Contested Belonging in an Election Year: The Case of Refugees Living in Sweden

ABSTRACT

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.

KEYWORDS:

• Dialogism
• exclusion
• politicised belonging
• refugees
• social cohesion

Introduction

Social cohesion and belonging, in the context of humanitarian migration, are often expressed in terms of an imagined cohesive in-group in relation to a different and threatening other. Migration is thus conceived of as a challenge to the cohesive nation-state and its values that needs to be carefully managed, through ensuring that belonging is only granted to those who have qualified through a journey of ‘integration’ into the culture and values systems of the imagined community (Triadafilopoulos et al. 2012; Boucher and Samad 2013). Belonging is then politicised and employed in creating demarcations between self and other relying on a rhetoric of differences in cultural and civilizational terms (Kamali 2016; Brubaker 2017). These discourses can, in turn, impact on the sense of belonging newcomers experience and on the level of recognition they receive in their communities (Delanty et al. 2008; Krzyżanowski and Wodak 2008).

To explore how social cohesion and belonging are portrayed, contested and acted out, this article will adopt a Bakhtinian dialogical perspective to investigate processes of self-and-other authoring and their consequences in the context of refugee settlement in Sweden. Sweden is an interesting site for exploration as it has historically received significant numbers of refugees but has become increasingly restrictive since 2015 (Emilsson 2020; Hagelund 2020). There has also been a distinctive turn towards nationalist sentiments, fuelled by discourses on threatened social cohesion, integration failures, and dangerous segregation (Dahlstedt and Eliassi 2018; Rydgren and Van der Meiden 2019; Aylott and Bolin 2023). To capture the changing climate and some of the tensions a critical period of time was chosen for the study: the 2022 election year, where immigration, integration and segregation were again high on the pre-election agendas after an increase in crime and urban unrest.

In order to comprehend how inclusions and exclusions are discursively constructed and reproduced and impact on the lived experiences of those authored as excluded others, this article draws on data from political discourses prior to the election as well as interviews with refugees in the four weeks immediately following. The article will address the following research questions:

1. How are refugees presented in political discourses?

2. How is this representation contested and experienced by refugees?

Literature Review

Refugee Reception in Sweden

While Sweden has built up an international humanitarian reputation through years of generous asylum policies, things have changed considerably since 2015. Until 2015, Sweden had asylum and family reunification policies that went beyond the requirements of the Refugee Convention (Emilsson 2020), and during what was commonly labeled the ‘refugee crisis’, Sweden received around 160,000 asylum seekers (SCB 2023), which was more than six times the EU per capita average (Emilsson 2020). This caused significant strain on asylum reception systems (Emilsson 2020) and led to a number of interim measures which have since gained a level of permanence (Stern 2019; Hagelund 2020). Measures included tougher immigration rules but also less desirable conditions for those receiving asylum in Sweden: temporary residence permits became the norm for all except quota refugees, with requirements for financial self-sufficiency for those wanting to transition to permanent residence or apply for family reunification, including that of their spouse and children (Emilsson 2020; Hagelund 2020). Numbers dropped as a result, and in 2022, Sweden accepted about 9,000 quota refugees and asylum seekers and just under 3000 family reunification cases (Migrationsinfo 2023). The current government is reducing numbers further, with the quota decreasing from 5000 to 900 and further restrictions on asylum seekers to be implemented, with exceptions for Ukrainian refugees (Tidöavtalet: Överenskommelse för Sverige 2022).

Social Cohesion, ‘Integration’ and Politicised Belonging

Migration, particularly in the European context, has long been presented as the main challenge to social cohesion (Boucher and Samad 2013). There has been an increasing focus on promoting shared values and managing threats from parallel societies, terrorism, radicalisation and violence (Triadafilopoulos et al. 2012) and an emphasis on one-sided societal integration, particularly values integration, on the part of the newcomer (Triadafilopoulos et al. 2012; Boucher and Samad 2013). These social cohesion and integration discourses rely on the idea of politicised belonging, where the imagined community is subject to ongoing boundary drawing (and redrawing) as well as contestations, negotiations and reinforcement of boundaries (Yuval-Davis 2006). Politicised belonging emphasises membership and place ownership with an ongoing negotiation between those ‘who claim belonging’ and those who have ‘the power of “granting” belonging’ (Antonsich 2010), relying on exclusionary practices that are not necessarily overtly racist, but focus instead on cultural differences and distances (Delanty et al. 2008; Wodak 2008). The political project of defining belonging also impacts on social recognition and feelings of belonging for individuals. According to Krzyżanowski and Wodak (2008) while individuals may form attachments to the new country and identify with the target community, there is also a need for the individual to go beyond ‘identification with’ (the migrant’s desire to identify with the target community) to ‘identification as’ (the target community’s recognition of migrants as accepted members) for belonging to fully develop. Living with an ‘absence of recognition’ (Delanty et al. 2008: 3) becomes a form of everyday exclusion, even in the absence of more overt actions.

