Swedish ‘cultures of rejection’ and decreasing trust in authority during the COVID pandemic

ABSTRACT

While many countries were locking down due to the spread of COVID-19, Sweden remained open with few restrictions, as authorities relied predominantly on a civil sense of responsibility and collective compliance with government recommendations. Drawing on interviews conducted with workers in retail and logistics in 2020–21, ethnographic work in digital environments as well as in public spaces and demonstrations, this article analyses discourses of everyday life and discourses of rejection, exploring how rejections were shaped in reaction to how the government and the Public Health Agency of Sweden handled the pandemic. Ortega Soto's article uses the concept of cultures of rejection—emphasizing a complex compound of values, norms and affects that reject different phenomena in different contexts—to analyse how working and living conditions, political opinions, social views and media habits informed workers' disagreements with and reactions to the official handling of the pandemic, as well as how this may have led to a growing loss of trust in government. Ortega Soto further investigates how the expression of cultures of rejection differs across generations by looking closely into the ways that nostalgia and a sense of loss enhance such responses among various social groups. The article contributes to a wider understanding of the political shifts and cultural changes that were manifested in the context of the pandemic in Sweden.

KEYWORDS:

• authority
• censorship
• COVID-19
• cultures of rejection
• government
• nostalgia
• pandemic
• trust

At the time of this article's completion, Sweden was living through a government crisis, reflecting tensions between three different political projects: a weakening social democracy; a dominant but non-hegemonic neoliberalism; and the growing strength of a neo-racist right. This tension-ridden and unstable context was the political frame in which Sweden experienced the COVID-19 pandemic. At the beginning of the pandemic, Sweden chose a soft approach. There were no lockdowns but ‘recommendations’ that relied on people's voluntary compliance with rules concerning hygiene, social distancing and self-quarantine. Until the beginning of 2021 the main debate regarding COVID-19, both in traditional and social media, focused on what some perceived as a passive and dangerously frivolous strategy. On 10 January 2021, a new law, called ‘A Temporary COVID-19 Act’, was enacted.¹ It authorized rapid government interventions to prevent the spread of COVID-19 by way of enforceable restrictions. As such restrictions were implemented, public opinion supporting tighter measures decreased in parallel with the growth of a vocal anti-restriction rhetoric.

This article uses the Swedish context of the COVID-19 pandemic as a prism for exploring antagonistic and affective resentment that may be characteristic of what this project calls ‘cultures of rejection’ (CuRe). These comprise ‘modes of living, or ways of being in the world, that are constituted by attitudes, values, norms and affects that reject a set of socio-cultural objects’.² My analysis weaves together material gathered in 2020–21 from three empirical and analytical settings: interviews with workers in the logistics and retail sectors in a mid-size city and two large cities in Sweden; social media posts and discussions; and ethnographic observations from demonstrations against COVID-19 restrictions. My aim is to analyse how working and living conditions, social views and media habits inform people's responses to a crisis like the pandemic, and how their disagreements and reactions are linked to their lived experiences and distrust in others and in government. Put differently, I make use of the Swedish debate and discourse on COVID-19 as a way of connecting and interpreting the findings from my three sites of investigation. Through this interpretation, I argue that the pandemic has served as a kind of developing bath for CuRe in contemporary Sweden. By relating my three empirical areas to the COVID-19 crisis, we may therefore attain a clearer picture of the tendencies of CuRe in the Swedish present and, at the same time, the tensions between what is expressed in the different sites. Such tendencies are often rooted in the recognition of a neoliberal transformation and include: the desire to protect the small and the close; a suspicion of authorities and elites; worry that the truth is being silenced or censored; intensified hostility towards the EU; and a more intense conviction that ‘Sweden’, as an imaginary community, mediated through immigration, is about to fall ill and be lost.

In the first sections of the article, the theoretical framing of the concept of ‘cultures of rejection’ is introduced, followed by an examination of the Swedish context, and ending with a note on methods and material. The second section of the article consists of four subsections, the first three of which represent different material and analytical settings through which I explore the origins and expressions of CuRe and a fourth in which I discuss the linkages between them. The article concludes by highlighting the central points of the analysis.

Theoretical frame: cultures of rejection

The zeitgeist of recent decades has, on the one hand, been dominated by neoliberal globalization but also, on the other, by the ensuing critique, as well as by an increasing but uneven expansion of complex mobilizations and politics that so far have been difficult to conceptualize. It is this latter phenomenon that is at the core of this article, a phenomenon that I sum up with the concept of ‘cultures of rejection’. The potential of this concept will inform my analysis in two ways. First, in this approach the term rejection is distinguished from the more general term critique in three ways: its emotional intensity; its negation of dialogue; and its short duration, that is, the fact that it rarely has either an implicit or an explicit continuation (in the sense that rejection, unlike critique, is rarely followed by proposals or visions of change). Second, the concept of CuRe enables us to analytically address and connect two dimensions of ‘culture’. On the one hand, it views culture as a form of life. In the analysis below, I study responses and reactions to transformation and crises in working lives and everyday lives in socio-spatial and digital environments; culture is here understood as being co-constituted by changes in socio-economic institutions and organizations. On the other hand, the concept connects this deep sociological notion of culture to culture in the sense of communication, such as by showing how the communicative forms of social media influence opinions and behaviour by a subtle dynamic between approval and censorship. In speaking of ‘cultures’ of rejection, we may thus claim, first, that such cultures are embedded in socio-economic transformations on the level of social institutions and organizations and, second, that they are at the same time causes of cultural, discursive and political change and that, more particularly, they demonstrate that internet-based culture is today a political force. As we shall see in the Swedish material, our concept offers the possibility of synthesizing such approaches, while also transcending their limitations. At the same time, using ‘culture’ as a thick and encompassing concept, CuRe sheds new light on the uneven tensions and peculiar confluences between neoliberalism and ethnonationalism that have characterized Sweden for the last three decades.³ By taking the COVID-19 pandemic as a prism and focusing on people's lived experiences and practices, I will apply CuRe as a heuristic and sensitizing concept that explores this current conjuncture.

