Integrating the Immigrant the Swedish Way? Understandings of Citizenship and Integration in Swedish Local Civic Integration Projects

Abstract

ABSTRACT In Sweden, integration is a pressing issue particularly following the large influx of immigrants in 2015. Swedish municipalities play an important role in civic integration, with responsibility for newly arrived immigrants receiving a basic understanding of Swedish society, their rights and obligations. We analyse data from 204 applications granted funding 2016/2017 for projects improving the integration of refugees into society by co-operation between municipalities and other actors. Using thematic analysis, we identify two broad themes. One concerning the ‘what’ of integration – the Swedish values, norms and behaviours that immigrants are expected to learn in order to become ‘good’ Swedish citizens, and the other concerning the means or the ‘how’ of integration. However, although these projects are well-meaning, they may have normalizing and disciplining effects whereby the immigrant is constructed as subordinate, as the Other. Swedish gender-equality is heavily emphasized and we see how, in relation to this, the immigrant is constructed as unmodern, bound by tradition and unequal. Particularly immigrant women are produced as passive objects rather than active subjects, in need of special women’s activities and lacking as parents in comparison with the Swedish ideal.