as relegated to a secondary status, either according to the Marxist tradition as the superstructure or within a Weberian framework as a form of status difference. The aim of the article is to put the study of racism, a fundamental principle of social organisation in modern society, at the centre of social theory. The aim is also to develop a productive dialogue with the traditions of Critical Race Theory (CRT), neo-Marxism and Black feminism; traditions that we will argue are highly relevant for the analysis of the Swedish racial regime.

Based on Bourdieu’s conceptualization of social capital (the social stratification perspective), this study examines the impact of social capital on the educational outcomes of young people in Sweden, with a focus on the extra-familial aspect of social capital – that is, social capital generated by parental networks and active membership in various social organizations and friendship networks. The results indicate that the class background of respondents is the main predictor of access to all three forms of extra-familial social capital. However, after controlling for class background, the children of racialized immigrant groups are more likely to have access to more types of social capital than others. All three aspects of extra-familial social capital positively influence the educational performance of pupils.

I det här kapitlet diskuterar jag arbetskraftsmigration i Sverige och fackföreningsrörelsens syn på invandrad arbetskraft. Jag fokuserar dels på 2008 års arbetskraftsinvandringsreform i ett Sverige där gränserna mellan olika migrationsformer håller på att suddas ut, dels på Landsorganisationens (LO) och LO-förbundens syn på frågan. Migrationen måste ses som en aspekt av den pågående globaliseringen, med förändrade former för produktionens och arbetets organisering, samt med ökad rörlighet för kapital och arbete. Vidare hämtar jag inspiration från teorier om arbetskraftsmigration och teorier om facklig organisering. Informalisering, rasifiering, ofritt arbete och föreställd solidaritet är centrala begrepp i mitt resonemang. Jag vill förstå kopplingen mellan å ena sidan fackets varierande förhållningssätt till arbetskraftsmigration och därmed hur man uttrycker solidaritet, och å andra sidan förändrade styrkeförhållanden mellan kapital och arbete samt fackföreningsrörelsens syn på den ekonomiska utvecklingen och på sin egen roll.

This introductory editorial chapter paints the background to current issues of international migration, unfree labour, racialization, and changing frameworks of citizenship. The theoretical basis for this chapter is drawn from a modified view of the writings of Karl Polanyi. Using the notion of ‘precarity’ as a central concept, the editors analyse the prospects for a contemporary ‘double movement’ which challenges the commodification of labour under conditions of neoliberal globalization. The introduction summarizes and discusses the content of the book’s fifteen chapters in the light of this perspective, and posits a discussion of human rights as a stratagem for today’s labour movements. It makes a case for bringing the labour movement back in, through debates on migration, migrants’ working conditions, the organization of labour, and the utopia of social justice in a post-neoliberal era.

The welfare and migration regime of Sweden are undergoing substantial changes, as neo-liberal restructuring is rapidly increasing inequalities, and multicultural policies are in retreat as neo-assimilationist policies are growing. In 2014, the Sweden Democrats, a party conceptualised as culturally racist, was re-elected with 13% of the votes, with a presence in almost all municipalities. While scholarship on this and similar parties has expanded, the role that gender and gender equality has for the culturally racist articulation of their agenda remains unexplored. The experience of women organised in the Sweden Democrats is the focus of this article, the experience of these women engaged in local politics, working to include the Sweden Democrats' culturally racist agenda at the municipality level. The article draws upon in-depths interviews with women activists of the Sweden Democrats. Central to the article is an analysis of forms of inclusion and normalisation of the Sweden Democrats' worldviews but also of the forms of resistance towards their presence at the municipality level. Unlike mainstream research, which downplays the cultural racism of extreme right-wing parties, and rarely employ a gendered analysis, we see (cultural) racism and anti-feminism as central for their agenda.