Background: situating Sweden in the COVID-19 pandemic

Increasing inequalities and ethnonationalism

Sweden has been known for many things throughout the years, including being one of the most equal societies in the world. This is in part due to its inclusive welfare state,⁴ and its approaches to gender equality,⁵ migration policy and multiculturalism.⁶ The country has, in international contexts, been known as a socially progressive nation that has built a safe, democratic and stable society with the help of a strong welfare state introduced in the 1930s. Some in the past have admiringly described it as a ‘paradise of social enlightenment’ or the ‘world's capital of good intentions and civilized behavior towards others’.⁷ However, this image is today almost vacuous, and recent studies suggest that segregation based on both ethnicity and class rapidly growing.⁸ Despite nostalgic and collective memories persisting, there has been substantial political transformation of the Swedish social fabric, making the Swedish Model and the inclusive welfare project for which it was known a thing of the past. The neoliberal transformation started with social democratic governments at the end of the 1980s and continued, albeit unevenly, ever since.⁹ Social insurance has been eroded in terms of both coverage and payment, and substantial parts of public services (schools, health and social care for the elderly) have been privatized, although they continue to be publicly funded. In addition, an increase in housing segregation indicates more general patterns of separation based on class and racialization. This has been further aggravated by the shift from Keynesian to monetarist economic policies,¹⁰ with increasing unemployment, insecure working conditions and lean or struggling concerns.¹¹ In the logistics and retail sectors, flexibility and precarious employments are increasingly common.¹² The precarization of employment especially targets women, young workers and those with migrant backgrounds.¹³ Furthermore, there has been a transition from notions of collectivity towards those of individual responsibility.¹⁴ The rapidly increasing inequality, intersecting with surging ethnonationalism, especially visible in migration, integration and law enforcement, as briefly outlined above, constitutes the context in which the Swedish experience of the COVID-19 pandemic unfolded.

An emerging generational conflict?

Sweden became known for its strategy in dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic, and its lack of preparedness for this kind of health crisis quickly became visible. The Folkhalsomyndigheten (Public Health Agency of Sweden) and the Socialstyrelsen (National Board of Health and Welfare), which shared responsibility for developing and coordinating the COVID-19 strategy, responded with hasty and sometimes contradictory changes and information based on the developing situation. Problems were aggravated by poor communication between the authorities. What made Sweden particularly stand out in comparison with other countries was its initially ‘soft’ approach to the pandemic. There were no lockdowns, only recommendations: the authorities trusted people to observe hygiene and social distancing. However, people often failed to trust the authorities in return. International and domestic criticism described Sweden's strategy as ‘wrong’, ‘an experiment’ and ‘a disaster’, concluding that it resulted in ‘failure’.¹⁵ Comparisons were made to other Nordic countries, which had all opted for early lockdowns and strict restrictions, and were among those with lower numbers of infections and the lowest numbers of deaths. One analysis of the ‘excess mortality rate’ for the whole pandemic period reached the following conclusion:

Sweden had significantly higher excess mortality in 2020 than the other Nordic countries. In Europe, Sweden rank[ed] just below the middle. . . . In 2021 and 2022, the excess mortality figures in Sweden were among the lowest in Europe. This could be due partly to effective vaccine roll-out and partly to the fact that high mortality in one year historically tends to coincide with low mortality in the following years. In 2020–2022 as a whole, Sweden had the fourth lowest excess mortality rate in Europe.¹⁶

Polls have shown a marked decrease in trust in government and other authorities in Sweden during the pandemic.¹⁷ To some extent this decline is explained by scandals concerning politicians or senior officials not following COVID-19 guidelines, as well as public awareness that preparations for a pandemic had been seriously neglected by the government. Another reason for the growing mistrust could be the ambiguity and instability of the recommendations and restrictions. In March 2021, the Swedish police warned against vague and ambiguous restrictions stating that ‘the regulatory framework . . . is often changed or expanded. It could sometimes be difficult for the public to keep track of which rules are mandatory and which are recommendations.’¹⁸

In April 2020, 90 per cent of the COVID-19 death toll in Sweden comprised people over 70 years of age.¹⁹ The death rate for the elderly had been highest among those who either lived in special accommodation group homes (50 per cent) or received home care (26 per cent).²⁰ The failure to protect this group ignited political controversies focusing on care of the elderly, with the radical-right Sverigedemokraterna (SD, Sweden Democrats), for instance, blaming the centre-left government for ‘killing so many people’.²¹ In late June 2020, this resulted in the appointment of an independent commission that, some months later, issued a strong critique of the government and the responsible state agencies, particularly those linked to elder care.²²

Analysis

Methods and material

In the following analysis, we will see how COVID-19-related responses and controversies such as those mentioned above have presented a range of new issues, concerns and indications on how lived culture affects CuRe, as well as how CuRe are articulated, expressed and politically mobilized. Using thematic analysis,²³ our inquiry into how people express their experiences, opinions and emotions in regard to their work and everyday life, on social media and in political demonstrations, will enable us to trace how the COVID-19 pandemic reveals the contours and substance of CuRe in contemporary Sweden.

Our analysis builds on empirical research of three kinds. The first set of data consists of interviews with those who work in different types of workplaces in the retail and logistics sectors, from supermarkets to electronics, to delivery and warehousing. Second, we draw on data from ethnographic work in digital environments. And, third, we use material gathered from ethnographic fieldwork in public places and political demonstrations. The guiding principal data has been collected on the assumption that retail and logistics are sectors that have experienced digitalization. We have then used COVID-19 as an empirical case to better understand the development of cultures of rejection during such a crisis. The selection of Facebook groups was based on the intensity of their activity during the collection period of the research.

The interviews were conducted in late 2020 and early 2021; some were conducted on site, while others were conducted digitally due to the pandemic. These interviews, guided by the same manual used by research teams in four other European countries, concerned workers' views on work and leisure, as well as their attitudes toward change, and their perspectives on society in general. The digital ethnography was conducted during two weeks in the summer of 2020, and focused on two large and active Facebook networks chosen because they were likely to attract some of the supporters of CuRe and potentially appeal to those social groups represented by the interviewees. Finally, our ethnographic observation was conducted during the period of the political protests against COVID-19 restrictions and vaccination programmes in the spring of 2021.

