Critical Legal Practices
Approaches to Law in Contemporary Anti-racist Social Justice Struggles in Sweden
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12967703 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Maja Sager (0000-0002-1816-8878, Lund University, corresponding author), Marta Kolankiewicz (0000-0002-8987-733X, Lund University) |
| Year | 2022 |
| Volume | 16 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 534-553 |
| Publication date | 2022-11-07 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Studies in Social Justice (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1911-4788 • E-ISSN: 1911-4788 |
| Publisher | Brock University Library (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.26522/ssj.v16i3.2523 |
| OpenAlex | W4308460204 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
| References cited | 10 |
Based on interviews with legal practitioners working with or within anti-racist social justice movements in Sweden, we explore some dilemmas and paradoxes that appear when social movements pursue struggles for anti-racist social justice through the legal arena. How do the interviewees understand and critically relate to legal practices in contemporary anti-racist social justice struggles? What are the conditions of engagement of these organisations in the legal arena and how do they impact social justice struggles in Sweden? What are the stakes in the legal practices of these movements? Rather than a strategically chosen tool for social justice, legal practice could be understood as a kind of self-defence, as resorting to law is often a response to an unjust legal system, oppressive treatment by the state or disadvantage and deprivation. The interviewees’ reflections on their legal practices are informed by a fundamental ambivalence between the ideological commitment in the critique of law and their position from which it is impossible to ignore the legal arena. Instead of taking a clear stance for or against the law as a tool for social justice struggles, we have attempted to understand what are the methods and the effects of legal practice that grow from this ambivalence. The accounts of our interviewees indicate that both practical strategies and ways of accounting for these aim at subverting and challenging the law while at the same time using it. Throughout the analysis we have conceptualised these strategies as decentring, re-politicising and redistribution
Ambivalence · Economic Justice · Ideology · Legal profession · Legal realism · Political science · Politics · Redistribution (election · Social movement · Sociology · Law · Law in Society and Culture · Psychology · Social Psychology
Sweden 1950–2015
Normal Life
Credibility Assessments as 'Normative Leakage
Law and Social Movements
The alchemy of race and rights
Unspeakable subjects
Situated Knowledges
Struggles Around Representation and In/Visibility in Everyday Migrant Irregularity in Sweden
The end of Swedish exceptionalism? Citizenship, neoliberalism and the politics of exclusion
| Citations per year | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2024 - 2026 (3) |
| Highly cited | No |