Social Cohesion and Legitimised Belonging in Sweden

There has been a substantial amount of research carried out on how social cohesion is conceptualised in Sweden, and how boundaries between belonging and non-belonging are drawn and contested in discourse. A discursive discussion of cohesion using metaphors of home and family (Dahlstedt and Eliassi 2018) has been used to construct a bounded imagined community in need of protection (Elgenius and Rydgren 2019) and utsatta områden (‘vulnerable areas’), earlier commonly called utanförskapsområden (literally ‘areas of exclusion’), are used as a way of speaking of the segregated other who is not part of, and therefore threatening, cohesion. While vulnerable areas exist in practical reality as suburbs vulnerable to crime, with low socioeconomic status and a high percentage of individuals with foreign background (Polisen n.d.), these areas are also mobilised in discourse as metaphors of segregation and absence of Swedish law, order and values (Dahlstedt and Eliassi 2018). Thus, the areas have become a device for justifying tougher immigration and integration measures (Dahlstedt and Eliassi 2018), and for discursively linking immigration and crime (Aylott and Bolin 2023).

Boundary drawing for the Swedish identity is also achieved through the conceptualisation of Sweden as a superior democracy and champion of human rights and democratic values (Norocel 2017; Elgenius and Rydgren 2019) and the conceptualisation of the immigrant other as a threat to these values (Dahlstedt and Eliassi 2018; Alinia 2020). This is seen in the discourses of populist parties (Elgenius and Rydgren 2019) and in political strategies more generally (Dahlstedt and Eliassi 2018) as well as in initiatives that intend to promote inclusion and integration. Studies suggest that in the latter contexts, Sweden is presented as a historically homogenous and uncontested entity that has steadily progressed to reach a high level of democracy and prosperity (Bauer et al. 2023) with integration conceptualised as a one-way process of adopting Swedish democratic values (Muftee and Lundberg 2016; Hudson et al. 2022). Refugees are thus subject to a deficiency discourse and presumed to need instruction in diligence, productivity and the duty to contribute to the welfare state as well as other fundamental Swedish values (Muftee and Lundberg 2016; Hudson et al. 2022). Research on Swedish fundamental values, particularly in relation to migrants and refugees, highlights the emphasis placed on gender equality as one of the least negotiable of the Swedish values (Hudson et al. 2022) and an essential part of Swedish self-authoring (Carlson 2015; Norocel 2017). Immigrant women are constructed as less equal than Swedish women and in need of interventions in integration programmes (Carlson 2015; Hudson et al. 2022), while gender equality in Sweden is presented as already achieved and an integral and unproblematic part of Swedish society (Hudson et al. 2022). This is particularly the case for Muslim women (Lövheim 2020).

In recent years, Sweden has witnessed an increased presence of nationalist and exclusionary ideas in politics, seen in the success of the nationalist party Sverigedemokraterna (the Sweden Democrats, or ‘SD’) as well as in changes within mainstream parliamentary parties. While Sweden was long viewed as exceptionalist in that it did not have a right-wing nationalist party in government, SD has gradually established a presence and an influence over the years (Schierup and Ålund 2011; Rydgren and Van der Meiden 2019). A parliamentary party since 2010, the 2022 elections saw SD gain considerable influence as it not only gained 20.5 percent of the vote making it the second largest party, but was also for the first time included in formal collaborations by other parties (Aylott and Bolin 2023). While it did not become part of the coalition government, it had substantial influence over the direction of the government through the Tidö agreement (Tidöavtalet: Överenskommelse för Sverige 2022), an agreement between SD and the government (Aylott and Bolin 2023). The agreement contains a summary of directions and proposed policies for the collaboration and has a particular focus on crime and immigration. The proposed changes to immigration policy have as an overall aim to limit immigration, deter asylum seekers and increase return migration. Proposed measures include decreasing the refugee quota, making the asylum process more difficult through stricter requirements and less support, and imposing further restrictions on family reunification. Further, the agreement signals a move from permanent to temporary residence permits, higher thresholds for citizenship and restricted welfare access for non-citizens.