The next section presents an analysis of the working conditions and employment based on fifteen interviews. First, however, the general observation should be noted concerning a ‘generation gap’ that manifested itself in a greater willingness among young people to volunteer for interviews. The median age of the interviewees was 29. By contrast, many older workers said that they were too stressed, or that they had neither the time to nor the interest in being interviewed. A similar but reversed generation gap apparently pertained in social media environments, with many younger workers stating that they were less active on Facebook. This age difference was also illuminated by comparing the interviews of mainly young interviewees with what seemed to be mainly middle-aged and elderly members of the Facebook groups.²⁴ Such differences between generations were highly significant in the COVID-19 situation which, as already noted, revealed major dissimilarities between young and old in terms of vulnerability, and compliance with health authorities and government restrictions.²⁵ In short, and of relevance to our understanding of CuRe, we can see here the emergence of a generational conflict that has so far not been successfully interpellated by any political party.

Conditions of work environments and employment

Workers in the logistics and service sectors were asked about their employment conditions and work environments, as well as about the relationship of their work to their private lives, homes, families, leisure activities and social habits and attitudes. The majority of the interviewees responded to an anonymous questionnaire in which they answered that they managed or managed well on their current incomes. (Here it should be noted that the majority of the workers lived with more than one person in their household.) Several interviewees stressed the challenges of keeping up with tasks and managing their everyday lives: family, hobbies, leisure, friends and so on. A middle-aged single parent and racialized Other working in logistics remarked on how hard it was to find the energy and the time to spend with her teenage child. A young white male working in logistics said it was a challenge to make time for activities outside of work, and that this negatively affected his sleep patterns. Still, he said that he had tried to find the time to do things he enjoyed, like playing computer games and making music. A middle-aged white female working in retail, who was also a union representative at her workplace, said that she preferred to spend her free time by herself or together with her partner, because at work she had to be sociable from early morning until late afternoon. She recalled a time when her two children lived at home, and how now, later in life, they told her: ‘You were not that fun when you came home from work.’ But since then, because of her position and duties in the union, she has had much more flexibility in setting her own working hours.

This informant had worked as a salesperson since the 1980s, and explained that the working conditions she encountered at the beginning of her career were altogether different. She used to work at a low to medium tempo and had time to socialize with co-workers and customers, at a time when human contact was sometimes crucial for lonely customers or outsiders. She then described a stark transformation of her workplace: due to an increased workload, the speed had increased, multitasking became a requirement and social contact with co-workers and customers had become infrequent. ‘You are no longer supposed to talk to the customers but only deliver the goods’, she said. In the interview, she often returned to the subject of her work environment. Her understanding of class relations and the change in working conditions was possibly due to her training and role as a union activist. Later in the interview, when I asked again about changes in her workplace, she responded: ‘Yes, overall I notice that people, people have a shorter fuse. . . . I think it has to do with [the fact] that the person is so damn pissed at this corona that you, you can't have a go at, so you have a go at the surroundings. . . . The climate we have now is tougher.’ Unlike many other interviewees, she managed in her own analysis to look back at the past and relate her labour conditions to her personal life. She mentioned that COVID-19 had affected her and her colleagues' work, as customers had become more irritable and moodier than before the pandemic. In the way she described the influence the pandemic had on customers, she linked the conditions of the pandemic to both economic processes and effects.

Stress was a recurring topic in the interviews. Workers emphasized how periods of heavy workloads led to a stressful atmosphere, creating tension among workers and poor communication within the workplace, as well as how managers and coordinators often failed to provide a sufficient number of staff in relation to the workload. In this regard, a female logistics worker said about her co-workers: ‘It feels like they’re always having a bad day.’ Some logistics workers said that, at the beginning of the pandemic, they were concerned that it could lead to layoffs, and were surprised when it became clear that, instead, it led to growing online business. One European-born female logistics worker in her late thirties told me:

We thought there would be very little to do, because people would stop ordering. But the opposite happened; we had twice as much to do. So we worked overtime every day, and of course there was more pressure to be faster and talk less, and of course more pressure, pressure, work, work, work, work.

The same worker went on to say that she didn't like it when her work got boring; she thought there should be ‘days in between when you can both laugh and joke and work at the same time’, otherwise people got ‘moody’ or ‘go on sick leave’. She also suggested a solution to the problem, saying that a balanced workload would improve working conditions and the psychosocial environment. Other workers in logistics also mentioned an overall bad or toxic psychosocial work atmosphere, and growing polarization between workers. They attributed this to what they perceived as flawed or biased hiring procedures. Reflecting the general character of the retail and logistics sector, most informants started their jobs in logistics as hourly or part-time employees, and they were hired for six to twelve months at a time.²⁶ According to the interviewees, such contracting had led to a bad atmosphere in the workplace, because workers competed for the coordinator's attention in the hopes of securing an extension of their contracts or full-time employment. Workers with the right kind of contact or those who spent a lot of time talking to the coordinators usually got full-time employment, to the disadvantage of workers who had been working there for a long time or who simply worked hard rather than seeking the coordinator's attention. Based on this material, one could understand this discourse as related to neoliberal working conditions, in which workers emphasized flexibility, stress and precarious employment as part of their everyday lives.

It was clear from the interviews that the pandemic affected workers in retail and logistics in different ways. As for retail workers, their otherwise very sociable job had become tedious due to the lack of customers, leaving them with a workday with lots of spare time. The retail workers I spoke to expressed this as a negative change, as many of them described the positive aspects of their job as a chance to be outgoing, to help customers and be sociable. A young racialized Other who worked as a salesman said that he was so bored that he had started to read newspapers during working hours just to pass the time (reading the newspaper was not something he would normally do).²⁷ A young woman, also a racialized Other, who worked part-time at a supermarket, described an experience similar to that of many workers in logistics. She said that her hard work was recognized but it did not give her the opportunity to secure full-time employment.

Several workers mentioned the issue of not being recognized in the workplace and that working hard rarely translated into secure employment. This resulted in disappointment on the part of several of the interviewees who also reported a sense of being treated unfairly. Many also remarked that such feelings could lead to divisiveness and a deterioration in the workplace atmosphere. Here, the interviewees tended to blame the coordinator (the lowest level manager) for making skewed hiring decisions while, at the same time, they seemed to have greater respect for their boss (the higher level manager). A white senior male working in logistics believed today's coordinators were young and inexperienced, which he suggested might influence their positions and their choices.

