Locating Sweden in Time and Space: National Chronotopes in Civic Orientation for Adult Migrants

Abstract

The aim of this article is to use courses in civic orientation for newly arrived adult migrants in Sweden as the empirical entry point from which to investigate whether, and if so, how, civic values are tied to the Swedish nation through specific discourses and narratives. With the help of a framework that brings together theorisations of the discursive construction of the nation with the notions of the chronotope and ‘social narratives’, the article demonstrates how narratives within civic orientation are characterised by specific spatio-temporal moves that discursively construct Sweden as a nation-state. Such national chronotopes are not innocuous but are part of a rhetoric of nationalism that constructs a linear and comprehensive story of prosperity and superiority, not least vis-à-vis some other geographical areas in the world. As such, the analysis seeks to contribute to the burgeoning scholarship on civic orientation programmes by offering further empirical evidence of the shapes such programmes take, and how civic values become nationalised. With the help of the notion of the chronotope, the article also seeks to add some fresh perspectives to scholarship on nationalism and othering by showing mundane spatio-temporal moves in the production of a ‘national imaginary’ (Calhoun 2017).