Slaget om hemmet

Värden, utanförskapanden och förorten som folkhemmets periferi

Abstract

The struggle about home. Values, social exclusion and the suburb as the periphery of the People’s home

In this article, we analyse contemporary discourses about social exclusion in the suburbs. The empirical material is mainly based on speeches of different Swedish political party leaders during the Politician’s Week (politikerveckan) in Almedalen that took place in 2016. By adopting a discursive psychology approach, we have examined the interpretative repertoires and the discursive resources that the party leaders use to frame the suburbs as sites of ”parallel society”, criminality, passivity, gender oppression, radicalization and dominance of values that assumingly pose a threat to the social cohesion of Swedish society and the basis of the People’s Home. In order to remediate the ”crisis of values” in Swedish society that migration and social exclusion of suburbs have supposedly engendered, ”Swedish values” are highlighted as important resources to strengthen social cohesion and reclaim the endangered People’s Home. Thus, values are gradually becoming primary markers of difference and deployed to construct hierarchies of belonging and rights in the Swedish society.