When asked whether they could identify any changes or transformations in their working or social lives, many interviewees needed extra time to think. They often found it easier to think of changes or transitions in the workplace than of changes in their residential areas. Many of the younger workers did not mention any changes in society or in their residential areas, even if they had lived in the same areas for most of their lives. The interviews, admittedly a limited sample, gave the impression that younger and older workers experienced change and transformation in different ways. The older generation tended to find more concrete examples of change or transition in their everyday lives, whether it concerned reconstructions of a residential area, a refurbished supermarket, reorganizations in the workplace, or the changed role of their union. For example, a female racialized Other in logistics mentioned how the union, in comparison to the past, no longer had an important role to play in protecting workers' rights. When taken together, the interviews indicated that the older generation had a better grasp of social change and transition, and that this ability to perceive change seemed to evoke different degrees of nostalgia. It seemed clear that feelings of nostalgia could be understood in connection to transformations of the work environment and the sense of being forced to adapt to a new paradigm of ‘flexibility’. The prevalence of ‘flexibility’ in labour management was apparent in the increased frequency of precarious contracts in both logistics and retail, which, as mentioned, have had a negative impact on the working environment, inciting competition and polarizing the workplace.

One crucial feature to note here, however, is that none of the interviewed workers shared the impression that such competition and polarization were aligned with ethnic or racialized boundaries, or occurred between ‘Swedes’ and ‘migrants’. Work-related wrongs and failures were not attributed to stereotyped or stigmatized groups, but rather to workplace organization, job insecurity and inexperienced or unfair management, all of which appeared to trigger attitudes of rejection and withdrawal. This could of course be explained by the fact that the interviewees were young, workplaces were multiethnic and the majority of the interviewees were themselves racialized Others. This echoes studies arguing that the experience in the workplace is often not articulated through racialized tensions and conflicts, at the same time as the same workers are capable of explaining general societal ills as a consequence of migration.²⁸ Thus, anti-immigrant or neo-racist arguments were not voiced in the interviews, offering an interesting contrast to the prevailing discourses in social media and digital environments, to which I now turn.

Reflections in social media and digital environments

The digital material gathered for this study shows a myriad of examples of cultures of rejection. Common targets are the government, the Socialdemokraterna (Swedish Social Democratic Party), the establishment, immigration and/or immigrants, censorship, Black Lives Matter (both the US social movement and its Swedish affiliates), the Miljöpartiet de gröna (Swedish Green Party), the EU, Islam and more. The digital material expresses rejection far more frequently than the interviews. Based on the context, we can also assume that users who post to the two Facebook groups are somewhat older than the average age of the interviewees. As for the first, smaller Facebook group, members refer to politicians, elites and globalists as ‘them’, while they refer to themselves as, for instance, Swedes, taxpayers and the ‘humane ones’.

Another recurring pattern is that the Swedes in general are idiots, dumb, emotional and self-destructive; they pay their taxes and are indoctrinated by the media. In the same discursive register, ‘Swedes’ are described as ‘asleep’, or not awake, as opposed to the self-descriptions of the posting narrators who are awake, who swim against the stream, and dare to both criticize and be criticized: all of this in stark contrast to the large majority of sleeping and uncritical Swedes. The rhetoric of idiots and sleeping became a persistent discourse among neoliberal politicians in the 1980s and early 1990s, as exemplified by the 1993 book Det sovande folket (The Sleeping People) by the young politician Fredrik Reinfeldt who would later become the Swedish prime minister.²⁹ It also has a history among the radical right, although those on the far right argue that this passivity would sooner or later become explosive, as exemplified in a talk by Kent Ekeroth of the Sweden Democrats, arguing against immigrants and the government: ‘You have to leave the house every day, every day, and show them that we do not accept this anymore. . . . The Swedish people have a long fuse. But when that fuse has burned away, then it blows. We’ll show them that now it's time. Now it's exploding.’³⁰ Often, these narrators also describe the Social Democrats as antagonists who betray, silence or even murder Swedes, while they see themselves and their supporters as an avant-garde of freedom and truth. As we shall see, much of the rhetoric found in the Facebook group would subsequently be expressed in promotional material and banners linked to the demonstrations in Stockholm in the spring of 2021.

Interestingly, individual postings on Facebook frequently refer to 1984, George Orwell's 1949 novel about a dystopian future in a totalitarian society in which the brainwashed inhabitants are notified of the enemy of the day, and only the main character remains as the voice of truth and dissidence. Orwell's warning against totalitarianism thus turns into a justification for resistance against the government and COVID-19 restrictions, and is enlisted into the service of cultures of rejection. Another Facebook commentator says that ‘[it] feels like I am in The Truman Show’, implying that the warnings about and policies against COVID-19 are part of a manufactured reality. Such cultural references offer alternative ways to describe the feeling of being awake in a sleeping society, such as having surreal feelings or being insane. Similar feelings and affects are expressed in other parts of the material. As affect is shared between members, the result is the formation of a collective whose members feel they are the only ones awake in a deluded and slumbering world. The sense of being chosen creates the basis of trust with other chosen ones, a collective of dissenters.

A closer look at the emotional and affective register of the digital material reveals numerous expressions of hate and disgust, with discourses describing Others such as politicians and immigrants as ‘idiots’. Some of the most common emojis in the postings are the angry one or the vomiting one, followed by the laughing one and a range of others.³¹ On the other hand, the postings also express empathy, care and love, most frequently in relation to animals, the deceased, the elderly and children. Examples range from animal abuse to the situation of senior citizens during the pandemic and the deportation of a young migrant girl. Such expressions of love and empathy are also implicitly seen in posters' worries about the future of their children, their elderly relations or themselves. To make matters more complex, it is not uncommon that such implicit empathy is articulated through anger:

Asylum-seekers and migrants now seem to be the government's biggest issue. Completely insane. Helloooo, there are problems in Sweden that must be taken care of, young people who cannot move away from home due to lack of housing, poor seniors who must collect refund cans, homeless people who freeze to death in the winter when they're being chased away from a warm bus or subway. Crime, violent crime and so on. Politicians should be ashamed. All for power, these idiotic agreements that the Social Democrats have signed will destroy our country.

