Transnational Adoption and European Immigration Politics: Producing the National Body in Sweden
This article explores the role of transnational adoption in the production of a multicultural but Swedish national body during the second half of the twentieth and the first decade of the twenty-first century, when Sweden became a multiethnic, multicultural, and racially divided country. I examine the development of international adoption policies in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, emphasizing the erasure of the child's connection to a preadoptive past, even as the child's cultural difference was celebrated in adopting nations. In Sweden, which in the late 1970s and early 1980s had the world's highest adoption ratio (number of transnational adoptions per 1000 live births), debates about the Swedishness of the adoptee and the difference of the immigrant child underscored the assumption that the former but not the latter could become completely Swedish, while hinting at the (in)significance of race in constituting Swedish identity. My research situates transnational adoption in the context of technologies of exclusion that regulate the national body and the complex position of the adoptee as an incorporated but excluded other in adopting nations.
Bodies under assault: Nation and immigration in Henning Mankell's Faceless Killers
Sweden has in just a few decades developed from a relatively ethnically homogenous society to a multicultural society. In almost all municipal decisions taken in Sweden, the immigrant aspect has to be taken into account. This is one of the most important changes in everyday life in Sweden since the industrial revolution. (United Nations 3) ********** THE STATEMENT above comprises the second paragraph of Sweden's I996 report to the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. The statement reflects the Swedish official view that immigration has fundamentally changed Sweden on all levels of civic life from the general level of "society" to "everyday" practices. Paramount changes to the nation and individual municipalities, the quotation implies, are imposed from the outside in a model of simplistic causality. The official description thus affirms a view common in contemporary Swedish popular culture, namely that this small, peaceful country has been forcefully transformed by foreigners. The "immigrant aspect" is (negatively) compared with its (positive) correlate, the remarkable and accelerated industrialization process that transformed a once provincial and impoverished Sweden into Europe's primary example of a prosperous Western welfare state in less than half a century. The official description nevertheless accurately reflects the significant changes in the ethnic make-up of Sweden. In I995, more than 10 percent of the population was born abroad and first or second generation immigrants comprised nearly 20 percent of the population (United Nations 3). (1) This rapid transition process was uneasily received during the 1990s when attitudes in media, official policy, and by a broad range of members of the population were expressed in largely negative and racist terms toward immigration and those construed as "immigrants" (namely those of non-western European or non-North-American descent), as Allan Pred shows in Even in Sweden. The rapid transformation of Sweden, as described in the United Nations report, has only become visible and integrated into aspects of popular culture since about the year 2000, reflecting the slow pace of Swedish reconciliation with an unrelenting globalization process that it can no longer pretend to ignore. High-grossing productions by director Josef Fares (Jalla! Jalla!, 2000) and the popular TV-series Det nya landet (2000), written by Peter Birro and Lukas Moodysson, as well as successful novels by Jonas Hassen Khemiri (Ett oga rott [2003; An Eye Red]) and Marjaneh Bakhtiaris (Kalla det vad fan du vill [2005; Call It Whatever the Hell You Want]) straightforwardly and unsentimentally represent "the immigrant aspect" of Swedish "everyday life" to recall again the UN report. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, however, popular representation of an already multi-ethnic Sweden was tentative and hesitant. Several well-received films flirted with nostalgic views of a Sweden untainted by racism and lionized as the savior of Jews persecuted during World War II; Kjell Grede's God afton, Herr Wallenberg (1990; Good Evening, Mr. Wallenberg, 1990) exemplifies this stance. Others showed an increasing awareness of the return of a repressed racist past and the rise of neo-fascism, which Suzanne Osten investigates in a montage/documentary-inspired film about a neo-Nazi and his Jewish therapist who is also a Holocaust survivor--Tala! Det ar sa morkt (1993; Speak Up! It's So Dark, 1993). Henning Mankell's first detective novel about Inspector Wallander, Mordare utan ansikte (1991; Faceless Killers, 1997), hit the Swedish market around the same time as Grede's and Osten's films. The early 1990s was a period of profound social changes for the Swedish welfare state, exemplified by rising unemployment and increasing ethnic and racial segregation. In contrast to Grede and Osten, whose cinematic sophistication and art-film orientation arguably lessened the reach and impact of their respective political messages, Mankell's detective story became a runaway, popular, and critical success. …
Exploring interculturally competent teaching in social sciences classrooms
Abstract This paper explores a grounded research-based framework for intercultural competence and discusses the implications of interculturally competent teaching in the classroom and beyond. Given the importance of teachers being interculturally competent in today’s diverse classrooms, a number of questions, based on the framework, are presented, which guide teachers in reflecting upon their own teaching practice and the ways in which they integrate aspects of intercultural competence into their classrooms. The paper also provides some examples from the USA of ways in which intercultural competence development is being addressed in teacher training.