Becoming an Activist Citizen: Individual Experiences and Learning Processes within the Swedish Suburban Movement

Abstract

<p class="STYCKEEFTERRUBRIK"><em>Focusing on activism within a new “suburban movement” (förortsrörelse) in Sweden, this article explores the processes of becoming an activist from the perspective of post-migrant youth. The authors ask how individual identities are formed under conditions of social subordination and cultural stigmatization. Using interviews with urban activists the authors elaborate how this experience is contingent on individual and collective learning processes, and related to place struggle; the notion of self-identification for a “justice movement” among Swedish activists in ethnically mixed suburban areas</em><em>. The article is based on </em><em>Megafonen, a youth led organization grounded in Husby, a Stockholm suburb</em><em>.</em><em> Employing the notions of active and activist citizen, the interconnection of racialization and resistance, as well as how conditions of a racialized being affects the options of becoming an activist citizen, are explored. </em></p>

Revisiting migrant networks: migrants and their descendants in labour markets Revisiting migrant networks: migrants and their descendants in labour markets , edited by Elif Keskiner, Michael Eve, and Louise Ryan, IMISCOE Research Series, Cham, Springer, 2022, viii + 236 pp., £34.99 (paperback), ISBN 978-3-030-94974-7

“…The FAI network (a group of immigrant union activists) demanded an equal participation and representation of immigrants in the Swedish trade-union confederation. Ålund and Rosales (2017) depict current youth-led networks, associations and organisations in Sweden. Young people with an immigrant background and from the most socio-economically deprived metropolitan neighbourhoods, are the main actors and activists of these new forms of organisation.…”