Although this might not be read as love and empathy, several recurrent postings and comments in the digital material appear to be angry at the authorities because they have betrayed vulnerable people in need of care, which amounts to nothing less than ‘destroy[ing] our country’. Such sentiments may be characterized as a form of caring racism.³² As one reads this posting, one understands that much is at stake: young people, the housing shortage, poor seniors, the homeless and the victims of violent crimes. The fact that conditions allow these social hardships to exist leads to the rejection of politicians, the Social Democrats in particular. This posting also synthesizes different aspects of the material in one understandable format, connecting the dots of several comments and postings on the Facebook group. On closer scrutiny, the posting also expresses a class perspective and a concern for the future. Recurrent themes in the material are criminality, politicians, Social Democrats, migrants and the elderly. While all of these are recognized as important components of the alleged problems of Swedish society, they are all eventually reduced to an opposition that pits migration against all other social issues, so that the Swedish welfare society appears to be incompatible with immigration. As stated in one of the postings: ‘Immigration is the most important issue for sweden. it affects everything’. Thus, among the group members, immigration becomes the decisive issue for understanding social and individual conditions in Sweden.

Similar to the interviews, the digital material also records different types of personal experiences, some of them intimate and existential: ‘I know what it's like to be homeless in Stockholm and walk around and look for refundable cans to collect for a meal. No help from politicians or the social services. They say you should go to a shelter. But there, there are only drug addicts who snatch everything you own . . .’ Many of the older workers who were interviewed mentioned people in their immediate circle with experience of being in vulnerable situations, due to such problems as substance abuse or financial difficulties. This seems to affect their perception of society, creating distrust in the welfare system, a core part of their Swedish identity and what they pay their taxes for. Such experiences are distinct expressions of white class-based exclusion.³³ They support previous studies that explore some of the causes and effects of growing segregation in Sweden.³⁴ The quote above also illustrates a concern for welfare policy, as group members describe Swedes as taxpayers and complain that immigration has become the ‘utmost important issue’ that ‘affects everything’. The postings often call for help for the needy, the vulnerable and the victims, who are often described as victims of immigration policies or the immigrants themselves.

Having analysed in the first section the conditions of work and everyday life that elicit feelings of increased competition, insecurity and social polarization, this second section has focused on social media culture. What connections can be made between the two empirical sites? It should be clear that both sets of data—the interviews and the Facebook posts—speak at one and the same socio-political ‘conjuncture’, in which individual coping mechanisms translate into specific values, attitudes and affects.³⁵ What the interviewed retail and logistics workers articulate based on their concrete impressions of and experiences in their workplaces and everyday lives—impressions of change and crisis during the pandemic as well as more long-term experiences of workplace precarity and social polarization—is an explicit or implicit critique of neoliberal transformation in their working lives. Some of this reappears in the social media postings, but in a more general register. Noting the difference in the two groups of informants, the first younger and with a more migrant or racialized background, the focus shifts so that the sentiments and affects reflective of change, polarization and insecurity attain both emotional force and a political orientation that attribute blame and guilt to specific social groups and tendencies, including elites, immigrants and the authorities. In the next section, I seek to shed light on the social media material by examining it against observations made and interviews conducted during fieldwork at anti-COVID-19 restrictions protests.

The COVID-19 pandemic, mobilizations and protests

During the spring of 2021, I went to Stockholm to conduct ethnographic studies of the demonstrations against pandemic restrictions. At the same time as I observed some of the placards on display relating to conspiracy theories—such as the deep state, ‘plandemic’ and the Illuminati—I spoke to demonstrators who brought up other narratives relating to the pandemic, including: the desire for freedom (referring to the restrictions dictated by the pandemic law) and human rights; the belief that the virus was not that serious; that politicians exaggerated its severity; the importance of a good organic diet to help boost the immune system against the vaccine; opposition to the vaccine; opposition to mandatory vaccines; and freedom to criticize media propaganda, politicians and the (Swedish) ‘totalitarian’ regime. As I followed several protests in Stockholm, I observed how the demonstrators became more diverse and numerous as time went on. While the organizers of the demonstrations claimed them to be non-ideological, a number of analyses have emphasized that far-right and radical-right groups were trying to exploit the mobilizations.³⁶ Based on my fieldwork, I would describe the target group as ideologically heterogeneous and heterodox: a gathering of people from different ideological positions united in scepticism towards and rejection of politicians, elites, the establishment and so on. When asking some of the people why they attended, a young white male answered in English:

Um, I'm not necessarily against vaccination, I'm just, um, against that they might force vaccination on people so, I, I’m not um . . . So I'm just confused about how this turns so fast into something that is supranationalism, or something, that is, you have to do at the same time in [a] different country.

The real meaning of his statement is unclear; it appears that he performs a rejection of an imagined, rather than an actual, antagonist. That is to say, the object of rejection is secondary to the primary act of rejection itself. What matters is the act of saying, rather than the meaning of what is said. In this way, the demonstrator displays political agency. He remarks that the question of vaccination has created polarization. Further, he mentions the divisiveness and being lumped into a group as ‘anti-vaccine’ and ‘anti-mandatory vaccine’, thus highlighting the social polarization between those who were against and critical of the vaccine and those who believed the science and trusted the vaccine. It seems like the demonstrator struggled to distance himself from both positions.

Two white middle-aged brothers with whom I kept in contact after the demonstration said the following:

Older brother: Ten years ago . . . I didn't really care about what happened or occurred, but today . . . [it] has gone too far and, um, yes, I think about my son, among other things, um . . . yeah, think of his children. Um, that they should have about the same . . . um, um . . . be able to have the same upbringing as I, myself, had.

Younger brother: Freedom.

Older brother: No, yes, freedom, exactly. And . . . um, the longer it's been, the less freedom they have.

