Abstract
This article discusses the emergence of political subjectivity and politicization among social workers and teachers. We present situations that have induced teachers and social workers to become politically active and examine what their struggle might imply for these unaccompanied children. We also ask how the nation state is interpellated and transformed. Drawing on Laclau, Mouffe and Biesta, we find that political subjectivity emerges in situations with conflicting norms and contradictory interpellations. When Sweden deported unaccompanied refugee children, numerous social workers and teachers found themselves torn between acting as loyal civil servants or acting in accordance with their professional ethics. When representatives from this category emerge as political subjects directed at political change, the nation state becomes unstable and porous, creating possibilities for change.
Keywords
Introduction
In April 2017, the phrase ‘Vi står inte ut’ (‘we can’t stand it any more’) appeared on banners outside a convention hall in Gothenburg, where the ruling Social Democratic Party held its national congress that year. In wind, rain and sunshine, protesters against the government’s current refugee policies gathered for five days in a row, in small groups and large, to try to make the delegates vote to grant amnesty to unaccompanied refugee children. The group distributed leaflets to delegates outside the doors to the congress hall, held speeches, and gave away and sold booklets, tshirts and bags.
‘Vi står inte ut’, or WCSA from its English translation, is a recently created network of people who work with newly arrived unaccompanied children. The network was founded in 2015 after the Swedish government decided to close its borders to refugees and introduced new and stricter policies for refugees who were already in the country. By early autumn 2015, around 150,000 refugees had arrived in Sweden. Initially the Social Democratic prime minister, Stefan Löfvén, supported welcoming refugee policies, not least by attending a rally in Stockholm where he stated, ‘My Europe does not know any walls’ (Bolling, 2015). On 23 November of the same year, however, the government closed the Swedish border – refugees with non-existent or unclear papers were no longer allowed to enter the country.
The aim of this article is to study the emergence of processes of politicization among social workers and teachers who work with unaccompanied children (or refugee minors who live in Sweden without their parents). Social workers and teachers, as street-level bureaucrats at the interface between citizens and the government, must deliver government policy while also meeting the needs of the people they meet face-to-face on a daily basis (Lipsky, 2010). In this study we explore the contradictory discourses these people are exposed to, reiterate and transform in relation to their work with unaccompanied children. We will also discuss what their struggle and politicization might imply for these unaccompanied children in becoming understood as political subjects, both for themselves and for others. Finally, we will discuss the implications these discourses might have for the imagination of the nation state (compare Anderson, 1983). With Etienne Balibar (1990), we argue that no nation state has an ethnic base; every nation state must create fictional ethnicities in order to project stability to its populace. And, with Billig (1995), we argue that conceptions of the nation are constituted by repetitions of ‘banal nationalism’, or the taken-for-granted notions of nation and nationality found in mundane practices and discourses.
We argue that the ambiguous position of social workers and teachers as simultaneous representatives and producers of the imaginary nation state, constitutes a possibility for them to take political action, based on their vocational position. The narratives of the social workers and teachers examined in this article constructs them as moving from positions of obedient and loyal civil servants to active, struggling and critical political subjects, from being inside a system to taking a position in between, and as simultaneously part of and critical of the state. It is as social workers and teachers that they become political subjects, through contradictory interpellations by different laws and policies (Mouffe, 2013; Reimers and Martinsson, 2017). We also argue that the emergence of political subjectivity (discussed later) risks producing passive positions within the political work: in this case the teachers and social workers as active political subjects and the refugee children as the vulnerable objects on whose behalf the civil servants struggle. The role of teachers and social workers as political subjects is often underestimated and even understood to be a problem; the idea of the loyal civil servant has thus become the norm (Neuhold et al., 2013).
Differing from Michael Lipsky (2010), who stresses the need for and competence of street-level bureaucrats in transforming policies to practices, we will move one step further by showing how teachers and social workers mobilize and become activists in order to combat and change what they believe are dehumanizing policies. The article thus contributes to the field’s knowledge about radical social work, i.e. social work explicitly seeking to bring about change in favour of social justice and equality (Dahlstedt and Lalander, 2018).
