In today’s multicultural Sweden, museums need to work more inclusively to reflect the country’s national identities. This is both difficult and complex. The purpose of this thesis is to increase the understanding of whether and, if so, the museums’ diversity work affects the museums’ role in society as either a meeting place or as an exclusionary field in contemporary multicultural Sweden. More specifically, the thesis aims to investigate how museums’ diversity work is perceived by both museum staff and new Swedes, especially with regards to recruitment, staff composition and treatment of visitors, and how new Swedes relate to the cultural heritage as presented and reinterpreted in exhibitions at museums in Stockholm. The qualitative material consists of seven individual in-depth interviews with new Swedes who are non-academics, a focus group interview with seven new Swedes who are academically educated and three in-depth interviews with three museum employees from different museums.

The results show that the museums have difficulty recruiting more widely and this lack of diversity among staff contributes to the critique expressed by the new Swedes about the museums’ diversity work and the expertise of the museums that interpret cultural heritage from different parts of the world. These attitudes and experiences have reproduced various notions of museums, Swedishness, cultural heritage and class differences that exist in Swedish society. The results show that the new Swedes consider the museums to be white rooms, mainly for white children. Five non-white new Swedes testify that they have been exposed to racism in the museums and these individuals believe that the museum staff is the source of their perceived insecurity. Both the new Swedes and the museum staff agree that the museums maintain old habits that hinder the museums’ diversity work.