Swedish Welfare State Research Articles

Riots in the welfare state: The contours of a modern-day moral economy

This article accounts for the tacit politics of the 2013 Stockholm riots. Based on interviews with local residents and a study of the parliamentary debate, it is suggested that the post-war Swedish welfare state generated commonly shared conceptions, which ascribed a temporary legitimacy to the riots within the community by conceptualizing poor living conditions and police racism as government infractions. The modern moral economy was endorsed by the political establishment, with a cynical twist. For future studies of similar riots, it is argued that, although the classical notion of moral economy successfully directs attention to the normative conceptions that propel riots, the notion must be extended with a racialized dimension, the concept of citizenship, and new incarnations of government infraction.

At the threshold of retirement: From all-absorbing relations to self-actualization

ABSTRACTTo investigate the complexities of the retirement process, the present article draws on a case study of Eva, a Swedish woman who “awakened” from all-absorbing relations. It considers the ways in which retirement can enable liberation from patriarchal kinship structures and embodied values of respectability. The aim is to illuminate how deep, embodied values can become conscious and explicit during precarious life situations and transitional phases. The relation between the Swedish welfare state, an I-we balance, and gender equity values are illuminated. These analytical dimensions support the analysis by providing insights into the ways in which individuals embody and use cultural and social structures when they aim to manage unpredictability and to create change toward self-actualization.

Szwed i Polak czytają „Underdoga”. Kulturowe uwarunkowania recepcji dzieła literackiego

In the article, the author considers cultural factors which affect the reading of literary work by Swedish and Polish audiences. The piece in question is Underdog by Torbjörn Flygt (2001, translated into Polish by Elżbieta Jasińska-Brunnberg, 2006). Analyzing the setting of the novel in historical narrative about the Swedish welfare state, the authors poses questions regarding universal or hermetic nature of Flygt’s novel.

"Är inte att komma och kräva kärlek en smula mycket begärt?"

Kristina Sandberg’s novels about Maj Berglund and her life as a reluctant housewife in a Swedish small town during the 1930’s to the early 1960’s have received wide critical acclaim. Following a previously unacknowledged feminist literary trace of cookie crumbs, this article discovers a sisterhood of mad women in the kitchen, running throughout the 19th and 20th centuries up till the contemporary revival of the image of the happy housewife in popular culture and fiction. Sandberg’s unique contribution to the genre is the notion of love refusal as a subversive strategy, which in turn is deeply connected with a hidden legacy of housewives novels from the 1950’s. These were experimental in form and aggressively outspoken in their emotional modus. Due to their emotional intensity and domestic setting against the backdrop of the Swedish welfare state, these novels may tentatively be labelled “dollhouse desperado stories”, including Ibsen’s Nora in their ancestry. Taken together, these housewife/madwomen narratives play a crucial role in the forming of, with Sara Ahmed’s term, the “Unhappy Archives” of feminist theory.

Active citizenship for persons with psychosocial disabilities in Sweden

As it is the case in many European countries, psychosocial disabilities have become an important concern in Sweden. Persons with psychosocial disabilities’ experiences of various societal domains such as school, work, family life, leisure activities and contact with welfare agencies need a complex analysis which takes into account both personal and contextual factors. This article draws on 15 interviews with informants with psychosocial disabilities and discusses their experiences and the difficulties that they met during their lives. These experiences are conceptualised with the framework of “active citizenship” developed by Hvinden et al. (2016), which distinguishes three core dimensions of active citizenship: security, influence and autonomy. The empirically grounded article discusses the opportunities and barriers that encourage or hamper persons with psychosocial disabilities to be active citizens in the Swedish welfare state and underlines some of the main challenges that stand in the way of their “full and effective participation in society” (CRPD, article 1).