What we see in this exchange is similar to what we see in the digital material, which in many ways manifests a sense of belonging or trust also articulated by the Sweden Democrats, Sweden's main radical-right party. The comment brings up feelings of nostalgia, as well as empathy and love for his son, his grandchildren and their future. According to the brothers and their older friend, recent generations will not enjoy the same type of freedom they once did. This corresponds to an underlying theme that is found in all the material, the interviews, digital ethnography and ethnography: that is, nostalgia for ‘the good old days’. This feeling of nostalgia is perceived as a vision of a past society in which most citizens had stable finances, felt safe, paid lower taxes and did not worry about segregation: a society in which most people trusted the government and the Swedish welfare state. When I asked where they grew up, the brothers said that their ideas of freedom derive from their upbringing in ‘the sticks, the countryside, farming’. They acknowledged that this has saved them, as opposed to those from bigger cities, from being indoctrinated into thinking a certain way. ‘You have freedom with responsibility, while in the bigger cities you have freedom by decree’, their friend told me. Further into the conversation, the younger brother admitted that he was ‘terribly worried’ about ‘big tech’, referring to the founders and companies that dominate social media sites like Facebook, Twitter (now X) or Instagram. He explained how ‘big tech’, Bill Gates, George Soros, elites and globalists were controlling Prime Minister Stefan Lövfen and other politicians. He also related how alternative media, or ‘free media’, had earned his trust by having predicted the prime minister's betrayal.

In this way, the brothers and their friend connected, and even synthesized, the themes and topics that dominate the social media and the demonstrations. None of these opinions are supported by arguments; they seek validation in emotional intensity and the perception of ‘society’ as an antagonistic and distant reality. Expressed in such attitudes is also a distinct echo of class consciousness, and a related collective experience of polarization and segregation. The sharing of their experiences and feelings with others on social media obviously offers a welcome outlet. An outlet, as already mentioned, that is not primarily site for social criticism per se, but rather for a more categorical and affective performance of rejection of ‘society’, ‘politics’ and ‘the Other’. What the COVID-19 pandemic in Sweden brought to the fore, then, was a situation in which the performance of rejection was no longer merely imaginary or rhetorical, but able to mobilize people to march and demonstrate to assert their agency and voice. More specifically, the COVID-19 pandemic has apparently amplified an already ongoing conflict with the established system, which arguably has become weaker because of neoliberal transformations and the erosion of the welfare state.

Linkages and tensions among the three sites

What relations can possibly be hypothesized among my three sites of investigation composed of different populations and limited samples? As these relations developed and became visible through the extraordinary social conditions of the pandemic, I found that the workplace had created a basis for unsatisfactory and precarious living conditions leading to a critique of neoliberal transformations—such as the decline of ‘flexibility’ in working conditions—and that social media offered a free space for discussion and the sharing of feelings, resulting in demonstrations born from affect and thus hypothetically becoming part of the process of rejection.

Let me begin to explain these relations by highlighting that the interviews with workers in retail and logistics revealed a decreasing or, at best, sporadic interest in politics and current affairs. For example, one racialized Other who worked as a salesman said that he stopped watching and reading the newspapers at around age seventeen, and that he trusts that someone will tell him during the day if there is any important news; he had been doing this for over ten years. A young white male logistics worker said that he had absolutely no trust in national evening tabloids like Expressen and Aftonbladet because of their unnecessary articles and their use of ‘clickbait’.

While the interviewees generally confessed a low level of interest in politics, they still believed in the importance of voting, though none felt represented by any politician. One female logistics worker rejected politics and politicians in Sweden, and generally focused on her earlier experiences of politics in another European country where voting was a waste of time and merely a way to deceive people into believing that they were participating. Another racialized Other who worked as a salesman told me that he left his ballot blank because ‘everyone is the same’. Yet, while neither worker had any trust in politicians or political parties, they still voted. The salesman believed it was important to vote simply because it was an act of participation: ‘One can't complain if one doesn't vote.’ The female logistics worker voted for the first time in 2018 because her husband persuaded her to, although she had no trust in politicians and the political system.

In addition, my study of social media postings clearly show increasing polarization as a reaction to the COVID-19 pandemic. There were many, on the one hand, who called for harsher restrictions and lockdowns but, as of the winter of 2021, there were also others who used their voices to defend their freedoms in the face of stricter COVID-19 restrictions. While one side argued for safeguarding at-risk groups such as the those with multiple health conditions, the elderly (who needed to be sheltered from others) and front-line health workers; the other side argued for prioritizing school-age children, the elderly (now perceived as suffering from isolation) and entrepreneurs (as contributors to employment and the economy). The fact that Sweden went from a soft position of hygienic self-responsibility to a harder line of legally mandated regulations (but still without enforced lockdowns) may seem strange to both sides and has, possibly, caused further polarization.

A third observation concerns the contradictions that have emerged, especially in the ethnographic study and the digital material. How does one explain that the participants were not overly concerned by the numerous contradictions found in their own messages and behaviour? During my observation of the demonstrations, I established contact with a few of the protesters and asked them what were their most important issues. Recurring responses included, for instance, the pandemic law, freedom of speech, sovereignty, manipulation, human rights, control and vaccination (or forced vaccination). That the demonstrations had been organized using Facebook as the main platform did not prevent anyone from expressing their disapproval of what they called ‘big tech’ or accusing ‘big tech’ of exercising censorship. Moreover, although many showed distrust for and even the rejection of established science—as being corrupted and controlled by elites—this did not prevent them from supporting science or experts promoting vitamin D, fish oil or other supplements to boost the immune system or improve health. Finally, the informants' general rejection of scientific institutions and intellectual elites in no way precluded people from talking to me—a young university researcher—or from being baffled and positively surprised when I presented myself as such.

Conditions of acceptability: concluding remarks

In this article, the notion of ‘cultures of rejection’ has served as a heuristic and sensitizing concept that enables us both to capture how everyday lived experiences create cultural repertoires, and to identify attitudes towards perceived threats that have characterized Sweden during the COVID-19 pandemic. My analysis started with a section on the conditions of everyday life, work environments and employment. I analysed workers' experience of transformations in the workplace. Workers born before 1990 reported more change in their working and daily lives than younger workers. Rising levels of stress, an increased tempo of work and moody colleagues have become part of the ‘new’ working environment for everyone, also affecting their private and social lives. While the younger generation did not express, to the same extent, these changes, many said they had difficulty finding time to rest, and some said that the workplace contributed to a generally unsupportive environment in which hard work goes unacknowledged.

