Contested Belonging in an Election Year

The Case of Refugees Living in Sweden

Bibliographic Data

ID3609593
AuthorsHanna Svensson (0000-0001-5641-207X, Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand, corresponding author)
Year2024
Volume45
Issue4
Pages706-721
Publication date2024-07-03
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Intercultural Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0725-6868 • E-ISSN: 1469-9540
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/07256868.2024.2325955
OpenAlexW4392591171
LanguageEN
Citations received4
References cited30

In the context of humanitarian migration to Western societies, social cohesion and belonging are often discursively expressed in terms of an imagined cohesive in-group and a markedly different and potentially threatening other whose values conflict with that of the democratic nation-state.This article investigates how belonging is constructed in discourse in the 2022 election year in Sweden, and how discursive constructions of belonging impact on the lived experiences of refugees in the country.The article draws on data from political discourses prior to the election as well as interviews with refugees in the four weeks immediately following.It argues that refugees are authored as distant from the Swedish culture and as threats to Swedish democratic values, and that this authoring, while contested by refugees themselves, can have significant impact on their lived experiences.Further, the portrayal of democratic values as uniquely Swedish and the portrayal of immigrants as a threat can mean that interpretations of such values as gender equality and freedom of religion become inflexible

Democracy · Immigration · Political science · Politics · Refugee · Sociology · Gender Studies · Law · Migration, Health and Trauma · Migration, Refugees, and Integration · Populism, Right-Wing Movements

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