Perspectives on Contradictory Discourses as Instigators of Political Action among Social Workers and Teachers
We are not unique in problematizing the consequences of the position of social workers and teachers, who are squeezed between the demands of the nation state and the needs of the students or clients whom they meet with in their daily work. Notable in this regard is Lipsky, who uses the term ‘street-level bureaucrat’ to describe the delicate position of civil servants who interact on a personal level with the citizenry (Lipsky, 2010). In the US context, Amy Dean (2013) argues that teachers must take political action to ensure the quality and equality of public education for all students. She argues that teachers’ political activity should be based not on self-interest but on their professional expertise as educators who are acting in the interest of society and its students. Similarly, Christine Malsbary (2016) recounts how teachers in New York City emerged as political subjects by refusing to subject recently arrived immigrant students to a mandatory and prescribed Common Core field test. This refusal arose both from their experiences of meeting with their students and from their conception of what it means to be a teacher. The teachers claimed that in order to fulfil the mission of the school and act professionally, they needed to breach the expected policy and manifest a new (or another) aspect of what it means to be a teacher engaged in schooling. This claim accords with our arguments in this article, where we show how one’s professional role can serve as a foundation for political action.
In an article about relations between social workers, refugees and growing racism in Greece, Dimitri Dora Teloni and Regina Mantanika argue that it is crucial for the social work field to be aware of and linked to social and political anti-racist movements (Teloni and Mantanika, 2015). They base this argument on the conception of social justice as a core value for social work (Dahlstedt and Lalander, 2018). Jessica Jönsson and Bente Heggem Kojan (2017), who focus on the diverse expectations commonly placed on social workers, similarly write about social work as a global and human rights profession. They argue that social work should move beyond national boundaries that force social workers to differentiate between ‘our citizens’ and ‘others’. Social workers need to pursue the international solidarity of social work and social workers.
In a recent Sweden-based study, Vanna Nordling (2017) demonstrated how some social workers who assisted undocumented and unaccompanied refugee children turned to activism on behalf of their clients, an activism based both on the aspect of care inherent in the profession and on their desire to contribute to a more just society. Although their relationships with the children were in agreement with the values of the Svensk Författningssamling (SFS, or Swedish Code of Statutes) Social Service Act (2001), these relationships also caused them to breach the constraints of their work and take political action. Previous authors have thus recognized the tensions inherent in the teaching and social work vocations that have spurred some of these people into taking political action. This article, in addition to building on the previous research, examines how civil servants’ political subjectivity (see the following discussion) is connected to conceptions of the nation state, belonging and responsibility.
Theoretical Perspectives
The most important theoretical concept discussed in this article is that of political subjectivity (Reimers and Martinsson, 2017), which emerges in situations with conflicting norms and contradictory interpellations. Situations like these make it possible to view society and oneself in multiple and contrasting ways (Mouffe, 2013), which then creates possibilities for the emergence of situations where dissonance is perceived as intolerable, thus demanding action and change. These experiences are always situated and particular. They arise from specific situations and circumstances that produce collective political subjects who share experiences of similar dissonance and conflicting interpellations. People then form alliances, which produce new political frontiers and counter-hegemonies that challenge the dominant order (Mouffe, 2018). Hegemony, as Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe have noted in various works, is never the same as a totalizing order, quite the contrary. The concept of hegemony (Laclau and Mouffe, 1985), or hegemonies (Mouffe, 2018), stresses that policies presume contingencies, particularities and antagonism.
This theoretical entrance opens the way for an understanding of political subjectivity as far from predictable. In contrast to the case with Marxist traditions, the emergence of political subjectivities is clearly not limited to class conflicts (Haarstad, 2007; Laclau and Mouffe, 1985; Torfing, 1999). Other types of conflicts have appeared (such as the women’s movements, LGBTQ movements and environmental movements) and have had political impacts (Laclau and Mouffe, 1985; Mouffe, 2018). Consequently, the political field in which political subjectivities emerge is generally signified by different and changing frontiers and conflicts where new political groups can emerge (Krause and Shramm, 2011).
We draw on the work of Laclau and Mouffe (1985) and Gert Biesta (2011) by defining political subjectivity according to several perceptions, as follows:
Things are not as they should be. Due to conflicting norms and interpellations, individuals and collectives conclude that the present situation does not (in one way or another) agree with their wished-for aspirations, goals and ideologies;
The social situation must not remain as it is. The situation can be changed, and the conflicts and different hegemonies/discourses that arise make it obvious that the situation is contingent;
We can act to change the present for the better (Reimers and Martinsson, 2017).
