The Swedish Road to Democracy? : Governmentality, Technologies of Citizenship and Popular Movements

• The paper examines the view of popular movements as the hallmark of Swedish democracy, looking at how it is conveyed to “immigrants” involved in popular movements in today’s Sweden. Taking as its point of departure Michel Foucault and his theories of governmentality, the paper analyzes techniques of citizen-formation staged in Swedish popular movements, with the aim of including “immigrants” in an imagined “Swedish democratic community”. The paper further analyzes two popular movements that have long set the tone of Swedish social and political life, namely the trade union movement and the adult education movement. The work of both movements in relation to “immigrants” is based on an idea that democracy is more or less synonymous with specifically “Swedish traditions”. Both movements are viewed as bearers of the “Swedish national heritage”. This view, obviously, has a number of far-reaching consequences for the inclusion of “immigrants” in Swedish democracy, as mature “democratic citizens”, as well as for the functioning of Swedish democracy at large. The techniques of “democratic schooling” initiated by both movements thereby appears to be some kind of evolutionary process of governmentality, in which “immigrants” are transferred to a different stage of “development”. The process involves “us Swedes”, on the one side, sharing “our” historical experiences and conveying “our” democratic heritage, while “they”, on the other side, abandon their pre-modern, collectivist loyalties and become transformed into modern individuals, i.e. mature, democratic citizens.

Subject headings

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Annan samhällsvetenskap -- Internationell migration och etniska relationer (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Other Social Sciences -- International Migration and Ethnic Relations (hsv//eng)

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Statsvetenskap -- Statsvetenskap (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Political Science -- Political Science (hsv//eng)

Keyword

popular movements

popular education

governmentality

citizenship

Ethnicity

Etnicitet

Political science

Statsvetenskap

Publication and Content Type

vet (subject category)

rap (subject category)