Focusing on the memories of Estonian refugees moving to Sweden in the wake of World War II, I analyze the concepts of “memory space” and history within the framework of the Escape as a master narrative. Following the research participants to the sites of their memories in Estonia and Sweden today, raised the questions what constitutes a lived memory space, and how is history defined within it?

Through a combination of a phenomenological analysis of memory’s lived ex­perience, using Walter Benjamin’s concept of montage as radical remembering and its dialectical relation to history, I show how embodied memories shape their own space, a space not always framed by historical master narratives and identity posi­tions, but rather a searching space that is always changing. Dealing with the politics of place and representations, these memories are constantly loaded and unloaded with meaning. Yet the space of lived memory is not always a creation of meaning. Walking around, searching for traces, a memory space confronts the place and maps its own geography. It turns to a spatial and temporal flow, which intertwines place and experience, and erases the past and future as homogeneous categories. It is a living space of memory, rather than a memorial space of representations.

The analysis focuses further on the tensions between remembering as a dialogue with history and memory’s ongoing acts of embodied experience. The position of in-betweenness appears in these stories of escape, not as a state of in-between home and away, past and present, but rather as an ongoing space-making process be­tween different modes and layers of memory. This is a process aware of the constant changes in the understandings of both history and personal experiences, intertwin­ing these new interpretations with embodied memory and thereby constantly add­ing new layers of experience to it. Memory’s tracing illuminates a memory poetics of the meanwhile and the in-between, which refuses historical closure.

"This edited collection contributes to studies of intra-EU migration and mobility, welfare and European social citizenship by focusing on transnational labour movements from new to the old EU member states (Hungary-Austria, Bulgaria-Germany, Poland-UK and Estonia-Sweden). The volume provides a comparative analysis of formal organization and mobile individuals' use of European social security coordination, which involves mobile Europeans access to and portability of social security rights from the sending to the receiving country (and back). The book discloses the selectivity criteria of welfare provision in four areas (unemployment, family benefits, health insurance and pensions) that lay at heart of European cross-border social security governance. It also identifies specific discourses of belonging (gendered, ethnicized/racialized and class-related images of 'Us' and 'Them') that frame the institutional selectivity by constructing images of mobile EU-citizens 'deserving' or 'non-deserving' social membership. The collection offers a detailed examination of inequality experiences mobile EU citizens from the new EU countries encounter while accessing and porting social security rights across borders. It will be of interest to a wide range of social science and interdisciplinary researchers, students and practitioners as well as those interested in intra-EU migration and mobility, social security, European social citizenship and transnational studies"

This study is about the Turkish diaspora in Sweden and how whose thoughts about being a Turk interact with how they perceive their work environment. The purpose of the paper is to analyse how four individuals with Turkish background interact with surrounding actors at their workplaces in Sweden and when, where, and how their Turkish identity is performed.

Following are the questions asked to fulfil the purpose of the study;

•  How do high educated Turks in diaspora experience being Turkish in Sweden?
•  When, where, and how is the Turkish identity performed?
•  How do high educated Turks in diaspora interact with and perceive their surrounding actors in workplaces in Sweden?

The results show that the participants do not have a direct experience of being a Turk. Their experiences are mostly a result of their interaction with others and of others’ perception of their Turkish identity.

The results also show that the Turkish identity is often visible in interaction with actors outside the Turkish diaspora. However, the heterogeneous Turkish diaspora shows that perceptions of religion, politics and education can be identified as critical factors at play in interactions within the Turkish diaspora.

Participants’ interaction with others and their perceptions of their workplaces are highlydependant on the workplace. Depending on the workplace’s heterogeneity or homogeneity the experiences differ. Some of the participants have developed strategies to eliminate conflicts associated with their Turkish identity.

The following thesis explores the racialisation of second generation sweden finns in contemporary Sweden. This is done by applying a theoretical framework from critical race and whiteness studies on 8 interviews with second generation sweden finns. Especially the concept of the margins of whiteness has been of importance for the following study, which allows the analysis to consider both marginality and privilege.    

The analysis focus on the intersection of the variables of ethnicity, class and race, which allows the racialised position of the 8 informants in the study to be outlined. While the themes of ethnicity and class have ocurred in previous research, the study of race and in particular whiteness, have yet to be applied on sweden finns.    

As will be revealed through the analysis, there are good reasons to consider Sweden finns as belonging within the margin of swedish whiteness. While there are signs that sweden finns have a position of marginality within swedish society the informants in this study can pass for swedes thanks to being racialised as white in everyday contexts.