Our interest in what makes political subjectivity possible is also connected to what makes it impossible. According to Krause and Schramm (2011), the emergence of political subjectivity is connected to belonging. In order to gain political power, the collective political subject (see the following) needs to be recognized as a valid political agent in a hegemonic order or in an emerging counter-hegemony. Counter-hegemonies present alternative narratives and practices that pose challenges to and question the dominant order. They also entail struggles over who can be a legitimate political subject – that is to say, those who have the basic requisites to be heard and listened to. One question we ask in our analysis is how boundaries for political agency (in the form of age, citizenship and race, among others) are constructed and contribute to making some subjects into valid political subjects and others into objects for political work.
Method
We feel deep frustration over Sweden’s migration policies, especially in relation to unaccompanied refugee children. We, as scholars and civil servants, have much in common with the teachers and social workers in focus for this article. Like them, we have the responsibility to use our professional competence in order to safeguard and develop a more democratic society. This is why we have chosen to produce knowledge about political subjectivities and frictions in relation to refugee and immigration policies and practices. A starting point for this article is the state being permeated by racism and other hegemonic norms which have various exclusionary effects (Hörnqvist and De los Reyes, 2016; Spade, 2015). In this sense, we agree with previous researchers who have discussed how states often act in racist and violent ways to migrants and the borders they cross. In Sager et al.’s (2016) Irreguljär Migration i Sverige (Irregular Migration in Sweden), the authors underline the importance for both researchers and activists to challenge current events (compare Hörnqvist and de los Reyes, 2016). The same idea applies for the authors of the book Go Home (Jones and Gunaratnam, 2017), who took a break from their ordinary work as academics so they could write in close proximity to people affected by state-sponsored violence (compare Youkhana and Sutter, 2017).
Our study was conducted in Gothenburg, Sweden’s second-largest city. Using multi-sited ethnography (Marcus, 1995), we interviewed six activists, recorded four speeches and attended five protests. We have followed four Facebook pages and read numerous articles shared with us on social media. We have received a report from a social worker in the field (Fältgruppen City, 2017) and collected 40 newspaper articles. In doing so, we gradually became aware of the role of social workers and teachers within the struggle for attaining asylum. From this awareness arose an interest in how these two groups become political subjects. The data we have examined therefore includes examples of themes and critical points we have discerned within the large amount of material. The data is also based on our theoretical conception of political subjectivity outlined previously. These steps then directed us towards material that contained discursive and emotional friction in relation to the occupational role of teachers and social workers. For this article we have analysed observations from one WCSA protest, the written manifesto from WCSA and three newspaper articles: one from a social worker (Göteborgs Posten, 2016b); one from a group of teachers (Svenska Dagbladet, 2016); and one about activities in a school in Gothenburg (Göteborgs Posten, 2016a).
We have used the theoretical concepts previously described in our discourse analysis to identify various frictions, affects and conflicting norms in order to explore the production of political actions and subjectivities (Tsing, 2004). During this collaborative process, we identified crucial moments, texts and events that brought aspects of these professions together through political actions.
Our analysis of how civil servants turn to political action is divided into three sections. The first discusses the struggle between WCSA and the government regarding how the relationship between the Swedish nation state and the present situation should be understood. The second section focusses on the friction that civil servants experience through different interpellations by the state of what a civil servant should be. The third section presents how an affect-related narrative of Sweden as a welfare society may be constructed politically, both as a nostalgic past that is now gone and as a future to fight and hope for.
The Emergence of Political Subjectivities in Struggles Over the Nation State
Frictions Among Representations of Sweden
The slogan of the Social Democratic congress, mentioned at the beginning of this article, is ‘Trygghet i en ny tid’, meaning to feel economically and socially safe as well as being secure in relation to terrorism and crime. We now return to this event and slogan, and to the protest outside the convention hall, in order to consider a discursive struggle over the representation of Sweden. In the events we studied, we saw how this struggle about the nation state was part of the politicizing of unaccompanied refugee children. Among the factors at stake were this representation’s impact on political life, and thereby on how civil servants and teachers are supposed to work. Partly this was a question of which people are considered to be part of this imagined national community. We noted a discursive differentiation between some children as entitled to care from society and other children who lacked these rights. We have also focussed on how what we call a ‘responsible we’ was constructed in relation to the understanding of Sweden.