The creation of acceptability has for SD, as for many other nationalist parties in Europe, involved reframing xenophobia in terms of culture rather than race (Elgenius and Rydgren 2019), racial superiority as civilizational superiority (Brubaker 2017) and immigration as a threat to social cohesion (Elgenius and Rydgren 2019). However, these discourses are no longer exclusively employed by SD but have also been adopted by more mainstream parties (Aylott and Bolin 2023). A general increase in xenophobia can also be seen in increases in racial harassments, particularly those relating to islamophobia (Forselius and Westerberg 2019), which are particularly prone to affect women (Stendahl and Axell 2021).

As evident from the literature review above, there is a significant amount of research undertaken in the Swedish context, particularly in areas connected to social cohesion, exclusions and belonging. However, few studies exist that tie together political perspectives and the perspectives of refugees themselves, and bring together discursive constructions and lived experiences (see Christensen and Jensen 2011; White 2015). Further, there is of yet little research on what can be considered a critical point in Swedish immigration and integration history, the election year 2022 which saw significant and likely far-reaching changes and brought integration and segregation to the top of the agenda through the so-called Easter riots (see Findings section). Further, with politics and media focusing primarily on cities, vulnerable areas and crises, there is a need to understand the everyday lived experiences of those living everyday lives in smaller municipalities.

Conceptual Framework

To understand the complexities of social cohesion, belonging and exclusion as both discursively constructed and as lived realities, this article adopts a conceptual framework based on Bakhtinian dialogism. A dialogical perspective acknowledges the intersubjective nature of identity and belonging (Holquist 1990; Kostogriz 2005; Vitanova 2010) and recognises that these are constructed and negotiated in the interactions between self and other, while also influenced by how identities are portrayed in public and private discourse. From a Bakhtinian dialogical perspective, identity is created through acts of authoring, where subjects through their utterances author themselves in relation to those around them (Holquist 1990; Vitanova 2010) and also author others and in turn are authored by others (Sullivan and McCarthy 2004). While ideally identity constructions should occur in a dialogical relationship where each subject is recognised in their uniqueness (Kostogriz and Doecke 2007), in reality power dynamics and processes of exclusion often determine whose authoring is seen as valid (Holquist 1990). Thus, certain groups may be authored – in public or private discourse – as a lesser other, ‘impoverished’ or reduced to a type without individual uniqueness and value (Sullivan and McCarthy 2004) to serve certain ends, for example in projects of nation building (Kostogriz 2005). However, in face of reductive or negative authoring, dialogical subjects are still able to exercise agency and engage in contestations of meanings and discourses and in that way ‘transcend their subject positions’ (Vitanova 2005: 156) and create space for their own voice (Hall et al. 2005).

Methodology

Data Collection

In order to investigate the construction of the ‘foreign’ other and how this impacts on feelings of belonging and recognition, the analysis draws on data obtained from political discourse prior to the elections, as well as data obtained from semi-structured interviews with refugees (n = 29). Samples of political discourse were selected from two sources: party leaders’ speeches at Almedalsveckan 2022 and a party leaders’ debate in May 2022. As a nationally significant and highly mediatised yearly event that enables party leaders to highlight their core values and policies, Almedalsveckan is a fruitful site for analysis (see also Norocel 2017, Dahlstedt and Eliassi 2018). The May debate was chosen as a sample due to its timeliness (following the ‘Easter riots’) and its strong focus on integration.

The interviews with refugees were carried out in a post-industrial/rural municipality, ‘Nyfält’. Nyfält was chosen as it received a significant number of refugees in 2015 and the years following and has had strong electoral support for the Sweden Democrats (about 40 percent in the 2022 elections, compared to the 20.5 per cent national average). With no large city in the municipality, Nyfält lacks the extreme residential segregation of larger centres, but is overall a municipality with comparatively low socioeconomic outcomes. Fieldwork was undertaken, on site, in the four weeks following the 2022 national election. At this time, though it was clear that there was a right-wing majority and that SD would be conceded significant power, the final agreement (Tidöavtalet) was yet to be completed.