Skörda, mjölka, så, gräva, slakta, kärna smör, hugga is. Arbetsfolk, torpare och bönder utförde en mängd uppgifter varje år vid Biby sätesgård. Den som planerade och övervakade arbetet var gårdens inspektor. År 1786 flyttade Carl Hane från Vingåker in i inspektorsbostaden. Kapitlet handlar om arbetet på godset, tjänsten som inspektor och om livet på de sörmländska herrgårdarna.

A hallmark of modernist thought is the belief in science and technology as a socially revolutionary force. Consequently, new technologies have often been sequenced by pictures of another world to be. The birth of electronic data processing (EDP) was no exception. Provoking both hopes and anxieties, EDP and its subsequent process of automation has, ever since the launch of the first electronic data processing machines in the early 1950’s, been a cornerstone for countless extravagant visions of the future, such as the thought of an ever so impending “Robot Revolution”. This article builds from the basic assumption that visions of the future draw on notions of what at a given time is considered socially and politically desirable, unwanted or at all possible. It thus argues that the robot revolution could be studied as a form of reified anticipation through which possible social trajectories are made symbolically comprehensible. Focusing on the automation debate of the Swedish 1950’s, I argue that the robot revolution serves as a symbolic articulation of the social experiences of Swedish welfare society, and that it carries both ideological and utopian dimensions worth examining.

En oansenlig bok med rosamarmorerad pärm och bleknad handskrift blir i den här artikeln ett titthål till en svunnen tid. Vad kan då en tunn liten apoteksbok berätta om dåtidens aristokratiska livsstil? I den här artikeln diskuterar jag relationen mellan en serie läkemedelsinköp och den adliga livsstilens sociala funktion.

Abortion stigma, while observable as a global phenomenon, is constructed locally through various pathways and institutions, and at the intersection of transnational and local discourses. Stigmatisation of abortion has been challenged in varied ways by pro-choice adherents. This article investigates strategies for identifying and opposing stigmatisation of abortion in Ireland and Poland, focusing on campaigns aimed in one context, at repealing a near total prohibition of abortion, and in another, on resisting further restrictions concerning reproductive rights. We examine how mobilisation on sexual and reproductive health (SRH) in both contexts worked to address stigma and discrimination in SRH, drawing on the concept of framing and showing similarities between these two national contexts. Our analysis explains how the logic of inclusion and exclusion works in efforts at destigmatising abortion.

The subject of this bachelor thesis is the logics and counter-logics that have structured the perception of transsexualism and the now abolished sterilization requirement for legal recognition of sex change within the Swedish legal system and governmental authority. The analyzed material consists of judgments from two court cases with opposing verdicts that took place in 2004-2005 and 2012. The main conflict in the first court case was about if the sterilization requirement entailed the destruction of frozen germ cells or not. In the second court case the antagonism was mainly about if the sterilization requirement itself was legitimate or not. The differentiation in the verdicts and the expressed logics between the court cases was through analyze linked to discursive displacements in media coverage and judicial descriptions of transsexuals and their legal rights.

Syftet med denna uppsats är att studera hur det perspektivskifte som skett rörandetranspersoner som potentiella föräldrar mellan 1972 och 2013 tagits emot och omsatts ipraktiken inom svensk hälso- och sjukvård. Uppsatsen söker identifiera förändringsprocesser,brytpunkter, problem och lösningar. Det primära materialet består av intervjuer med personalpå utredningsenheten ANOVA och fertilitetskliniken Reproduktionsmedicin KI. Uppsatsenpåvisar att cisnormativitetens gradvisa tillbakagång på samhällsnivå medfört en successivnormalisering av transpersoners föräldraskap inom vården, samt att vårdkedjor utvecklas viaen interaktiv process mellan vårdgivare, patienter, teknologi, juridik och politik. 2013 årslagändring varigenom personer med ändrad könstillhörighet erhöll den juridiska rätten tillbiologiskt föräldraskap är i praktiken bristfälligt realiserad på grund av bristande finansiering.

In the years after WWII the Baltic Sea Area developed into an area strongly divided between East and West. Because of the tensions between the blocs, the coastal areas where strongly militarized and prepared for war.

The new political situation after 1989 propelled an international military disarmament and closing down of bases, training areas around Europe. Since the Baltic Sea Area was one of the heaviest militarized part of Europe the question of disarmament here is of particularly great economic, social and cultural importance.