Outside the convention hall, on the square where the WCSA network held its protest, signs with the slogan about a safe and secure society served as a reminder of the presence of the party in power – the reason for the protest. These signs also served as a reminder about what was happening inside the hall and about complex divisions in society. Many young people participated in the protest since many of them had personally experienced being unaccompanied children and asylum seekers themselves. They were occupied with practical matters such as they fulfilled technology roles, but they also took the stage to present emotional testimonies about their precarious positions in Sweden. In a similar way, the civil servants testified about emotional experiences they had had whenever ideals and norms clashed in meetings among state policy-makers, civil servants and unaccompanied refugee children. The speakers all concluded that it was necessary to grant these children asylum.
Inside the convention hall, the delegates decided to maintain the strict migration legislation, with no asylum to be granted for unaccompanied refugee children. This decision ensured that these children would have an insecure and precarious future in Sweden. The decision again erected a distinct divide between those who are thought of as the responsibility of the state (and therefore entitled to more security) and those who are discharged as others, or outsiders, and are therefore left to someone else’s care – or to take care of themselves.
At stake is not only the question of how Sweden should be represented – either as a successful nation or as a system facing collapse – but also the simultaneous struggle about how to understand the boundaries of the nation state, and who should be understood as a child for whom civil servants should be responsible. One of the WCSA’s petitions stated: Many of us have a lot of experience in working with groups of unaccompanied children. We regard children and young people as being the concern of society as a whole. Every day, we work so that their rights will be respected and so that they’ll receive the same treatment as other children. (Vi står inte ut, 2017, authors’ translation)
In the petition, the civil servants refused to make distinctions between ‘Swedish’ children and ‘other’ children. In their professional capacities, they felt that they were responsible for all children who lived within the geographical borders of Sweden: On the contrary, we use our professionality and our love towards others [our neighbours] in our work of receiving our newly arrived children and young people in the best way possible. Sweden as a country is on its way forward, upwards! (Vi står inte ut, 2017, authors’ translation)
The previous extract challenges and blurs the borders of the nation and of citizenship itself, in that newly arrived children are referred to as ‘our’ newly arrived children and young people, and not as foreign migrants. By taking refuge in Sweden, they have become ‘our’ children, entitled to the same support from Sweden’s welfare society as all other children in the nation. The group thus acknowledges them as members of the community. The text represents this way of understanding the teachers’ and social workers’ action as professional but it also brings a reference to the Bible in the formulation ‘kärlek till vår nästa’ (love towards others), where the term ‘nästa’ is a reiteration of the Swedish translation of Mark 12:31 (‘love thy neighbour’) and the appeal to love everybody. This statement challenges both the Social Democratic congress’s statement and the notion of strong borders that the party’s slogan suggests. The petition continues: We’re used to thinking that all children and young people are entitled to a good life. We used to be proud of the work we do. Now, all our preconditions have been altered. The hope we’ve infused in young people has vanished. What we told them one week doesn’t apply the next week. Our honour, self-respect and professionalism are all endangered. (Vi står inte ut, 2017, authors’ translation)
What is again visible in this statement is the experience of friction, of being exposed to contradictory and painful conditions at the hands of the government. The authors reiterate the notion about all children’s rights to a good life. They thus refuse to recognize a distinction between our children and other people’s children. In this refusal, they struggle for another understanding of an imagined national community, for other forms of borders than those referred to by politicians. The petition is a response to and refutation of the official governmental representation of Sweden as teetering on the brink of systemic collapse. In contrast, WCSA points to how civil society quickly mobilized: Volunteers and non-profits organized themselves quickly and efficiently to receive refugees. Municipalities hired teachers and social workers. Citizens opened their homes. Family homes were recruited, routines established and structure created. (Vi står inte ut, 2017, authors’ translation)
With its statement that ‘Sweden as a country is on its way forward, upwards!’ the text in the petition describes this mobilization as an alternative experience and image of the consequences of the arrival in Sweden of large numbers of refugees and migrants. Drawing on their personal experiences as professionals who worked to receive and integrate newly arrived refugees, they refuted the main argument for implementing policies meant to give Sweden respite from refugees. These policies consisted of closed borders, identity-checking, age-checking of unaccompanied refugee children, a lack of families’ rights to unite in Sweden, and residence permits conditional upon employment, among others. The image of a Swedish welfare society on the brink of collapse is replaced in this statement with the image of a stressed (but still functioning) welfare society that welcomes new citizens. Thus, the petition’s opening claims an alternative representation of the Swedish nation state, or as support for Prime Minister Löfven’s initial response when he stated that ‘My Sweden does not recognize any borders’. This was an image of a nation state that wants to, and can, take care of people in need. This image, the text asserts, was shattered once the government decided to deport unaccompanied refugee children, thus disregarding both the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) as well as research-based knowledge about the needs of refugee and unaccompanied children.