Refugee background participants in the study were recruited through educational institutions and snowballing and included quota refugees (n = 3), earlier asylum seekers (n = 13) and family reunification cases, primarily spouses (n = 13). All were Swedish residents (temporary or permanent) or citizens at the time of the interviews, and no participant had been in Sweden longer than ten years. Countries of origin were mainly Syria and Eritrea, but also other Arab and African countries. Interviews were conceived of as dialogical interactions between interviewer and interviewee, embedded in the broader sociocultural context (Tanggaard 2009), and included open-ended questions that allowed participants to redirect the conversation to topics of interest to them. Interviews were carried out in Swedish, with interpreters as requested or required. All interviews were transcribed by the author/researcher, focusing on lexical and syntactic features. Translations from Swedish to English are by the author. Full ethics applications were submitted prior to data collection and approved by the Massey University Human Ethics Commission (SOB 20/51) as well as by the Swedish Ethical Review Authority (dnr 2021-03635). All names of participants and places are pseudonyms.

Dialogical Analysis

To analyse data, I drew on a dialogical approach that was both semantic and structural. Semantically I chose to adopt a method that looks for the dialogical processes and developments expressed in interview data, as well as the generalised or larger scale dialogical interactions taking place outside the interview context. Using the NVivo software, semantic analysis was undertaken through a coding methodology that was based on the Grounded Theory Method (Charmaz 2006; Bryant and Charmaz 2007), but deviated from this in that it adopted a dialogical perspective as a guiding framework for analysis. The semantic analysis was supplemented by a dialogical narrative inquiry in order to understand how discourses were reproduced and contested, and how subjects authored themselves, were authored by others, and contested this authoring (Vitanova 2010). Following a dialogical narrative approach I paid attention to how utterances responded to the positions and utterances of others, including those present (for example interviewer and interpreter) but also absent Others, a generalised Other or even a less embodied Other such as a sociocultural norm or discourse (Vitanova 2010; Brookie 2018). This enabled me to distinguish not only the most prevalent discourses, but also how individuals and groups authored themselves in response to these.

Findings

In this section I will first present an analysis of political discourse and then findings from the interviews with refugees. When analysing political discourse, I have looked for common and general themes that are present in the discourse of several parties, albeit expressed slightly differently. In selecting representative quotes, I have primarily focused on the mainstream parties, including Socialdemokraterna (the Social Democrats, ‘S’), Moderaterna (the Moderates, ‘M’, the mainstream right-wing party), Liberalerna (the Liberals, ‘L’) and Kristdemokraterna (the Christian Democrats, ‘KD’). This is done in order to best represent prevalent ideas, beyond those of the overtly nationalist party, SD. Other mainstream parties, including Miljöpartiet (the Greens, ‘MP’), Centern (the Centre party, ‘C’) and Vänsterpartiet (the Left, ‘V’) were included in the analysis but their representations often deviated from those of the other parties, as they highlighted divisions based on class rather than ethnicity (V and MP) and presented themselves as anti-racist and anti-nationalist.

Threatened Social Cohesion and the Authoring of the Excluded Other

While there were distinct differences in approaches between political parties, many themes or discourses appeared to be widely adopted across much of the political spectrum. Sweden was, overall, authored as a socially cohesive and progressive democratic welfare state, with strong fundamental values, and currently under threat by a range of factors. These factors could be summarised under the label of segregation, as expressed by Magdalena Andersson (Socialdemokraterna 2022): ‘Something is fundamentally wrong in our nation. That wrong is spelled segregation’.

A common exemplification of segregation was through metaphors built on the so-called vulnerable areas, which functioned as a form of reification of the boundary between the cohesive society and the excluded other and also opened up for a range of classifications of the ‘segregated other’ that homogenised and problematized immigrants overall (cf. Dahlstedt and Eliassi 2018). While some parties – notably the Left and the Greens – challenged the general representations and focused instead on class (V) and political neglect (MP), overall the imagery of the threatening segregated other was utilised diligently. Areas with large immigrant populations were commonly referred to as ‘parallel societies’ (S, M, SD) and painted as areas of ‘clan rule’ (L, SD), lawlessness (L) and religious fundamentalism (SD), and were even coined ‘culturally encumbered areas’ by the Sweden Democrats (Partiledardebatt 2022 maj 2022).