In contrast to the interview material, the social media material analysed in the next section presented a more explicit discourse driven by and expressive of feelings elicited by current events big and small. While the two sets of material did not allow for any causal correlations between them, they substantiated interpretations of the conjuncture of which both arenas are part. The conditions of labour and daily life led to changes in subjective behaviour and habits, and the emergence of attitudes of dissatisfaction, alienation and resentment. While the workplace was not conducive to expressing such attitudes due to the high tempo of work, the lack of interaction and demoralized colleagues, online spaces were a safer place for such expression. The digital material revealed a space in which certain notions—such as, for instance, Swedes are taxpayers and immigrants are beneficiaries—could thrive and express feelings unlike anything the interview material reveals. That the workers rarely expressed explicit anti-immigration attitudes was probably also because many workers had a migrant background themselves, and the workplace thus objectively contradicted the image of migrants as beneficiaries. This, together with the relatively young age of interviewees, possibly accounts for the lack of correlation between the interview material and the digital material as regards racism and radical-right rejection.

The findings of the digital material as well as the ethnographic observations indicated that many participants expressed anxieties that stemmed from what they found socially unfamiliar: elites, people with power, institutions, religions and migrants, to cite a few examples. This further connects to feelings of social polarization and surreal feelings of insanity, which often characterize the affective content of the material. Social media platforms like Facebook present themselves as meaningful spaces for the expression and mutual recognition of such affects. My study of the Facebook group in this article shows that such intersubjective affirmations of affect, resentment, anger and anxiety appear to fulfil the Facebook users' desire for social recognition and community. The study of the movement against COVID-19 vaccinations and restrictions demonstrated that this was also the means whereby protesters could find each other and mobilize public manifestations. A final crucial observation is that all the material conveyed nostalgia for ‘the good old days’, while also pointing to the transformations that are seen as negative or destructive. The COVID-19 pandemic reinforced those feelings and pushed people to ‘wake up’ and come to terms with both old and new changes, as the pandemic tested society and its welfare provisions as never before.

Perhaps Sartre's metaphor of the ‘temperature of the community’ offers an apt description with which to conclude.³⁷ With an increase in the temperature of the community, he argued, integration between social groups became more difficult. The COVID-19 pandemic has, in this sense, raised the social temperature, thereby making existing patterns of rejection in Sweden more visible. The causes of such patterns are to be found in objective labour market arrangements that result in workers' precarity and polarization, in a sense of individuals abandoned, being left behind or going unseen, that speaks loudly in my material.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Celina Ortega Soto

Celina Ortega Soto is a Ph.D. candidate in Ethnic and Migration Studies at the Institute for Research on Migration, Ethnicity and Society (REMESO) at Linköping University. Her research focuses on social polarization, radicalization and digital discourse. Email: [email protected]. ORCID http://orcid.org/0009-0005-8175-2662

Notes

1 ‘Regeringens proposition 2020/21:79: En tillfällig covid-19-lag’, available on the Riksdagen website at https://data.riksdagen.se/fil/133A22DB-1D5C-46CD-BC0B-4CA72A5CDA0C (viewed 24 August 2023). All translations from the Swedish, unless otherwise stated, are by the authors.

2 Alexander Harder and Benjamin Opratko, ‘Cultures of rejection at work: investigating the acceptability of authoritarian populism’, Ethnicities, vol. 22, no. 3, 2022, 425–55 (429).

3 Ethnonationalism (or ethno-nationalism) stems from the social construction of a shared history and a cultural homogeneity. Gabriella Elgenius and Jens Rydgren, ‘Frames of nostalgia and belonging: the resurgence of ethno-nationalism in Sweden’, European Societies, vol. 21, no. 4, 2019, 583–602; Aleksandra Ålund, Carl-Ulrik Schierup and Anders Neergaard (eds), Reimagineering the Nation: Essays on Twenty-First-Century Sweden (Frankfurt: Peter Lang 2017).

4 Gøsta Esping-Andersen, The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism (Cambridge: Polity Press 1990).

5 Diane Sainsbury (ed.), Gender and Welfare State Regimes (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1999).

6 Carl-Ulrik Schierup, Peo Hansen and Stephen Castles, Migration, Citizenship, and the European Welfare State: A European Dilemma (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2006); Diane Sainsbury, Welfare States and Immigrant Rights: The Politics of Inclusion and Exclusion (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2012).

7 Allan Pred, Even in Sweden: Racisms, Racialized Spaces, and the Popular Geographical Imagination (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press 2000), 6.

8 Ålund, Schierup and Neergaard (eds), Reimagineering the Nation; Göran Therborn, ‘Sweden's turn to economic inequality, 1982–2019’, Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, vol. 52, 2020, 159–66; Vetenskapsrådet, Svensk forskning om segregation—en kartläggning, VR 1808 (Stockholm: Vetenskapsrådet, 2018), 32, available on the Vetenskapsrådet website at www.vr.se/download/18.4dd26b09169cbe0ddda629/1555326345256/Svensk-forskning-om-segregation_VR_2018.pdf (viewed 24 August 2023).

9 Carl-Ulrik Schierup and Simone Scarpa, ‘How the Swedish Model was (almost) lost: migration, welfare and the politics of solidarity’ and Anders Neergaard, ‘The Swedish Model in transition: trade unions and racialised workers’, both in Ålund, Schierup and Neergaard (eds), Reimagineering the Nation, 41–83 and 85–118, respectively; Nanako Fujita, ‘The transformation of the Swedish Model since the 1990s: the political aspects of institutional change’, in Hideko Magara and Bruno Amable (eds), Growth, Crisis, Democracy: The Political Economy of Social Coalitions and Policy Regime Change (London and New York: Routledge 2017), 103–99.

10 Peo Hansen, A Modern Migration Theory: An Alternative Economic Approach to Failed EU Policy (Newcastle upon Tyne: Agenda Publishing 2021).

11 Carl-Ulrik Schierup, ‘Diversity and social exclusion in third way Sweden: the “Swedish model” in transition, 1975–2005’, TheMES: Themes on Migration and Ethnic Studies (Norrköping, REMESO), no. 35, 2010, 1–46.

12 Stefan Carlén and Paulina de los Reyes, ‘Ojämlikhet och polarisering i detaljhandeln 1990–2015’, in Kristina Boréus, Anders Neergaard and Lena Sohl (eds), Ojämlika arbetsplatser: Hierarkier, diskriminering och strategier för jämlikhet (Lund: Nordic Academic Press/Kriterium 2021), 35–62.