The WCSA’s text goes against the definition of ‘refugee crisis’ that is often repeated not only by Sweden’s nationalist party (the Sweden Democrats) and other protectionist nationalistic forces at play but also by the party in power, the Social Democrats. According to the WCSA, this method of avoiding what the government has called the ‘collapse of the system’ (systemkollaps) was in itself a protest against the collapse of the system, the collapse of the welfare society, and the collapse of the legislation and intentions of the Social Services Act (SFS, 2001: 453), the Education Act (SFS, 2010: 800) and the UNCRC. The WCSA members claim that what Sweden faces is not a refugee crisis per se but a crisis for Sweden’s welfare society. WCSA both criticized and offered an alternative to the dominant – or at least politically decisive – representation of Sweden in the wake of the reception of refugees and migrants in the autumn of 2015.
Frictions Emerging in Encounters Among Professionals and Unaccompanied Refugee Children
This section presents various types of friction that we consider to be important for understanding the emergence of political subjectivity.
On 17 October 2016, the national Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet published a debate article called ‘The teacher uprising’ with the headline ‘300 teachers: Deportation to Afghanistan must be stopped’. The 300 teachers who signed the article claimed that they could not do their work as teachers because of Sweden’s refugee policies: Our assignment with these children is identical to what it is with all children we’re entrusted with, and we take it just as seriously. Our job is to welcome them to Sweden, give them a meaningful education, and make them safe and functioning citizens. (Svenska Dagbladet, 2016, authors’ translation)
Later in the text, they wrote: We are told to protect children against all forms of physical or mental violence, against harm or wrongdoing, and we acknowledge their right to education. (Svenska Dagbladet, 2016, authors’ translation)
In these formulations the teachers draw on both the national curriculum (Lpfö 2011, 2011) and the UNCRC, which they describe as fundamental for the work they do and are expected to do. They use these texts, and teachers’ roles and assignments, as a stepping stone for criticizing Sweden’s migrant policies, where unaccompanied Afghan refugee children run the risk of deportation once they turn 18. The teachers claim that this policy makes it impossible for them to do their work as teachers in relation to these students. Thus, as teachers governed by politically decided policies and legislation they speak out and protest against decisions made by the same government they are expected to serve.
In these examples, we want to emphasize how different discourses produce subject positions as ‘teacher’, ‘social worker’ and ‘child’ and induce friction, both regarding what these vocations imply and, in tandem, who they are expected to serve, and how to make sense of the latter. As civil servants, teachers and social workers act on behalf of (and as representatives of) the Swedish nation state. In applying the same policies and legislation in relation to all children, including those who have not yet been granted asylum, they are acting in accordance with what it means to be teachers or social workers. In constructing these children as having equal rights to education, these civil servants make unaccompanied refugee children ‘our’ responsibility – they are Swedish children – or at least into children who are on equal footing with all other children in Sweden.
This situation creates tension regarding the content and scope of the services that those teachers who have caretaking functions are supposed to use. As a consequence of taking their jobs seriously, they construct their political positions as protesters against policies that refuse to grant asylum to a portion of the students in the Swedish school system. Their very position as loyal civil servants makes it impossible for them to remain loyal to policies that prevent them from acting as teachers who are loyal to all their students. The political conflict becomes obvious: either you accept that these unaccompanied refugee children will be deported to Afghanistan, which would mean that you are a poor teacher who does not act according to the professional ethics, or you take the position of a teacher who acts in the interest of all students and protests these deportations. In this way, the text constructs the refugee policies as conflicting with other, more fundamental, Swedish legislation such as the Educational Act (SFS, 2010: 800) and the national curriculum (Lpfö 2011, 2011).
