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Sweden is reputed to have the most avant-garde welfare and immigration policies in Europe. But behind this image lies a more complex reality. Recent changes are turning an explicit commitment to multiculturalism into a kind of cultural repression that conceals the structure of power underlying racial, ethnic, gender and class inequalities. Drawing fruitfully on comparisons with Britain and other European countries, Alexandra Ålund and Carl-Ulrik Schierup examine some of the paradoxes of multiculturalism that have com to light during the course of public debates about Sweden’s ‘over-programmed’ society. They critically reassess the dominant political, institutional and academic discourses: they look at changes in refugee policy, at how immigrant women and youth are represented and at the limited voice given to immigrant communities and contemporary social movements. In discussing the dilemma faced by the welfare state under the twin threats of globalization and localization, the book focuses on the emerging notion of ‘trans-ethnicity’ and, in so doing, exposes the need for more comprehensive definitions of ‘politics’, ‘class’, ‘state’, ‘civil society’ and ‘everyday life’.
Castles et al. (Fri,) studied this question.