This study is about the post-military landscape in the Baltic Sea Area with examples from Dejevo on the Estonian island Saaremaa, Dranske on the (East)German island Rügen and Fårösund on the Swedish island Gotland.

The aim of this thesis is to shed light on the process where the military landscape of the Cold War is transformed in order to be incorporated in the macro-regional endeavors for unity in the new Europe. I want to analyze the implications that planning visions have on the everyday life of people. A following aim is to shed light on the challenges that urban planning has to face in this transformation. Three research questions frame the study. The first question analyzes the process where the coastal areas of the Baltic Sea after the end of the Cold War are disarmed and transformed, from a landscape of production of military services and objects into a landscape of consumption for recreation and tourism. The second question takes its point of departure in the relation between planning visions and everyday life. The third question concerns the matter of the past and analyzes what aspects of the military landscape are emphasized respectively pushed aside in the transformation into post-military landscape.

The study is based on interviews with inhabitants and local planners as well as macro-regional and local planning documents, articles and photographs.

This dissertation concerns the legacy of the Nazi forced enlistment during World War II and focuses more precisely on the case of Alsace/Moselle. Many of these French men, enlisted by force from 1942 in the German army, were sent to the Eastern Front and experienced Soviet prison camps.

The aim of this thesis is to examine how knowledge and memories about forced enlistment and Soviet captivity have been remembered, commemorated, communicated and passed on since the Alsatian/Mosellan POWs (Prisoners of War) carried the tokens of enemies or traitors when reintegrating their motherland, France.

Four strategies dealing with the experiences of forced enlistment and of internment in Soviet prison camps are examined. I present how the first and most common strategy, i.e. avoidance, is contributing to an individual and collective construction of silence. Then I argue that a second strategy, the constitution of families of remembrance, is helping them to articulate and narrate their experiences (third strategy). The fourth strategy is the organisation of pilgrimages (emic term) to the former prison camp of Tambov, where the majority of the Alsatian/Mosellan POWs were gathered during the war. This last strategy actualises the issue of the transmission of the war experiences given that pilgrimages bring together three to four generations. Through fieldwork observations of the journeys I show how the pilgrims engage with a sense of the past. They remember and reassess the meaning of the past in terms of the social, cultural and political needs of the present. The importance of place and the aspect of self-in-place are thoughtfully analysed in order to highlight the process of passing on the memory of Tambov.

I conclude by arguing that the agents of remembrance interviewed for the purpose of this thesis are engaged in turning the tangible and intangible legacies of World War II into heritage. This is done by releasing the legacy of forced enlistment and internment in Soviet prison camp from the private/familial sphere and inscribing it in the public sphere. Yet, the agency of the former POWs and their descendants shows how to let pass a past “that does not want to pass” in a contemporary European context.

This article examines visits by French people to the former Soviet prison camp in Tambov, Russia, where Alsatians-Mosellans men were imprisoned during World War II. Because the memory of these prisoners of war, conscripted by force into the German army during the war is disappearing together with the witnesses, some survivors organized in the 1990s journeys to the Tambov former prison camp, called “pilgrimages.” There are currently two kinds of pilgrimages: pilgrimages for survivors of the camp and their close relatives and pilgrimages for grandchildren of former Tambov inmates. This article suggests that the pilgrims, confronting their past, are engaged with a process of identity making, and that pilgrimage provides pilgrims with the opportunity to confront their grief for the dead or their sense of injustice and to let go of the past. The article concludes that with the pilgrimage the value of Tambov as a place of death is re-evaluated.

Recension av Hagelstam, Sonja avhandling "Röster från kriget" 2013

This chapter concerns the lingering after-effects of World War II – as well as the

individual and collective efforts to overcome them. The focus lies on the Alsatians-

Mosellans’ war prisoners in the USSR at the former prison camp of Tambov. The

case of these French men, enlisted by force in the German army during World War

II and sent to the Eastern Front, the Malgré-Nous as they call themselves, is very

interesting.

War being a traumatic event which is difficult to overcome, how can soldiers,

who were forced to make war within the army of their initial enemies, be able to

move on and get on with their lives in a post-war context? Alsatian/Mosellan conscripts

were French and at the same time they were forced to wear the German

feldgrau army uniform and fight the Allies. I examine in this paper the personal

and collective strategies used by these people to come to terms with their contentious

past when re-integrating the French nation after the war and subsequently. The

study materials consist of interviews with former POWs and their descendants and

the ethnographical study of the memorial practices at the site of the former soviet

prison camp of Tambov.