All the material we have discussed so far includes a strong sense of frustration. These teachers and social workers chose their professions so that they could create healthy situations and opportunities for their clients or pupils. They want to do well. The 300 teachers involved in the teacher uprising wrote: Protected as we are from warfare and the life of the soldier, we as teachers are able to mend our pupils’ sense of worth. By following the Education Act and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, we have the opportunity to implement the law here in Sweden. Hope has been awakened. We, as teachers, have been entrusted with a task. In order to safeguard the right to safety and security for these Afghan children, we cannot and will not silently sit by and watch while the government tears down the important work we have done. (Svenska Dagbladet, 2016, authors’ translation)
Recognizing the friction between what the civil servants experience in their work with these students and the government’s policies is important in order to understand the frustrations that have emerged and led these teachers to become politically active. Despite (or because of) their loyalty to the Education Act (SFS, 2010: 800), the teachers refused to do what the government told them to do. The writers emerged as a political ‘we’, a community of teachers who acted responsibly and (in accordance with their mission as teachers) had restored their pupils’ sense of worth. They therefore asserted that there was, and perhaps still is, another political possibility. The text is written in order to bring about change and to politicize what is happening. The texts described in this section also demonstrate the political productivity of the contradictory interpellations to which social workers and teachers are subjected in their work with unaccompanied refugee children.
Nostalgia as Friction and Strategy
This section demonstrates how civil servants, in this case teachers, draw on a nostalgic conception of the Swedish welfare society in order to politicize their professional experiences from their encounters with unaccompanied refugee children.
One notion that is salient in the text analysed previously is that Swedish schools have been spaces where all pupils are equally welcomed and treated. In the political struggle, the texts articulate emotions of nostalgia about a welfare state that has disappeared. This nostalgic theme has to do with the sense of affect, in that it alludes to a common conception of Sweden as one of the most advanced welfare societies in the world (Martinsson et al., 2016). The friction demonstrated by the teachers both questions and shatters this notion of Sweden as a nation. The nostalgic notion of Sweden politicizes what is happening with its migrants. Something is lost. We argue that this nostalgia has a political and affective role, but this notion problematically conceals past inequalities, exclusions and injustices. In the article quoted previously, for example, the notion of what a good Sweden ‘really is’ is repeated again and again. The authors ask the rhetorical question: ‘On the walls in our classrooms, you’ll find the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child translated into several different languages. Are we supposed to take that down now?’ (Svenska Dagbladet, 2016, authors’ translation) This question is directed to the government and points to the current devaluing of human rights; it also indicates that the 300 teachers are struggling for a Sweden that perhaps no longer exists. The statement that, unlike before, they are now forced to act against children’s rights is a political performance constituted by anger, nostalgia, the critique of double standards and a hope for achieving change for the better.
A newspaper article containing a letter from a headmaster to the parents of his students displays a similar discrepancy or tension between the past, when Sweden represented a welfare society for all inhabitants, and the present, when this is no longer the case (Göteborgs Posten, 2016a). In the letter, the headmaster recounts how the students in his school, after finding a safe space and settling in well, had been forced to leave the school after the migration authorities determined that they were over the age of 18. This decision turned the children into adults, who were therefore no longer entitled to residence permits or an education. He protested against this practice by writing: To arbitrarily assign a person a higher age deprives that person of a large part of the social safety net, and it also deprives people – in this case our students – of the right to go to school. This is something we forcefully reject. We are writing this statement because we cannot stay silent about what is going on right now. (Göteborgs Posten, 2016a, authors’ translation)
Much like the members of the WCSA movement, this civil servant is criticizing recent changes to refugee policies and showing what this transformation has done to his school. He refuses to be silent, and by writing this letter he makes the parents aware of a certain political tension. His story also creates a ‘now’ and a ‘before’. In the past, numerous refugees and unaccompanied children were welcomed into and became part of the school system; now many are sent away. The resistance did not occur only in the form of this open letter, it was also enacted in school practices. The headmaster states, ‘At our school, all students are welcome until they have graduated – regardless of their age.’ In this statement he stresses that the school considers that part of its mission is to be loyal to any students who have been placed in its care, even when doing so might be contrary to the government’s measures to reduce the number of refugees in the country. By doing so, he positions himself as a representative of an educational system that, according to the ideals of Sweden’s welfare society, offers education to all children and young people in Sweden.
