The Injuries of the Margins and the Restorative Power of the Political: How Young People with Migrant Backgrounds Create their Capacity to Act

Abstract

This paper presents some ways in which young people of a migrant background in Sweden handle their marginalisation at a time of transition from school to higher education. The stories of two young men are discussed, who develop opposing strategies to cope with the double bind created by a society that promotes meritocracy but acts on the basis of racialised exclusionary practices. One is forced into the position of ‘immigrant’ while wanting to be recognised as Swede. The other has more possibilities to be recognised as Swedish but chooses to define himself as ‘immigrant’ and to understand his experiences through a political analysis of racism in Swedish society. While the conflict in which the former finds himself leads to a state of paralysis, the later is able to de-individualise his position and thus to integrate his different belongings. It is argued that while the celebration of hybridity and multicultural capabilities is crucial, it is also important to recognise how marginalisation and discrimination hamper young people's capacity to act.

Keywords:

• Multiculturalism
• Sweden
• Young Migrants
• Marginalisation
• Social Inclusion
• Everyday Racism

Notes

1. In this text I will only be talking about young people with a migrant background, without repeating this label in what follows.

2. In the German original the term is Handlungsfähigkeit, which Tolman (1991) has translated as ‘action potence’. This term may be more scientific but it is more difficult to understand, which is why I have chosen the simpler translation of ‘capacity to act’.

3. This is in reference to Sennett and Cobb's The Hidden Injuries of Class (1972), where they take their departure in an analysis of a ‘class journey’ that creates an ‘internal contradiction’ for the worker undertaking it. I am analysing a similar process here.

4. This is as much a reference to what he does now as described in other parts of the interview as to what he might envisage doing in a future well-earning job.

5. Two souls, alas! are lodged in my wild breast,

Which evermore opposing ways endeavour,

The one lives only on the joys of time,

Still to the world with clamp-like organs clinging;

The other leaves this earthly dust and slime,

To fields of sainted sires up-springing.

(Johann Wolfgang Goethe: Faust. A tragedy. Free ebook available from: http://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/world/readfile?fk_files=117499

6. The conservative party in Sweden

7. Lasermannen (‘the Laser Man’) is a Swedish serial killer who shot eleven people between August 1991 and February 1992 in the areas of Stockholm and Uppsala. One died and the others were seriously injured. Most of them had a migrant background. He shot at people who appeared to be immigrants. He first used a rifle equipped with a laser sight (hence, his nickname), and later switched to a revolver. Arrested in June 1992 he was sentenced to life imprisonment. People with a migrant background remember that time with horror – not only because of the immediate danger and thus anxiety they felt, but also because of the way in which their anxiety was not taken seriously by Swedish media, authorities and many of their Swedish acquaintances. In a society that praised itself of not being racist, that was one of the moments when racism was expressed through negligence and denial.

8. A right wing extremist party

9. I have discussed this elsewhere (Räthzel 2006) arguing that a social democrat, even one who positions himself on the right wing of his party is unlikely to talk of people who receive social benefits as parasites and would not interpret his party's politics as wanting to serve “people who committed a crime”. Arguably Paul did not present himself so differently in the first as compared to the second interview.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Nora Räthzel

Nora Räthzel is a Professor of Sociology at Umeå University. Her general research interest is to understand the ways in which gender, ethnic, and class relations interrelate in everyday life at work and in urban spaces, creating forms of subordination and/or resistance. Nora's research projects have been about: the everyday lives of young people with and without migrant backgrounds in Germany and the UK (“Finding the Way Home”), young people's access to the labour market in Sweden, working and domestic lives of Volvo workers in Mexico, South Africa and Sweden, and urban planning and sustainability in Malmö. She is currently researching trade union policies towards climate change and the global north-south divide