A Unique Source for Innovative Longitudinal Research: The POPLINK Database


 
 
 This paper presents the longitudinal database POPLINK, which has been developed at the Demographic Data Base at Umeå University, Sweden. Based on digitized Swedish population registers between c. 1700-1950, the database contains micro-data that covers the agrarian society through industrialization and further on to the Swedish welfare state and contemporary society. It is now possible to study the profound processes of the second demographic transition using individual level data with a proper size population. POPLINK allows for a large array of longitudinal studies, such as social mobility, migration, fertility, mortality, civil status, kinship relations, diseases, disability and causes of death. International standards of occupations (HISCO) and diseases (ICD-10) have been applied, facilitating comparability. POPLINK covers two large regions in Northern Sweden and is built on complete registrations. It is one of the world’s most information-dense historical population databases, covering up to 15 generations and 350,000 individuals described by 300 variables, allowing the ability to monitor populations over time. POPLINK has been built to allow linkage to modern registries, clinical data and medical biobanks, which enables the study of transgenerational effects, heredity and genetic transfers in disease incidence of the population today. DDB serves as an infrastructure for research and is open to researchers of any nationality.
 
 

A New Field:History of Humanities

A New Field:<i>History of Humanities</i>

Social rights in the shadow of poor relief – social assistance in the universal Swedish welfare state

The idea of a European social citizenship is being developed by the EU to provide a minimum safety net. Questions about social citizenship are of fundamental importance in people’s everyday lives. Social assistance is a central dimension when studying social citizenship. Before discussing in terms of a European social citizenship, we should determine whether we have a social citizenship at the national level. We therefore analyse the Swedish welfare state, one of the most mature welfare states in the EU. We conclude that the social right to social assistance is not part of modern citizenship, nor does it follow the formal principles of legal citizenship rights. The law presupposes a considerable amount of discretionary power at the local level when it comes to identifying the deserving poor; something that goes against the definition of a legal citizenship right. The right to social assistance is still a reproduction of the old poor-relief logic.

Bottom-up childcare in a top-down welfare state: explaining cooperative organization among Swedish parents

ABSTRACTAlmost all children in Sweden spend at least some part of their early childhood in organized childcare, primarily in the form of preschools. About 10% of all preschools in Sweden are parent cooperatives, which make the childcare area an anomaly in the Swedish welfare state; no other service area has such a significant proportion of cooperative service providers. The parent cooperatives are initiated by the parents themselves, they are social enterprises created from the bottom-up. Why do parents decide to start a parent cooperative preschool in a welfare state where childcare is considered a social right and a responsibility for the state? This article will explore several different motives for starting parent cooperatives in Sweden, with special attention to the role of the public sector and political decisions. The findings are based on an extensive empiric study performed between the years 2003 and 2007.

Infant Health, Cognitive Performance and Earnings: Evidence from Inception of the Welfare State in Sweden

We estimate impacts of exposure to an infant health intervention trialled in Sweden in the early 1930s using purposively digitised birth registers linked to school catalogues, census files and tax records to generate longitudinal microdata that track individuals through five stages of the life-course, from birth to age 71. This allows us to measure impacts on childhood health and cognitive skills at ages 7 and 10, educational and occupational choice at age 16-20, employment, earnings and occupation at age 36-40, and pension income at age 71. Leveraging quasi-random variation in eligibility by birth date and birth parish, we estimate that an additional year of exposure was associated with improved reading and writing skills in primary school, and increased enrolment in university and apprenticeship in late adolescence. These changes are larger and more robust for men, but we find increases in secondary school completion which are unique to women. In the longer run, we find very substantial increases in employment (especially in the public sector) and income among women, alongside absolutely no impacts among men. We suggest that this may be, at least in part, because these cohorts were exposed to a massive expansion of the Swedish welfare state, which created more jobs for women than for men.