The tension between differing conceptions of what sort of society the civil servants are supposed to serve and uphold is also evident in an op-ed piece written by a social worker named Matilda Brinck-Larsen (Göteborgs Posten, 2016b). In the article, Brinck-Larsen announced that the government had made it impossible for social workers to live up to the Social Services Act (SFS, 2001: 453), because the children in their care were being deported to Afghanistan. She wrote to say that, while some civil servants had obeyed the order, she was later resigning in order to work for the unaccompanied children through a non-governmental organization. In her letter of resignation Brinck-Larsen wrote: I follow the kids, and I can’t do that from a position in a politically governed organisation, if I want to take a stand and freely fight, whenever the occasion arises, for society and the Sweden I want to have. (Brinck-Larsen, 2017, authors’ translation)
In stating that she can no longer serve a state in which not all inhabitants are entitled to the same rights, Brinck-Larsen enacts and promotes a vision of a society where living in the territory in which Swedish legislation is practised, rather than strictly citizenship, serves as the foundation for who is included in the nation state. Sending unaccompanied children to Afghanistan and to war influences the idea of the imagined community of Sweden (Anderson, 1983). Brinck-Larsen argues that ‘You can’t send kids to a dangerous situation, not in Sweden’(Göteborgs Posten, 2016b).
These writers argue that Sweden has obviously been transformed. There was a time when a responsible Swedish ‘we’ took care of all children. This good nation belongs to the past. Brinck-Larsen claims that before the restrictive migration and refugee policies were enacted, civil servants were to report if they felt that a child was in danger. Now, the same person to whom Brinck-Larsen previously would have sent her report is the very one who gives her the order to let go of the children so they can be deported. This situation has caused great distress for her, but of course especially for the children. She asks: ‘Where do I send my notification-of-concern report?’(Göteborgs Posten, 2016b).
By acting in accordance with their vocational ethos (for example by keeping students who are assessed as being over 18 in school and opening their homes to unaccompanied refugee children who have been denied rights to accommodation), these civil servants enact the kind of society that they claim Sweden has been, should be and truly is. To them, deporting these children is tantamount to acting in a non-Swedish way. They evoke a nostalgic hegemony as they live in and articulate the tension between what they claim was, is and ought to be.
We consider the examples given previously to be enactments not only of contradictory interpellations but also as political acts that enact an alternative society. They transform the present to become more akin to an imagined past, or at least to a caring and inclusive welfare society that once was the vision and goal of policies and legislation. Through their political work, and through their way of both being loyal to their mission and disobeying new policies, they offer a possible counter-narrative.
Migration as a Political Force, and the Construction of Migrant Children as Objects
So far we have described how the members of WCSA and other important voices have become political subjects through friction and through contradictory discursive situations and interpellations. In this section, we will discuss the effects these processes have had on the subjectivity of the children, and how they become objects rather than subjects.
The previous analyses evince a struggle connected to the question of these unaccompanied children’s position in relation to the Swedish nation state. Are these children ‘ours’ and ‘our’ responsibility? Or should they be positioned outside, as not belonging, and without any rights? The presence of unaccompanied refugee children within the framework of the Swedish welfare state thus challenges notions not only about what Sweden should or should not be, but also of how to make sense of the boundaries of the nation state. The position of the vulnerable child is an important consideration in this political argumentation. Brinck-Larsen, cited earlier in this article, blurred the national borders in the open letter she wrote when she resigned her job as manager of a home for refugee children. She began by stating how proud she was of all the work the social services in her municipality had done for ‘the children of parents’. In this way, the municipality’s social work becomes a substitute for the care and support that parents normally provide. She further stresses this idea by stating that what she had been doing for unaccompanied refugee children was what she would have wanted for her own children, had it been necessary to send them away to a foreign country. In this statement, Brinck-Larsen recognizes the notion of a transnational community of parents.
In referring to this community, civil servants and others understand themselves as substitutes for biological parents by opening their own homes to refugee children, among other deeds: a notion that stresses a reciprocity or link between parents who need to send their children away and other adults who take care of children in need. This expression of empathy and solidarity makes national borders less important and constructs another ‘we’ in the form of ‘responsible parents around the world’ in relation to vulnerable children in need of care. This construction fuses Brinck-Larsen’s occupational role as social worker with a discourse of family and parenthood (compare Braun, 2017).
In the earlier discussion, the teachers and social workers found it vital to underline the positions of the vulnerable children in need of care. They reiterated discourses about responsibility, which turned them into subjects in their own struggle. As we have tried to show, this struggle is important for the unaccompanied children but also for the political struggle over the Swedish nation state and its borders. Who are counted as insiders, and who as outsiders? At the same time, however, these young people have become marginalized objects. In one sense, everything in this struggle is focussed on them, but they are not allowed a voice of their own. In the example we provided at the beginning of this article, when the children stood up and presented their testimonies within the framework of the WCSA group, they were victims in need of care. They were not interpellated as activists themselves. The subjects are the teachers, social workers, and all the others who struggle on their behalf. Although this situation might be unavoidable to a certain extent, it is still a problem. The young unaccompanied children are not understood as political subjects but solely as vulnerable children who have challenged Swedish society to act responsibly.