Drawing on the concept of spatially segregated areas also enabled politicians to discursively create an imagined segregated community ostensibly devoid of Swedish values. Thus the leader of the Social Democrats was able to imply the deficiency of values by presenting a utopian scenario where Swedish values spread out and encompassed all regardless of area:

Sweden shall be the Sweden we love in every residential area. In every block. With the same book of law and the same security. Where every child knows that she or he can shape their own life and a good future. Where both women and men go to work every morning. For with your own job, yes, then comes an independent income and the freedom to decide for yourself how you want to live your life and with who. And Swedish gender equality, it applies to all girls and women in Sweden. (Socialdemokraterna 2022)

The same strategy was adopted by the leader of the conservative Moderaterna, though perhaps less subtly:

A Sweden without gang crime, without clan rule, where law and equality applies to all people … where all children see their parents go to work, where it always pays to work and do your very best. Where diligence and toil always trump cheating and poor excuses. (Moderaterna 2022)

An analysis of these and other passages highlights the values that are presented as central to what it means to be Swedish: democracy, social cohesion, justice and rule of law, duty and diligence, freedom of speech and religion, and gender equality. This aligns with earlier analyses of values discourses in Swedish politics (Dahlstedt and Eliassi 2018) and with representations of immigrant women as victims of patriarchy (Norocel 2017); however, there is also some indication that these discourses are becoming acceptable across a broader political base.

Drawing on value discourses enabled politicians to present a division that was not based on race or overt xenophobia, but relied on other, more subtle forms of othering while claiming that they subscribed to ‘a Swedishness that is not based on skin colour or background but that is based on the values that are so fundamental in our society’ (Liberalerna 2022). These values were then used to contrast the other who was authored as either deficient in Swedish values or subject to an opposing value system, and constituted a threat to Sweden. This was evident in the rhetoric of for example Ebba Busch, the leader of Kristdemokraterna: ‘We are about to lose that fight against those who want completely different values than those that built Sweden strong to prevail’ (Partiledardebatt 2022 maj 2022).

The Easter Riots and Freedom of Expression

To illustrate how Sweden was authored as unfailingly democratic in contrast to the ignorant or dangerous other, I will now turn to accounts relating to the so-called ‘Easter riots’ in April 2022, events that elevated segregation on the pre-election agendas. The events were triggered by the actions of Rasmus Paludan, a Danish far right, anti-Islam activist, who had obtained permission to burn the Qur’an and criticise Islam in the vulnerable areas of major cities during Ramadan. A significant police presence was required for these events which triggered riots in several places (Dozens arrested at Sweden riots sparked by planned Quran burnings 2022). While Paludan’s actions were subsequently criticised and referred to the courts for hate crime trials (Civil Rights Defenders 2023) and the questions of Qur’an burnings later became a diplomatic issue (Syed 2023), the immediate political reaction was to defend the right to freedom of expression, without problematizing this in terms of hate speech or hate crime.

In political debates and speeches, the events served to create an even stronger demarcation between the Swedish self and the foreign other and focused the discourse on immigrants as ‘problematic’. The fact that the rioters were throwing stones was picked up by all party leaders, and emphasised in speeches often with the subtext of stoning as a religious punishment. Islamophobia, otherisation and devaluing were further promoted by referring to the actions as ‘medieval barbarianism’ (M) and Sweden as a nation being destroyed by ‘clan rule, shadow societies, Muslim riots’ (SD). Most importantly, perhaps, was the portrayal of the other as undemocratic and unable to appreciate freedom of expression:

Some people who were there and who actually do not like the Swedish freedom of expression. People who think that it is wrong that the democracy has as its baseline that we shall be allowed to express ourselves. (Johan Pehrson, Liberalerna, (Partiledardebatt 2022 maj 2022))

The data from the political speeches and debates thus suggest an authoring of refugees and non-European immigrants as culturally distant, and deficient in some of the values that underpin Swedish society, such as freedom of expression, gender equality, diligence and law and order. Presented as outside the cohesive, orderly, democratic Swedish society, their belonging, or ‘identification as’ (Krzyżanowski and Wodak 2008) Swedes is thus put into question.