Unlocking the Social Trap: Inequality, Trust and the Scandinavian Welfare State

Recent research suggests that economic inequality thwarts attempts to establish a welfare state. The corollary of this view is that today's welfare states had witnessed an equality revolution already before the rise of social policies aiming at redistribution. The paper brings this insight to bear on the creation of the welfare state in Sweden, for many the very model of a universal welfare state, and enquires into whether equality really predated the formation of universal welfare policies in the 1950s. We present evidence on inequality based on labor market outcomes and corroborate the view that there has been a sharp reduction in inequality during the 1930s and 1940s. Hence Sweden underwent a true equality revolution prior to the establishment of the welfare state. A leveling of incomes is a necessary precondition for the rise of the universal welfare state, we suggest, because of trust, which correlates negatively with inequality. High trust levels solve the problems associated with collective goods and boosts support for universal solutions of income security. The paper provides a narrative in which the formation of institutions, the removal of large income differentials, and the creation of higher trust levels interacted in the 1930s and 1940s to form the foundation for the welfare state in the 1950s. It adopts a dynamic view of trust by departing from the assumption that trust arises endogenously as a concomitant to changes in the underlying fundamentals like income inequality and redesigned institutional frameworks.

Från motsatsförhållande till symbios? Miljöpolitik och välfärd i ekonomiska upp- och nedgångar

[From clash of interests to symbiosis? Environmental policy and welfare in times of economic boom and recession] Global challenges such as climate change, the free flow of international capital, and growing political transnational cooperation, together with two major financial crises, have put pressure on the national welfare state during recent decades. During the same period, the concepts of sustainable development and ecological modernization have contributed with an understanding of economic growth and environmental awareness as complementary. In that context, Karin Edberg’s article discusses whether environmental policy can be said to be part of the modern Swedish welfare state. Edberg makes use of the annual inaugural speeches given by the prime minister in connection with the opening of the Swedish parliament. This implies that the article’s results rather than reflecting political practice points at issues of political interest and their articulation. Edberg shows how environmental questions have fluctuated between being a de-ideologized and normalized part of the political landscape, and a political watershed. Today, the idea of sustainable development is the glue that connects environmental policies with the welfare state – at least on a rhetorical level – and which makes the environment a consensus issue. Publication history: Published original. (Published 7 October 2016) Citation: Edberg, Karin (2016) “Fran motsatsforhallande till symbios? Miljopolitik och valfard i ekonomiska upp- och nedgangar”, in Arkiv. Tidskrift for samhallsanalys , issue 6, pp. 7–37. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.13068/2000-6217.6.1

SINGLE AND AGGREGATE SALIVARY CORTISOL MEASURES IN WORKING WOMEN LIVING IN HIGH AND LOW STATUS NEIGHBORHOODS IN SWEDEN.

Contextual factors including neighborhood status have consistently been associated with health disparities. This may relate to a poorer neighborhood status involving an exposure to chronic stressors, which dysregulates cortisol secretion. This study investigated single and aggregate cortisol measures in 88 working women living in high and low status neighborhoods. Results showed significantly lower waking cortisol among women in low status neighborhoods. However, there were no group differences in aggregate cortisol measures. The lower morning cortisol among women in the low status neighborhoods follows previous research suggesting hypocortisolism as a pathway linking neighborhood status and health disparities, albeit a less consistent finding across cortisol measures in this sample. This may relate to the Swedish welfare state and its fostering of equality.

Book Review: Reaching a State of Hope: Refugees, Immigrants and the Swedish Welfare State, 1930–2000

Book Review: Reaching a State of Hope: Refugees, Immigrants and the Swedish Welfare State, 1930–2000

The Bamboos of Blekinge: The Writing of Cultures in Swedish Proletarian Fiction

The national identity of the source culture often constitutes an important hermeneutic frame from which a translated text is understood. At the same time, literary texts themselves sometimes have a tendency to resist cultural narratives and stereotypical ideas of a certain nation. This article explores how such a resistance is made in the English translations of four Swedish novels from the 1930s. These novels are all central texts in the history of Swedish literature, as they form the very basis of a literary current that had a huge impact on the development of the Swedish welfare state—proletarian fiction. In the translations of Harry Martinson’s, Moa Martinson’s, Eyvind Johnson’s, and Ivar Lo-Johansson’s breakthrough novels, the Anglophone target reader is faced with different kinds of disruptions of the Swedish national identity. Some of these disturb the conception of Sweden as a unified cultural space; others resist the idea of Sweden as a distinct cultural space. There is, however, no general rule to these disruptions: All four novels have their own, specific way of creating narrative resistance. (Less)

