Racializing Sweden: Narrative constructions of a new Swedishness

Racializing Sweden was financed by the Swedish Research Council and conducted by KuFo researcher Tobias Hübinette.

This project aims at analyzing Swedish non-white migrant and minority narratives in the form of novels, literary texts and autobiographies as a way of studying how the authors write about and relate to race, whiteness and Swedishness and articulate new perspectives on and constructions of Swedishness. With few exceptions, the official Swedish historiography has hitherto not included migrants and minorities as a part of the Swedish nation and of Swedishness. Instead, migrants and minorities are either written out of official Swedish history or constructed as a problem, and above all seen as not being fully Swedes. The material consists of a selection of published novels, literary texts and autobiographies written by non-white authors who have a migrant and minority background including migrants, children of migrants, mixed people as well as adoptees. The texts are read within the theoretical framework of critical race and whitenesss studies as well as within the context of previous research on race, whiteness and Swedishness, and with a particular emphasis on how new perspectives on Swedishness and new constructions of Swedishness are articulated and narrated. The overarching research questions are: How are white Swedes portrayed and represented in the texts? What is told and how is it told when it comes to Sweden and Swedishness from the perspective of being a non-white author? Do the authors write about themselves as Swedes, and if so, how do they construct their Swedishness?