Fateful triangles: integration, race and evidence-based policymaking in Sweden and the UK

Informed by respective discussions of race as a floating signifier and performative politics, we examine and discuss how empirical evidence is used to secure political authority and camouflage racial thinking. Our focus is on integration-related evidence-based policymaking in Sweden and the United Kingdom, within a broader crisis of public mistrust of politicians, experts and empiricism, and at a time when immigration policy is politically charged. Across four case examples – shadow economies, post-racialism, gendered racialisation and sovereign border power – we identify the symbolic and political effects of the performance of political rationality. Our aim is not to discount the role of empirical inquiry and evidence but to draw attention to the changing styles, grammars and policy mechanisms through which racial classifications continue to gain mainstream legitimacy.