Multicultural iteration:SwedishNationalDay as multiculturalism‐in‐practice

Abstract

This paper examines the creation of ‘national day’ in Sweden in order to understand how such a holiday works to shape the Swedish nation's relationship with diversity. Analyzing parliamentary debates and press coverage, the author finds that official national day coverage tends to invest the nation with progressive and multicultural meanings, foregrounding immigrant voices. However, this multiculturalism is polysemic, vague and subject to contestation, both from far right ‘traditionalists’ seeking to ‘protect’ Swedishness from outside influences and cosmopolitans who see the nation as outdated and dangerous. The creation of a new national holiday can be seen as a ‘democratic iteration’ wherein democracy is restated and reinvested with meanings, and new lines of cleavage are drawn, and also as a ‘multicultural iteration’ where multiculturalism is invested with new meaning. Finally, the author argues that multiculturalism benefits from polysemy in that the concept can then adapt to changing circumstances, and, thus, survive.

Celebrating nationhood: Negotiating nationhood and history in Finland's centenary celebrations

“…Our findings seem to echo those of other Nordic countries. Similarly to our findings, Swedes also connect nationalism to welfare‐state values, multiculturalism and international cosmopolitanism (Schall, 2014). Love of nature and rurality also characterise both Swedish (Schall, 2014) and Norwegian national identities (Elgenius, 2011b).…”

“…Communicative memory holds the idea of updating the past to correspond to present-day needs. Unlike in Sweden and Norway where national celebrations reach towards multiculturalism (Elgenius, 2011b;Schall, 2014), we infer that it is the value of equality, which alongside more traditional values, works as one possible themata (Marková, 2003) of contemporary Finnish society that generates present-day remembering. This was particularly striking in the way ordinary people, such as children, elderly, women and sexual minorities, were presented as actors of Finnishness and also in the way projects related to multiculturalism were highlighted in the centenary programme (cf.…”

The unbearable lightness of being Swedish? On the ideological thinness of a liberal citizenship regime

“…The day is an immensely popular, unabashed celebration of thick cultural values and traditions (cf. Schall, 2014: 356f). It plays on the heritage of a not so long ago agrarian nation, with customary tributes to nature, fertility (of both soil and people) and a rich harvest.…”

“…The Swedish National Day is more an à la carte day – multipurpose, flexible and optional. Or, what Carly Elisabeth Schall (2014) refers to as a fluid forum for ‘multicultural iteration’.…”

Diversity discourses: moral, ethical and pragmatic reasoning in the Swedish immigration and integration debate, 1968–1975 and 1991–1995

“…Many of the concepts underlying our discussions of diversity are, in fact, notoriously negotiable and ambiguous. Just think of the multiple definitions of "multiculturalism" espoused by scholars and lay people alike (Schall, 2014). Lay people often conceive of multiculturalism as the presence of simple diversity alone, while scholars may assign to the word a range of meanings, from a "politics of recognition" (Taylor, 1994).to a call for minority rights (Kymlicka, 1995) to a national identity that has appreciation for difference at its core (Alexander, 2001).…”