Abstract
Hostility to immigrants and the corresponding rise in nationalist populism in Western Europe is most often explained in terms of a reluctance to share in the bounty of welfare benefits. The ‘grand lady’ of French theorizing on the relationship between citizens and the state (i.e. social integration), Professor emerita Dominique Schnapper (1994, 1998), argues that homo oeconomicus has taken the lead over homo politicus just as private interests have taken the lead over a sense of public belonging. For Schnapper, the virulence of many ‘insiders’ towards the influx of immigrants and subsequent restrictive refugee policies is thus an unwillingness to share in the spoils of the welfare state.
In Nordic Nationalism and Penal Order: Walling the Welfare State, Vanessa Barker extends these arguments on the basis of an analysis of the dramatic reversal of Sweden’s open borders to refugees in late autumn 2015 – a reversal that James Traub histrionically called the ‘death of the most generous country on earth’ (Traub, 2016). In short, Barker argues that the closing of the border in 2015 cannot be explained alone by a system overload in the face of the massive influx of refugees: the explanation runs much deeper. While propelled by the so-called refugee crisis during autumn 2015, the reversal – which more or less closed Swedish borders to asylum-seekers – was, according to Barker, not inconsistent with the country’s migration controls seen from a historical perspective and is entirely consistent with the logic of the welfare state’s ambition to ‘preserve a sense of social security for those on the inside, even when it means generating insecurity for those on the outside’ (p. 5). The legitimacy of the Swedish state rests, today as since its inception in the latter 1930s, upon the state providing its ‘insiders’ with a sense of social security, belonging and place. According to Barker, this contributes to a kind of ontological investment on the part of citizens in the fate of the welfare state. Historically, the Swedish welfare state merged class struggle with the national struggle, as Barker points out: hence its success and entrenchment.
The universal logic of the welfare state – equality – ‘one for all and all for one’ paradoxically drives exclusion. When under perceived threat, the response is (not unexpectedly) to ‘wall in’ the state thereby closing its borders to ‘outsiders’. In an interview in Sweden’s largest morning newspaper, on 21 December 2017, the Social Democratic Minister of Finance, Magdalena Andersson, stated, ‘[we] cannot have a greater reception than what society is capable of receiving. I think they (refugees) have more opportunities if they seek asylum in another country.’ 1 Despite the far lower numbers of asylum-seekers, the Finance Minister was convinced that new refugees entering the country could not be integrated; from her perspective it was an unsustainable situation. Refugees posed an alleged threat to the viability of the state’s capacity to integrate the ‘new-comers’ into the social fabric of the Swedish nation and its symbol of belonging par excellence – the welfare state. Barker’s line of argumentation more or less resonates with that of Schnapper (1994, 1998). However, unlike Schnapper, Barker argues that increasing numbers of refugees pose not only economic and political threats but also, perhaps most importantly, an existential threat.
Key to Barker’s explanation of the exclusionary nature of the welfare state is her introduction of the notion of ‘penal nationalism’. Barker’s book is a theoretically and methodologically innovative analysis of the complex causality of the intersections between the fields of the welfare state, penal order and membership, which together produce penal nationalism that in turn gave rise to the closing of the borders. Through her investigation of the internal logic of the welfare state she uncovers the power of the state to exclude ‘others’ with the merger of criminal justice and migration control, thereby engaging with the growing body of research theorizing ‘crimmigration’, ‘border criminology’, etc. – that is, border practices that criminalize and penalize unwanted mobility. The categories included in unwanted migrants – those unwanted for membership in the nation – are sorted according to racial, ethnic and religious hierarchies. As Barker shows, when tracing the development of penal power in the 21st century, punishment marries well with welfare when exclusion is the logical result of equality.
Barker maintains that penal nationalism, in the Nordic cases, ‘seeks to reassure members of their material and social wellbeing’ (p. 8). Hence, penal nationalism strives not to retract but, rather, to preserve the welfare state. However, as she points out, penal nationalism’s exclusionary practices ‘if left unquestioned or naturalized, can eat away at a society, its core values, principles, and people’ (p. 15). Barker asks whether ‘walling in the state is worth the price’. She argues that these exclusionary practices ultimately undermine Sweden’s self-image and self-understanding as a ‘humanitarian superpower’. In chapter 5 Barker discusses civil society actors that are contesting the practices of penal nationalism in Sweden. The ‘publicity work’ of these actors, ‘politicizing the pain of people’ on the ‘outside’ of the social security offered by the welfare state, demonstrates that penal nationalism does not go unchallenged.
With her introduction of the notion of ‘penal nationalism’, Barker’s book is an important contribution to the literature on penal order and contemporary mass migrations. Departing from the Swedish case, she offers a compelling analysis of the interplay and intersection between the fields of the welfare state, penal order and membership, which results in the causality of penal nationalism. As she states, ‘The welfare state looks generous, comprehensive, and universal until we examine its internal logic through membership. Here we see how its nationalizing aspects made it incredibly successful and resilient but keen to distinguish between worthy members and more troublesome outsiders’ (p. 131).