Authoring Self as an Acceptable Other

Interviews with refugee participants were designed to allow for narratives and discussions on some of the themes identified in the analysis of political discourses, including integration, segregation and belonging, as well as reflections on the elections, the results and the general political climate. Participants engaged with these questions to varying extents, based on language level and, especially, on their level of contact with Swedish individuals and institutions. Overall, participants whose interactions with Swedes were mostly limited to the language school were less likely to have encountered hostile discourses and actions as they moved within a relatively safe, but isolated, sphere:

I come to school, go home. Not working, I not, I don’t know, I don’t know them

However, participants proficient in Swedish and with higher levels of contact through education or employment were the ones most likely to express feelings of alienation and recognise negative authoring by politicians and wider society, as well as more likely to contest this authoring in the interviews.

Through a dialogical analysis focusing on instances of contestation, data revealed the ubiquity of negative discourses and indicated that refugees were tasked with authoring an acceptable identity, often through distancing themselves from what they knew to be prevalent discourses and representations. They contested the reductive authoring of refugees – an incredibly diverse group in terms of religious and political beliefs as well as educational and professional backgrounds – as a homogenous group where one mistake could affect the entire imagined community:

The problem is that when a [refugee] does something wrong, crime or something, they collect them all in the same basket.

you are not angels, and we are not devils … We are people. We have the devils and we have the angels. And you also.

In their self-authoring, participants more specifically contested the authoring of refugees as unmotivated, unproductive and careless by presenting themselves as motivated, punctual and productive:

I was very engaged, I had a lot of enthusiasm, I want – I want to become someone. I don’t want to be a problem. I want to show that we, we came here to be like ordinary people, to help, to integrate into society.

We have this in my home country too … that you, for example, you respect times, you are punctual.

Like I said forty people [from my extended family] come to Sweden. Thirty-three we work

Other common contestations involved contesting the authoring of refugees as uncivilised, intolerant and threatening:

But we are not dangerous. Yes we have religion, that is Islam, but we are not dangerous and we respect all religions

I come from Lebanon. In my family we don’t have the close-minded … we are open.

Because of the prevalent negative authoring of refugees, individuals also needed to author themselves as not belonging to the non-compliant, or to those who may been seen to confirm the stereotypes. Participants generally did not contest that there were those who did not contribute to society, but strongly distanced themselves from these imagined, or actual, others by speaking of ‘some others’ or ‘some families’ that were problematic:

Some families they didn’t want to … like they didn’t want to study the language, they thought just that I have moved to Sweden. It’s enough if we study and for example if we get no job then we can stay home and [social services] pay for them every month … We didn’t think like that … Me and my husband thought no we don’t want that and we haven’t gone through welfare.

Identity construction, or self-authoring, is thus done within a context of negative authoring by powerful members of Swedish society, and requires significant contestation in order to construct an acceptable identity of belonging in Sweden. I will now turn to how the negative authoring of refugees impacts on dimensions of everyday life.

Living as Other

Analyses of narratives about everyday interactions in society revealed a range of lived experiences of othering, from absence of recognition to overtly racial incidents, all impacting on the individual’s sense of belonging. Thus, even participants with limited societal engagement reported that they felt perceived as different, and treated with a level of caution and distancing:

Sometimes they don’t want hello, just silent.

Those with higher levels of engagement needed to purposely author themselves in real life to counteract the negative perceptions in society, as in this example from a staff member at a primary/intermediate school:

Earlier they were really careful and scared … like I tried all the time to show to the other that I am positive, I am happy, kind, nice, not harsh. Not that I am like they talk about us that they are dangerous something, but very helpful if they need help with anything.

This sense of being on probation until you had proven yourself trustworthy was shared by several participants, particularly those in paid employment and who were seen as successfully integrated. After proving themselves they could gain the respect of those close to them; however, it did not appear to challenge the overall perception of refugees as non-compliant, and non-belonging. Instead, it appeared to be viewed as a transition from out-group to in-group for that one individual:

Okay, we know Abbas, Abbas is good. So we are kind. We take care of … Abbas. We take Abbas from this group of immigrants to our place.

Further, for the individual, the respect and legitimised belonging only lasted within the work or social setting, and as soon as they stepped outside that setting, they were subjected to the same negative narrative and had to contest it yet again. Thus, even if someone was highly respected in their workplace, they may not have any respect in the wider community:

If I just start my car and go to [the supermarket] I lose all my respect. Because nobody knows I am working.