Volatile and Violent Relationships Among Women Sentenced for Homicide in Sweden Between 1986 and 2005

Data from Swedish court judgments of all 124 women convicted of homicide during 20 years was analyzed. The typical pattern was an abused woman who kills her intimate partner at home with a knife, often with alcohol involved. A subsample (n = 66) was analyzed qualitatively, with a focus on intimate partner relationships. The findings indicate that female homicides usually take place after a long progression of violence and reflect women’s subordinate gendered position. Situational triggers finally lead up to the killing event. Gender equality and the so-called woman-friendly welfare state in Sweden do not appear to reduce women’s volatility in violent relationships.

Welfare Mix as a Contested Terrain: Political Positions on Government–Non-profit Relations at National and Local Levels in a Social Democratic Welfare State

As welfare states are increasingly challenged and replaced by welfare mix models, new ideas about the functions of non-profit and voluntary organisations (NPVOs) provoke political conflicts that should be reflected in research. This paper explores the significance of political and ideological dimensions to present changes in the Swedish welfare state regarding NPVOs as welfare services providers. Investigating both national and local level, the study addresses political as well as practical implications of the reframing of NPVOs as service providers rather than being associated with a voice function. The article shows extensive differences between national and local levels as contentious ideological cleavages at national level are dormant in local level politics. Variations in the way relations to NPVOs are structured in practice at local level appear related to factors other than political dimensions. The findings support the development of an analytical framework that reflects political dimensions and allow for empirical focus that includes national and local level politics and practices.

A different path to individualization of welfare services? Co-production of childcare services in Sweden

The Swedish welfare state has in recent years undergone extensive reforms that have allowed quasi-markets to be formed in several social service areas. The establishment of these quasi-markets has been said to ensure greater individual freedom as well as competition between service providers that will create greater efficiency and better quality. But are quasi-markets really the only means to reach these goals? This paper studies how co-production can be used to reach the same or similar goals. The possibilities of co-production in the welfare state and its significance for what Marshall called social citizenship will be presented, using results from a research project on co-production. The results will show that co-production, like quasi-markets, has its limitations – especially with regard to marginalized groups in society – but that co-production has the potential to combine individualization of social services with social cohesion, provided that there is a political will to do so.

Expansion and retrenchment of the Swedish welfare state: a long-term approach.

In this article, we will undertake a long-term analysis of the evolution of the Swedish welfare state, seeking to explain that evolution through the use of a systemic approach. That is, our approach will consider the interrelations between economic growth (EG), the sociopolitical institutional framework (IF), and the welfare state (WS)-understood as a set of institutions embracing the labor market and its regulation, the tax system, and the so-called social wage-in order to find the main variables that elucidate its evolution. We will show that the expansive phase of the Swedish welfare state can be explained by the symbiotic relationships developed in the WS-EG-IF interaction, whereas the period of welfare state retrenchment is one result of changes operating within the sociopolitical IF and EG bases.

Between Opportunity and Constraint: Understanding the Onward Migration of Highly Educated Iranian Refugees from Sweden

In the 1980s and early 1990s, more than 50,000 Iranian refugees moved to Sweden. The Swedish state attended to their immediate needs, providing housing, language training, and other types of support. Moreover, these migrants had almost immediate access to all the benefits of the Swedish welfare state including affordable healthcare, unemployment insurance, and free education up to and including the tertiary level. Despite the opportunities available to them in Sweden, many Iranian refugees have faced challenges, especially when trying to secure meaningful work. One of the strategies they have used to overcome barriers to entering the labor market is to leave Sweden for onward destinations which are seen as having relatively more to offer. This study explores the onward migration of Iranians from Sweden by way of a two-step mixed methods approach: in the first step, population register data is used to determine how onward migrants differ from those Iranians who stay in Sweden. In the second step, information from life history interviews conducted with onward migrants in London and Toronto is used to understand what motivates individuals to leave Sweden. Overall, the study finds that highly educated Iranians who have struggled to find employment in Sweden are the most likely to move on. Their precise motivations for doing so, however, are nuanced and complex and relate to more than just economic factors.