Tornedalingar om minoritetsskap

Abstract

This article is based on an interview study with young and adult Tornedalians, a relatively unknown minority group in the northern part of Sweden. It scrutinizes the informants experiences of identifying with, and navigating within, a minority position in relation to the majority society’s discursive ideas and conceptions about them as national minority group. Through decolonial perspectives focusing on race and place, the analysis illuminates how societal prejudices construct the region of Tornedalen as uncivilized, and where Tornedalians are considered to embody a ”problematic” racialised position. At the same time, however, the informants express practices of both colonial awareness and decolonial resistance. In this way, the customs, culture, political power, and norms related to urbanisation of the Swedish majority society are questioned and challenged from a Finno-Ugric minority standpoint, with emphasis on nature values and knowledges linked to a rural lifestyle.