Another way of putting this idea is that this movement is not a movement of young refugees. It is the civil servants’ movement. In 2017, another movement called ‘Ung i Sverige’ (‘Young in Sweden’) started. A young woman named Fatemeh Kawari, a refugee from Afghanistan and Iran, became the group’s leader. By giving the organization the name Young in Sweden, the young refugees intentionally challenged conceptions of the conditions for belonging to the nation (Kawari, 2018). The name shifted the focus from migrants who wanted to enter the country to young people who lived in Sweden. This organization’s members framed themselves not only in contrast to the government but also against ‘the adults’ such as the members of WCSA, who may have regarded them as objects. Although the children are at the centre of this political struggle, they do not have a voice of their own. Young in Sweden refused this position and seized control of the political struggle themselves. Their story demonstrates the pluralistic process of political subjectivity.
Conclusion: The Emergence of Political Subjectivity
The conception that political subjectivity emerges within friction between contradictory interpellations allows for analyses that do not presume one superior position or process over another, for example in class or gender struggles. Instead, the theoretical and empirical work in this article opens the way for a pluralistic and multifaceted understanding of the emergence of political communities who struggle for change. This approach underlines the contingency and temporality of political subjects. The teachers and social servants examined in this study have formed an emerging counter-narrative. In this specific time and place, they have become a political ‘we’ against a ‘them’ consisting of the government and those of the public who support restrictive refugee policies.
Our analyses of the empirical material examined in this study provide evidence that an additional group of subjects had become positioned as ‘outside’ the political subjectivity of the social servants and teachers. This group consists of the unaccompanied refugee children who in most cases in the work of WCSA are positioned as objects rather than subjects for political struggle. As displayed in this article, some of these children have resisted this objectification and united as a community of young refugees who have become additional political subjects struggling on their own behalf, for their own rights, and without interference from adults. The gaining of political subjectivity is contingent and ongoing.
Political subjectivity always encompasses struggles over how to understand the national community and its significance, borders, responsibilities, authority and governance (Anderson, 1983; Balibar, 1990). Political arguments gain force from narratives about the ideals and values that people claim signify the Swedish nation state. Political nostalgia about solidarity and a welfare society that encompassed everybody serve as affect-based arguments that gain power from the claim of a shared imagery of what is significant to the nation. This situation means that both the future of these refugee children and the fate and identity of Sweden as a nation state are in jeopardy. This nostalgia produces both a vision to be strived for and a lost past to be mourned (compare Anderson, 1983). But in contrasting the present against an imagined past that was more responsible, humane and equal, this nostalgia not only reproduces strong notions of an exceptional Sweden and Swedes, but also simultaneously conceals the fact that the Swedish welfare state produces insecurity and precariousness. Thus, the porous nation that the teachers and social workers in this article wish to enact might be counteracted by a vision of a past nation state that was coherent and clearly distinguished, i.e. not a porous nation but a bounded nation.
An alternative and more subversive narrative about the Swedish nation state has surfaced in how teachers, social workers and the Young in Sweden group have positioned these children. The teachers and social workers, for example, claim that the unaccompanied children are ‘our children’. The migrant children who organized themselves under the label Young in Sweden used this same notion. Both articulations state that since these children live in Sweden, they are the responsibility of Sweden and are ‘our children’, and, as the members of Young in Sweden put it, the young are part of an imagined national community. They question and challenge the constraints of who can be Swedes, thus advocating a notion of Sweden as a porous nation state.
Finally, we want to stress the potential significance of teachers, social workers, and unaccompanied refugee children as political subjects. The movements and actions examined in this article nearly brought down the government in the spring of 2018 when the parliament discussed and voted on a proposition to grant temporary asylum to children who had arrived in Sweden before 24 November 2015. The proposition passed (barely) and was made into a law (SFS, 2018: 755). This enactment meant that some of the refugee children were granted a safer existence, at least temporarily; it also affirmed a conception of the nation state that includes these students as having an equal right to education as any other student under the age of 18. But refugee-friendly positions are constantly challenged. By 2017, according to Eurostat (2018), Sweden had fallen to the seventh position globally in granting refugees permanent residence.
