Stockholmsvit: Nationalism, Populism and the Right in Sweden

• In Event: : Imprisonment, Racialization and Right-Wing Populism in Europe I

Abstract

This paper aims to bring together two streams of research on violence and democracy—from the dirty work of the state itself to the rise of the far right. Both developments pose significant challenges to the people and principles of democratic societies as states come to rely increasingly on repression—hard borders and harsh punishments-- to respond to crime, migration, and problems of order. Many scholars have argued that it is the emergence of right wing populism that has transformed what are otherwise good societies into meaner, leaner, and even more authoritarian like regimes. These factors are certainly at play but they do not tell us the whole story. Empirically, this paper focuses on Sweden, one of the least likely cases to embrace the far right, more prisons, and closed borders. It will argue that a hawkish form of nationalism, rather than populism, helps to explain how and why people of color are overrepresented in prison and deportation. Inspired by W.E.B Du Bois, it will go on to show how this violence is racially structured, multi-scalar, and white-washed in a process I call Stockholmsvit.

Author

• Vanessa Barker, Stockholm University