The Prolonged Inclusion of Roma Groups in Swedish Society

Abstract

Inclusion policies focusing on Roma groups started in Sweden during the 1950s, when the Swedish government recognized the formal citizen status of the so called "Swedish Gypsies", a group consisting of approximately 740 people. As the Roma were perceived as people living outside the boundaries of normal society, the challenge facing the Swedish authorities was how to outline and organize the new policies. In our analyses we focus on the taken-for-granted premises of these policies. We discuss the "entry process" of these Roma into Swedish society. People-processing organizations classified Roma as "socially disabled" in different administrative contexts. In the early 1960s adult male Roma were classified as socially disabled on the labor market. Later during the same decade, experts and professionals increasingly focused attention on the Roma family as a problematic institution. In this context, Roma adults were classified as disabled in relation to the normative representations of parental capacities during that time, while Roma children of school age were defined as children with difficulties and put in special groups for children with problems. The related interventions were justified by a discourse on social inclusion, but in reality produced a web of measures, practices and yet further interventions, which in the long run have contributed to perpetuate the social marginality of Roma groups.

“Reflexivity of reflexivity” with Roma-related Nordic educational research

“…Reality is subjective and constructed based on many truths that form a system of socio-political power, while discourse is controlled by rhetorical and political purposes (Lather, 2006). Knowledge is produced to change the world by building alternative power systems or alternative modernities through, as my data shows, praxis-oriented critical ethnography (Ravnbøl, 2017;Tervonen & Enache, 2017) and critical discourse analysis (Al Fakir, 2019;Alexiadou & Norberg, 2017;Avery & Hoxhallari, 2017;Keskinen, 2019;Montesino, 2001;Montesino & Al Fakir, 2015;Olesen & Eklund Karlsson, 2018), among others.…”

Free to Move Along: On the Urbanisation of Cross-border Mobility Controls - A Case of Roma 'EU migrants' in Malmö, Sweden

“…However, it is telling of the exclusionary bordering practices that were operative during the mid-1900s. As has been documented by historians (e.g., Ericsson, 2015;Montesino, 2002;Ohlsson Al Fakir, 2015;Selling, 2013) and officially acknowledged by the Swedish state through the aforementioned White Paper (DS 2014:8), the mid-20th century was a period of severe violations towards people defined as zigenare, including in the form of forced sterilisation (Broberg & Tydén, 1991). At the time, the zigenare were mostly excluded from regular housing and made to live in camps.…”

“…This paved the way for the renewed classification and stigmatisation of tattare and zigenare. Over the course of the first two decades of the 20th century, attempts to revise and rationalise the Swedish Vagrancy Act (Lösdriverilagen, first adopted in 1885) prompted an intensive search for a diagnosis of what came to be defined as 'the tattare question' and the 'the zigenare question', respectively (Montesino, 2002;Ohlsson Al Fakir, 2015).…”

“…It is a well-established fact that the local authorities often refused to register (Sw: folkbokföra) the newly emancipated citizens, denying them local residency status and thereby deflecting their claims for a wide range of rights and services to which they were formally entitled (DS 2014:8, pp. 181-192;Montesino & Ohlsson Al Fakir, 2015;Ohlsson Al Fakir, 2015).…”

“…As Sahlin (2008) argues, social housing as the slum is the persistent spectre of contemporary Swedish social housing policy (see also Sahlin, 2013). In this context, it is also important to remember that unlike many other European countries that have a tradition of state-sanctioned caravan sites and institutionalised camps for Roma and Travellers, Swedish Roma civil rights activism in the 1950s successfully organised around claims for emancipation and integration into regular housing (Mohtadi, 2012;Ohlsson Al Fakir, 2015). While Roma and Traveller camps were a common sight during the first half of the 20th century, they mostly disappeared in the 1960s and 1970s as more and more people got access to regular housing (Ohlsson Al Fakir, 2015).…”