13 Viktor Vesterberg, Ethnicizing Employability: Governing the Unemployed in Labour Market Projects in Sweden (Linköping: Linköping University Department of Social and Welfare Studies 2016).

14 Magnus Dahlstedt, Aktiveringens politik: demokrati och medborgarskap för ett nytt millennium (Malmö: Liber 2009).

15 Kelly Björklund and Andrew Ewing, ‘The Swedish COVID-19 response is a disaster. It shouldn't be a model for the rest of the world’, Time, 14 October 2020, available at https://time.com/5899432/sweden-coronovirus-disaster; Maddy Savage, ‘Did Sweden's coronavirus strategy succeed or fail?’, BBC News (online), 24 July 2020, available at www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-53498133; Simon Johnson, ‘Pandemic handling sours Nordic neighbours’ view of Sweden, survey shows', Reuters (online), 23 March 2021, available at www.reuters.com/article/sweden-nordic-survey-idUSL8N2LL1QY (all viewed 1 September 2023).

16 Kristoffer Örstadius, ‘Fakta i frågan: Hade Sverige färre dödsfall under pandemin än andra länder?’, Dagens Nyheter (online), 27 March 2023, available at www.dn.se/sverige/fakta-i-fragan-hade-sverige-farre-dodsfall-under-pandemin-an-andra-lander (viewed 1 September 2023).

17 Torbjörn Sjöström, ‘Rapport Novus: förtroende för myndigheter, institutioner och media’, 20 January 2021, available at https://novus.se/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/novusfortroende20210120.pdf (viewed 1 September 2023).

18 Katia Elliott, ‘Polisen kritisk till coronaregler: “Inte förklarade på ett bra sätt”’, SVT Nyheter (online), 21 March 2021, available at www.svt.se/nyheter/inrikes/polisen-kritisk-till-coronaregler-inte-forklarade-pa-ett-bra-satt (viewed 1 September 2023); Polismyndigheten, ‘Ändringar i begränsningsförordningen’, diary no. A096.741/2021, 26 February 2021, available on the Regeringen.se website at www.regeringen.se/contentassets/0a09e74759694b45852935ab4430189d/polismyndigheten.pdf (viewed 1 September 2023).

19 Socialstyrelsen, ‘Ny statistik om smittade och avlidna i Covid-19 bland äldre’, 6 May 2020, available on the Socialstyrelsen website at www.socialstyrelsen.se/om-socialstyrelsen/pressrum/press/ny-statistik-om-smittade-och-avlidna-i-covid-19-70-ar-och-aldre (viewed 2 November 2023).

20 Ibid.

21 Karin Thurfjell, ‘M: Finns en majoritet för en coronakommission’, Svenska Dagbladet (online), 29 May 2020, available at www.svd.se/debatt-i-riksdagen-sd-kraver-coronakommission (viewed 1 September 2023).

22 See ‘Om kommissionen’, 2020, available on the Coronakommissionens website at https://coronakommissionen.com/om-kommissionen (viewed 1 September 2023).

23 Virginia Braun and Victoria Clarke, ‘Using thematic analysis in psychology’, Qualitative Research in Psychology, vol. 3, no. 2, 2006 (77–101).

24 Our referring to the Facebook users as middle-aged or elderly was based on their profile pictures and their names, which suggested that they might belong to an older generation than the interviewees.

25 Tanja Joelsson and Danielle Ekman Ladru, ‘Cracks in the well-plastered façade of the Nordic model: reflections on inequalities in housing and mobility in (post-)coronavirus pandemic Sweden’, Children's Geographies, vol. 20, no. 4, 2021, 478–86; Gabriella Nilsson, Lisa Ekstam, Anna Axmon and Janicke Andersson, ‘Old overnight: experiences of age-based recommendations in response to the COVID-19 pandemic in Sweden’, Journal of Aging & Social Policy, vol. 33, no. 4–5, 2021, 359–79.

26 Carlén and de los Reyes, Ojämlikhet och polarisering i detaljhandeln 1990–2015, 35–64.

27 The concept of ‘racialization’ is used in this article in terms of ‘racialized Others’. It refers to ‘race’ as a social construct, and in order to capture differences in phenotypes and cultures that are often used to differentiate, exclude and dominate the Other. In Sweden racialized Others has referred to various communities over time, but today especially focuses on some migrants, their children and generations following: Robert Miles, Racism after ‘Race Relations’ (London and New York: Routledge 1993).

28 Johanna Lindell and Lisa Pelling, Det svenska missnöjet (Stockholm: Atlas 2021).

29 Liv Sunnercrantz, ‘Hegemony and the Intellectual Function: Medialised Public Discourse on Privatisation in Sweden 1988–1993’, Ph.D. dissertation, Lund University, 2017.

30 Quoted in Gellert Tamas, ´De kommer fortsätta att sprida sitt hat´, Aftonbladet, 14 September 2022.

31 Related emojis included the demon emoji, mushroom emoji, the fuck-you emoji, the sick emoji, the wondering emoji, the plane emoji and others.

32 Diana Mulinari and Anders Neergaard, ‘We are Sweden Democrats because we care for others: exploring racisms in the Swedish extreme right’, European Journal of Women's Studies, vol. 21, no. 1, 2014, 43–56.

33 Lindell and Pelling, Det svenska missnöjet.

34 Daniel Suhonen, Göran Therborn and Jesper Weithz (eds), Klass i Sverige: Ojämlikheten, makten och politiken i det 21:a århundradet (Lund: Arkiv förlag 2021).

35 Harder and Opratko, ‘Cultures of rejection at work’.

36 Marcus Edmund Funck, Henrik Sköld and Oscar Gyllander, ‘Säpo varnar för våldsbejakande högerextremister på coronademonstrationer’, SVT Nyheter (online), 22 January 2022, available at www.svt.se/nyheter/inrikes/sapo-varnar-for-valdsbejakande-hogerextremister-pa-coronademonstrationer (viewed 7 September 2023).

37 Jean Paul Sartre, Anti-Semite and Jew: An Exploration of the Etiology of Hate, trans. from the French by George J. Becker (New York: Schocken Books 1995), 20.