New patterns of poverty and social exclusion in contemporary Sweden - a challenge for cultural studies

Ove Sernhede

Associate Professor and PhD Fellow

Unit for Cultural Studies (Forum för Studier av SamtidsKulturen, FSSK)

Department of Social Work

Göteborg University

Since the middle of the 1980s, there has raged an intense debate among sociologist and other social scientists about patterns of segregation, marginalisation and poverty in Europe. The post-industrial society has implied a growing social polarisation in many countries. The rise of new forms of social exclusion has pushed an increasing number of groups out of society. The forms and intensities of this process of mounting class differentiation do vary; but it is possible to discern certain common tendencies in the emerging new Europe. Luxury and poverty have always existed side by side. However, the present situation offers something new - neither millionaires nor the destitute have at any time been so many as now. According to official statistics there are today 52 million poor people, 17 million unemployed and 3 million homeless in the EU. At the same time, the EU economy have been in a strong phase of expansion during the 90s.

A background of importance in this development is the intensified international division of labour. In addition, new (IT) as well as old sectors of the economy is putting greater demands on labour. One consequence is that there are no jobs for a rising army of redundant citizens. Immigrants and refugees are among the ones that are facing growing difficulties in entering the labour market. Before Sweden was plunged into the recent structural changes in economy (1990), the immigrant population had a lager proportion in employment than Swedes. Another source for contemporary poverty is the dismantling of the institutions of the welfare state. This, in combination with the permanency of unemployment and the new patterns of poverty, has created a 'modern misery'. Marginalised groups have during the last two decades been forming ghettos all over Europe. In Sweden this development is related to the rapid changes in economy and society during the last 5 to 10 years. The Swedish ghettoisation is most visible in the modern multi-ethnic suburbs outside the highly segregated big cities. Along with Moss Side (Manchester), Bobigny (Paris), Gutleutviertel (Hamburg) we can today also list Angered (Gothenburg), Rinkeby (Stockholm) and Rosengard (Malmo). In Gothenburg, to give one example, there are many areas where 75-95 % of the population (neighbourhoods with of 5-10 000 people) are immigrants, the city is one of the most segregated in Europe. A young man (20 years) from Somalia told me in an interview 'Sweden does not need any apartheid laws, there are no laws needed forcing immigrant to live in certain locations. Its already a fact that all the blackheads are living separately, so the effect is just the same as the one that existed in South Africa. So, listen Man - Hammarkullen and Hjällbo are like the Soweto of Gothenburg … with one difference - we have no Mandela'. The parliamentary committee on 'big city conditions' recently presented statistics about the 'exposed urban districts' - more than 50 % of the children between 0-6 years of age have unemployed parents, in Gothenburg social entitlements increased by 100 % between 1990 and 1993, the unemployment for certain 'exposed' ethnic minorities are more that 90 %. - etc., etc. These circumstances have put Sweden more or less into a state of shock.

What has cultural studies to do with all this? All these above mentioned areas are involved in a territorial stigmatisation process. Discourses in media - and society more widely - are demonising the conditions of life in these areas in a way that is creating fright and insecurity both inside and outside them. Moral panics are created by stereotypes about criminality, race, culture and religious antagonisms. Traditional research on these areas in the European metropolitan districts suggests that, in contrast with the traditional working class quarters, where poverty was an integrated part of the culture, these new areas are suffering from a lack of solidarity and community spirit. The local, collective and territorial identity, which earlier provided security and a feeling of self-esteem, is now - we are told - replaced by instability in the very same districts. There is an uncertainty, and there is a severe alienation in relation to the rest of society. Within the neighbourhoods, living conditions are effected by competition and harsh hostility between different ethnic groups. These patterns can probably be discerned in Sweden as well, but the situation may not be that unitary, there are signs which points in other directions as well. Obviously many people tend to look upon their living in a particular district as a temporary solution, and thus the social space of the district represents a rather weak basis for any community spirit. Instead they turn to the family and the commonality of the ethnic group to which they belong. Again, this is true but other tendencies might be found. From statistics we know a lot about these new high-immigrant-density suburban districts in the three metropolitan areas. With no doubt, some of these districts are fragile communities characterised by extreme ethnic heterogeneity - but what do we actually know about every-day life, political potentials, cultural expressions, relations to media etc. in this new suburban life - not much. Neither do we know much about identity work, the clash between tradition and modernity, how life-worlds are constituted or how cultural cross-fertilisations or ethnic conflicts are lived out.

A lot of crucial political questions - related to the welfare state, solidarity, racism, inequality etc - has emerged out of these new social and cultural conditions. That is one reason why these aspects of the New Sweden are an important fields of research. There are today, in my opinion, hardly any issues more important than the ones that arose from the 'modern misery'. The way we manage to handle these issues during the years to come will be of great importance for the development of the Swedish society for decades. I believe that an interdisciplinary, cultural studies approach could be of great value in the effort to de-demonise and develop (for the political discussion) important knowledge about the life conditions in those areas. There are a lot of crucial questions that circles around culture, identity and the preconditions for social mobilisation that we need to know more about. Questions that obviously needs a cultural studies approach with many different methods; traditional ethnographic fieldwork, media reception, interpretation of textual forms, etc.

The currents of migration, processes of marginalisation and patterns of segregation, which has profoundly transformed Sweden during the 1990s, tend to make immigration almost synonymous with social exclusion. Comparing the Swedish situation with developments in France, the French sociologist Etienne Balibar denotes these conditions as 'racism without race'. Cultures developed by the young, as we know from youth culture research, often make antagonisms and conflicts that exist below the surface of society visible. The immigrant youth from the suburbs of the metropolitan areas where I do my resent research are often very conscious, and strongly critical, of the enforced ethnic boundaries that are transforming social inequality into cultural differences. Segregation has sent them off to delimited reservations where they have very restricted contacts with the surrounding society. Under such circumstances music, dance and other cultural expressions become important - the youth cultures in those areas often supersede the ethnic boundaries drawn by parental culture. These expressive cultural forms may also provide an opportunity to express and influence one's situation by making it known to the rest of society. An important aspect of cultural research must then not just be to explain and show how these cultural expressions are related to distinct patterns of Us and Them. From a cultural studies point of view it is also important to make contributions that will widen the possibilities for all those groups to be more visible, as well as to supply the debate and the critique of the present situation with facts and reflections. A situation that we no longer can turn a blind eye.

There are within the broad field of cultural studies many important themes to debate, and since we - in one way or another - are about to establish this field in Sweden there are of course organisational matters that must be discussed and many different types of initiatives must to be taken. A lot of challenging work has to be done. The aim of my statement is to give attention to a social reality (and a field of research) that more or less has been neglected by cultural studies in our country, but in my opinion needs to be emphasized. A national research project about culture and every-day life in 'exposed' areas in Stockholm, Gothenburg and Malmo could be of importance to our present efforts. It could bring people from different disciplines together (sociology, anthropology, psychology, musicology, media and communication, history, etc.), it would help to structure the research field and give Swedish cultural studies a profile and an identity. A national project like this would in it self be a network of researchers - the project could then also be connected to similar research in other parts of Europe.

FSSK - the local, recently established cultural studies unit (almost without money) at the university in Gothenburg - has just started a discussion about maybe doing a joint research project on some of (or one of) the suburbs in Angered. Senior researchers as well as PhD students from sociology, anthropology, social work, musicology, literature, social linguistics and media are involved.