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Abstract
This article focuses on adult learning in labour-market projects targeting unemployed migrants in Sweden. Drawing on a Foucauldian analysis of governmentality, the results of the study problematize the ways that such projects produce individualizing discourses – targeting individuals, constructing them as responsible for their position as unemployed. The project’s target groups are generally defined not on the basis of ethnicity as such, but rather using terms such as non-Nordic background, foreign born and immigrants. However, two groups considered especially problematic are constructed through ethnicity: Somali and Roma people. The notion of social competency is analysed here as a way of constructing the unemployed migrants as not yet employable. Another significant result concerns the notion of gender equality, which makes migrants governable because it constructs boundaries between Swedishness and Otherness. In line with this rationality, the targeted migrants are governed towards Swedishness through learning gender equality. These results raise a number of issues of great concern for the inclusion of migrants in the labour market, as they highlight a paradoxical relationship between the inclusive ambitions of interventions targeting unemployed migrants and the ethnicized discourses of ‘Othering’ that imbue these learning practices.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. ESF online project bank: http://www.esf.se/en/Projektbank/Search-project/.
2. The mandatory headings are as follows: summary, background, purpose, objective, accessibility for people with disabilities, gender mainstreaming, co-financiers, partners and municipality.
3. All translations of empirical material are made by the author.
4. Swedish name: Mötet. Vägen till arbete.
5. Swedish name: Din tur.
6. Swedish name: Mabi punkt nu.
7. Swedish name: Stjärnan.
8. Swedish name: Svartjobbarna.
9. Swedish name: Mötesplats i ny form.
10. Swedish name: Navigator.
11. Swedish name: INFRA.
12. Swedish name: Grön integration.
13. Roughly one-third of the projects analysed (33 of 107) are run by private and civil-society organizations. The ESF stresses the importance of involving partners from different sectors – public, private and civil society. Here, there is a strong focus on cooperation and partnership: ‘a successful partnership is based on a strategically relevant composition of players from public, private and non-commercial organizations’ (ESF 2007, 96).
14. Swedish name: Redo för jobb.
15. However, the notion of gender equality is not a marker of Swedishness alone. Research focusing on both Finnish (Tuori Citation2007) and Danish (Haldrup, Koefoed, and Simonsen Citation2006) contexts has identified similar tendencies, connecting a specific discourse of nationality closely to the idea of gender equality.
16. Swedish name: Yrkesutbildning i samverkan.
17. Romano Zor! Roma Force! Swedish name: Romano Zor! Romsk kraft!
18. Project for Roma Youth; Swedish name: Projekt för Romska ungdomar.
19. Swedish name: Sahil.
20. These groups have very different histories in Sweden. The Roma constitute a highly heterogeneous group whose history in Sweden goes back approximately 500 years. Roma populations have arrived in Sweden during several migration periods from the 16th century onwards (SOU 2010, 55). Somalis, on the other hand, form a relatively new group of immigrants to Sweden. Most Somalis migrating to Sweden have fled the civil war in Somalia. Migration from Somalia to Sweden has multiplied during the twenty-first century (Carlson, Magnusson, and Rönnqvist 2012).
21. This discourse about Swedishness as potentially ‘contagious’ parallels scientific knowledge developed elsewhere, not least in the so-called social contagion theory launched by Ryan and Gross (Citation1943) in the 1940s and in the contact hypothesis, or intergroup contact theory, launched a decade later (Allport Citation1954; Amir Citation1969). The basic ideas underpinning both are that ‘individuals adopt the attitudes or behaviors of others in the social network with whom they communicate’ and that ‘interpersonal networks influence the adoption of ideas, innovations, and behaviours’ (Scherer and Cho 2003, 263). The main difference between the two theories is that the contact hypothesis was developed within studies on ethnic relations. Both theories – of social contagiousness and ethnic contact – align with the rationale that social interaction with ‘Swedes’ will facilitate one’s learning to become Swedish.
22. In line with this tradition, the Ministry of Employment emphasizes that ‘measures targeting immigrants as a group are to be limited in time after their arrival in Sweden’. Ministry of Employment website: http://www.regeringen.se/sb/d/8270140617.