This context-specific belonging was experienced by one participant who had gained acceptance as an equal member of the teaching staff at her school, yet experienced the differential treatment between herself and a Swedish colleague when they found themselves on the maternity ward at the same time:

we had our babies like the same day … I was on the same, same corridor yes and met each other but only they helped her, and they didn’t come to me. Sure a short while with me but mostly with her and other, Swedish women … And then their way of talking. So I felt sometimes like [I] am rubbish or something. But I am a person.

In addition to the subtle forms of alienation and othering, many participants also spoke of overt racial harassment, which further impacted on their sense of belonging:

There was an old woman and her husband and then she looked like this [contemptuously] and she did this, she stood in the corner and [clutched her bag and struck a defensive pose] she did so she was so darn scared … so [my daughter] started to talk do you have a problem, yes? So she looked up and started saying bad words, bloody [ethnic slur] and Arabs and all.

There was also evidence that negative experiences increased in line with political rhetoric and changes:

Earlier there was racism but it was inside. Now it is inside and outside and everything.

I can say this year, we notice, we feel it, like now when we go into town or want to go shopping we see it, so it is really difficult for us. So it has affected over me a lot. And then when I get home I start talking to my husband and sometimes I cry.

Gender and Religious Freedom

While alienation and discrimination were experienced by both men and women, narratives suggested that the intersection of ethnicity, religion and gender was significant, with Muslim women more likely to have negative experiences despite the common Swedish narrative of gender equality and Sweden as a haven for women (see also Norocel 2017; Hudson et al. 2022). The women who participated in the study had varying experiences of gender equality, education and professional engagement prior to migration, but all were familiar with the Swedish gender-equal discourse and had aligned themselves with Swedish expectations of women and mothers as participants in education and employment. However, Muslim women also expressed that their gender, and particularly their gendered expressions of religion, gave rise to new forms of discrimination and harassment in the Swedish context. The link between hijab wearing and harassment was stated in a matter-of-fact manner by participants:

But you know. I have a scarf. They think not good, Arabic.

The Swedish gender-equal discourse tends to author immigrant women as lacking in gender equality and freedom (Carlson 2015; Hudson et al. 2022) and their liberation as an act of emancipation from cultural norms assisted by Western society (Norocel 2017). This narrow view, coupled with the negative authoring of refugees and Muslims in general, impacted on the choices available to Muslim women. This was exemplified in the account of one participant, Hanadi, as she went through a process of determining what gender equality and freedom meant to her. Feeling that the hijab had been imposed on her as a child, soon after arrival in Sweden, she gradually started socialising with Swedish people without her hijab, experiencing an initial sense of freedom:

I have had some parties with my friends, Swedish friends, yes, so I didn’t have the veil on me so I tried that … I mean I felt I am a real woman who’s danced and had a beautiful dress on

However, while she enjoyed the experience, she concluded that for her, at this point in her life, the hijab was an important part of her identity, and feeling free to choose, she elected to wear the hijab as an expression of who she was:

It gives me so much when I wear it. Like I feel, I feel that really happy … I feel even more beautiful when I wear it … I am Arabic from Syria, I have religion, it is Islam.

However, while the perceived cultural emancipation of removing her hijab was encouraged and acceptable, she did not experience the same freedom in her decision to wear it, as it laid her open to verbal harassment in public spaces. The anxiety and fear she experienced on an everyday basis led her to prohibit her daughter from wearing the hijab, despite repeated requests, in order to keep her safe. Thus the freedom to choose religious expression, which was denied Hanadi as a young girl in Syria, was now denied Hanadi’s daughter in Sweden.

There were also indications that the intersection of gender, religion and religious expression impacted on the rights of Muslim women to participate on equal terms in education and employment. One participant reported ongoing harassment in her work delivering circulars, and others reported distancing and alienation due to their hijab wearing as well as harassment in public spaces. A male participant, Abdul, explained that his wife was working in a care role part-time as well as studying full-time. As she had greater academic ability than him, he took part time Swedish classes and ran the household while she was studying and working. However, his wife was frequently subjected to harassment in the community:

My wife has eh veil and she walks many people look. And [spit] … [She] comes home and [cry] … And my wife drives car and [they spit] on the window much … [She] comes home: ‘Not go to school. Not to work’

Thus, while Swedish gender equality technically supported her right to study and work, this right – and her general freedom of movement – were threatened by societal responses to her gendered expression of religious beliefs.

