A Culture of Intervention—Vagrancy and Drug Treatment in Sweden from the Late 19th Century Until Today

Abstract

The Swedish social democratic welfare state seems to be the result of some unique historical set of circumstances. A vital condition seems to be that reform instead of revolution became the king’s way to changing society. In practice this meant that a certain set of problematizations were put to use which pointed toward the welfare state as a political solution. My interest here is how the welfare state was opened as a political arena. For Vanessa Barker the social democratic welfare state is not the solution to “(…) a more just and equal penal order” (2013, p. 21). On the contrary, due to ethno-nationalism and weak constitutional traditions regarding individual rights, the Swedish welfare state has a tendency toward repressiveness against individuals deemed as “others.”