Since the living memory of these war experiences is slowly disappearing with

the witnesses, the problematic of the transmission, often incomplete or paradoxical,

of their memories will also be considered. Consequently, I am also examining how

painful memories are handed down from a generation to another, transforming the

heredity into a heritage.

Review of the Nordic Romani Studies Conference

This article is a case study of the contacts between the music sector in Sweden and the GDR in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. The case is the activities of the East-German musicologist and music administrator Gerd Schönfelder (1936–2000) in Sweden at that time, and the debate that arose in the early 1990s when he was accused of having worked for the East German security service, Stasi. The purpose is to provide insight into how music-aesthetic and musicological aspects interacted with politics and ideology in the relations between Sweden and the GDR. In the early 1990s, the availability of material in the Stasi archive was still very limited, and so it was difficult to find out whether it was true that Schönfelder had worked for Stasi, what tasks he had received from the security service and what these tasks meant for his work with Swedish colleagues in the music field. In our article, we try to find answers to these questions by examining how Schönfelder established contact with the Swedish music sector, who were his closest partners in Sweden, and why they were of interest to him. Throughout, we explore Schönfelder’s relationship to Stasi and his work as an ”unofficial employee” for Stasi in Sweden. Finally, we offer a sociological perspective on Schönfelder’s activities in Sweden and the GDR, using Pierre Bourdieu's concepts of field and capital.

(Un)comfortable (un)knowing. On comfort zones in the guided tours of a mosque

This article, proceeding from the study I did for my thesis on the guided tours of the great mosque in Stockholm, discusses the situations that were characterized by a struggle for having the right knowledge and interpretative prerogative. The concept of comfort zone (Ahmed 2008), and how that is related to ideas of societal happiness, is central. It is a concept that opens up for analysis of how the exercise of power depends on the position of the speaker. During the tours there has been a rhetorical struggle to establish a comfort zone. The article explores the interlinking of knowledge and social positioning, and how positions decide the credibility of what is said.

Acknowledging that there are regimes of truth surrounding Muslims in Sweden, the main focus lies on the production of knowledge regarding Muslims in the context of the guided tours of a mosque in Stockholm. Special attention is given to how regimes of truth regarding Muslims inform the conversations during the visits, how they are debated in this particular arena and how that is dependent on positionality. It is a situation in which a Muslim, in the position of the guide, has an opportunity to present alternative storylines, or stories, about who Muslims are and what they do.

During the visits there was a tendency for the guests to feel comfortable. In spite of being guests they managed the discomfort by recreating a comfort zone brought about by the alternative storylines. Seemingly objective and established knowledge on Muslims has had such an impact that it made the Muslim guides less trustworthy, even when they talk about personal experiences and their private lives, giving the guides a position of discomfort.

In this article, I investigate the relation between national belonging in Sweden and religious belonging to Islam in Sweden and how that is related to the recurrent talk of respect during the guided tours of a mosque in Stockholm that I have studied. It is precisely that discussion on respect, in relation to national belonging in Sweden, which will be in focus in this article. Why has it been important to show respect on the guided tours of a mosque? What in the tours brings such issues to the fore? What personal convictions can be set aside or negotiated in the exercising of respect?

Since 1982, when the first baby conceived by in-vitro fertilization (IVF) in Sweden was born, Swedish legislation on assisted reproduction has gradually become more liberal and inclusive. Today, gamete donation and IVF are permitted not only for heterosexual couples, but also for lesbian couples and single women, and embryo donation is expected to become legalized shortly which will further increase the chances for involuntarily childless people to become parents. In recent years, the possibility of allowing surrogacy has been debated increasingly, with strongly polarized arguments both for and against it. Recent reports by the Swedish National Council of Medical Ethics and a governmental investigation agreed that the possibilities for involuntarily childless people should be increased in several ways, but reached opposing conclusions concerning surrogacy. While the former argued in favour of it (in certain circumstances), the latter argued against it (in all circumstances). One difference in their argumentation centred around the issue of bodily autonomy and self-determination in surrogacy. These two opposing conclusions raise crucial questions about what the principle of reproductive intent implies for questions concerning reproductive autonomy in surrogacy. Does it matter when in the reproductive process the declaration of intent is made, and what happens if we consider the possibility of changing intentions in relation to autonomy and self-determination in surrogacy? Is the mater est rule compatible with an intersectional, queer and non-discriminatory approach to reproductive justice, and if so, under what circumstances? Are there any possibilities of thinking beyond the ‘either/or’ between these two principles?