Discussion

In this article, I have demonstrated how belonging and exclusion are discursively constructed through positive self-authoring and negative other-authoring, and how these representations become pervasive in talk about refugees to a point where they impact on the lived experiences of refugees in Sweden. While the strategy of demarcating belonging along lines of culture and civilisation has long been used in nationalist rhetoric in Sweden and elsewhere (Brubaker 2017; Elgenius and Rydgren 2019), the analysis of political discourse suggests that these demarcations are now adopted by several mainstream parties. Though the threat to Swedish values has been utilised politically at other critical points, including times of urban unrest (Schierup and Ålund 2011) and in response to the ‘refugee crisis’ (Dahlstedt and Eliassi 2018), the analysis indicates an increase in otherisation and anti-immigration rhetoric from across the political spectrum. Refugee participants, through the contestation of discourses in their self-authoring, not only exercised their dialogical rights as unique individuals to respond to the multiple utterances about them, but also, in their contestations, revealed the extent to which these negative discourses were present to them and incongruent with their own self-authoring.

This article makes an important contribution to the study of social cohesion, segregation and belonging, as it examines not only the portrayal of the other in discourse and society but also how this impacts on the lived experiences of those who are authored as other. The contestations that were carried out in the interviews also needed to be carried out in everyday life as individuals authored – through words and actions – an acceptable identity in contrast to the identity imposed by others’ authoring. The suggestion by Krzyżanowski and Wodak (2008) and Delanty et al. (2008) that belonging requires recognition by those perceived as already belonging to a place is exemplified in this article through demonstrating the struggles of living as other and being seen as not belonging, and also through the everyday contestations of negative authoring that participants engaged in. The persistence of otherizing discourses is evident in how individuals may ‘cross over’ to the in-group but not change the in-group’s overall perception of the other and also in how acceptance is strictly tied to the setting where the individual has already contested imposed identities and authored themselves in dialogical interaction. The increase of social discomfort apace with the increase in xenophobic discourses in general exemplifies the effect of discourse on everyday experience.

Further, the article demonstrates the importance of values discourses in the Swedish context, highlighted by a number of authors (Schierup and Ålund 2011; Brookie 2018; Dahlstedt and Eliassi 2018; Hudson et al. 2022; Bauer et al. 2023) and also complexifies this understanding by arguing that using values as a device for authoring the other negatively in reality may lead to an impingement on the rights of these others. Data exemplify that Swedish values and human rights are indeed seen as something sacred and also something that is crucial for authoring the Swedish identity. The reactions to Paludan’s tour exemplify the strong attachment to certain values, but also the strong conviction that these values are somewhat uniquely Swedish. This view of values as Swedish and unique mean that interpretations of values like gender equality and freedom of religion become inflexible, and the portrayal of the other as a threat means that individuals are unable to live out the freedom they are entitled to. The strongest example of this is the impact on the gendered expression of religious devotion for Muslim women, who do not feel that they have the freedom to express their religious devotion, and that if they do, they may experience restrictions to their movements.

Conclusion

In this article, I have suggested that the authoring of refugees as distant from the Swedish culture and as threats to Swedish democratic values creates a simplistic and monological understanding of social cohesion and belonging where a significant portion of the population are living with some forms of exclusion and lack of recognition. It prevents any problematizing and dialogical engagement, for example in terms of defining the boundaries between freedom of speech and hate speech, and in terms of what equal rights, especially for women, means for the culturally and religiously diverse in a democratic society.

This article has some limitations. By exploring a range of dimensions, there has perhaps not been sufficient opportunity to explore some of these in-depth. Further, this article has focused on the discursive constructions of belonging and rights, and the impacts of this in daily life, and has not looked at some of the more practical dimensions, such as the increase in precarity due to changes in policies or the difficult socioeconomic conditions that many of the refugees are dealing with. These would be fruitful, and important, topics for further inquiry.

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to professor Cynthia White and distinguished professor Emeritus Paul Spoonley for their guidance and support, and to Jenny Ringdahl for assistance in coordinating the fieldwork. I also thank the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this article.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).