Mid Sweden University

This study explores the governance and implementation of local labor market programs (LLMPs) in Swedish municipalities, analyzing the tension between national mandates and local policy practices. Drawing on institutional ethnography (IE), intersectionality, and emotional labor theories, we examine interviews with politicians and managers from eight municipalities. Politicians frame LLMPs as budget-driven initiatives, depoliticizing local labor market issues to comply with national policies like the January Agreement. This approach prioritizes efficiency, workfare models, and quick labor market entry, often sidelining individualized support. In contrast, managers describe their role as navigating policy constraints while addressing diverse local needs. They emphasize the challenges of aligning "one-size-fits-all" activation strategies with the realities of their participants, advocating for flexibility and adaptation within national frameworks. These contrasting perspectives reveal how LLMPs, although locally implemented, are shaped by textually mediated national policies, which influence local governance practices. Politicians focus on the need to meet national objectives, while managers struggle to reconcile these goals with participant-centered approaches. This study contributes to the understanding of how LLMPs operate within a governance framework that prioritizes efficiency over holistic support, highlighting the limitations of workfare-oriented policies and their implications for labor market integration.

This article examines the interplay of religion, nationalism, and identity in contemporary Sweden, focusing on the rising phenomenon of Christian nationalism. Our analysis of editorials and opinion pieces from major Swedish newspapers reveals a significant shift towards a more pronounced Christian influence in public discourse, suggesting a renegotiation of the sacred–secular divide. This shift highlights a growing intertwining of religious narratives with national identity, raising questions about whether Sweden should embrace its Christian heritage or maintain religious neutrality and plurality. Our findings indicate that expressions of individual faith emerging in cultural discussions are not merely personal; they also foster organized religion, contributing to the construction of new communal identities. This relocation of the sacred from the private to the public sphere signifies a renewed world-building potential for religion, particularly in urban settings, challenging classical secularization theories. The increasing prominence of Christian perspectives reflects discontent with “secularized Christianity-as-culture”, signaling a desire for a more foundational Christianity. Furthermore, the integration of spheres, where discourse on values and societal crises fosters a renewed demand for religion, leads to a need to reinforce a religious identity which results in a “cultural defense” that effectively supports Christian nationalism.

In recent years, there has been a growing societal interest in agriculture and gardening, reflecting many of the activities and political ideals of the 1960s–70s Swedish gröna vågen (“green wave”) movement, when rural spaces became sites for societal critique and alternative lifestyles. This article compares the historical and contemporary back-to-the-land movements, focusing on the fantasmatic narratives that shape them. Both movements share ideals of anti-consumerism, self-sufficiency, and collectivism, but they differ in their societal critique and conceptions of resistance. The contemporary movement integrates individualistic values, emphasizing personal transformation, local engagement, and sustainability, while the 1960s–70s movement was more collectivist, challenging societal norms through communal living and political radicalism. This shift reflects broader societal changes, particularly neoliberal transformations, which have influenced how resistance and social change are understood and enacted today. Through an analysis of the emotional and symbolic dimensions of these movements, rurality, self-sufficiency, and community emerge as key factors in creating a sense of belonging and resistance. While the 1960s–70s movement idealized rurality as a utopian space of resistance against industrialization, the contemporary movement frames it as a solution to ecological crises, with a focus on sustainability and resilience. 

This article explores active labor market policies through a utopian lens, focusing on Swedish municipal activation services. Users of such services participated in visionary workshops and were invited to dream about what could be different in their (working) lives. In the analysis of the participants’ dreams, a tension between the internalization of and resistance to employability narratives, market logics, and capitalist structures emerges. By examining these dynamics, the article demonstrates how utopian thinking, rooted in experiences from the margins of the labor market, can inspire critiques of current labor systems and help in envisioning possible futures.

This introduction to a special issue on "Intersectional Analysis of Risk" and its contributors explores the development and current trends in intersectional risk analysis over the past two decades. Using Scopus, 778 publications between 2003 and 2022 were identified across social sciences, humanities, psychology, health, and arts. VOSviewer was employed to analyse these publications and identify trends and themes. The evolution of intersectional risk analysis shows its progression from HIV studies to encompass new areas such as climate change and environmental justice. By showcasing how intersectional perspectives and risk research have converged over time and how more and more research areas are incorporating intersectional risk analysis, this introduction hopes to inspire readers to delve into the articles in this special issue and continue developing intersectional risk analysis.

Local Labour Market Programs (LLMPs) at the municipal level in Sweden is a part of Active Labour Market Policies (ALMP). The LLMPs are aimed at enhancing people considered to be distant from the labour market, with particular complex problematics, opportunities to be self-sufficient and assume a place in the labour market. People with functional variations, immigrants and young people have difficulty entering the labour market, a problem exacerbated by the pandemic crisis. In this article we explore how ableist discourses operates in institutional narratives about work, the worker and abilities in relation to participants in LLMPs. The article is based on interview with managers and local politicians in charge of the LLMP units in eight Swedish municipalities. In the interviews we explore the mechanisms of the LLMPs and analyses them in relation to ableist norms. The managers and politicians’ narratives conceptualize skills and measures of productivity intrinsically excluding people who are not seen as being able to undertake productive work in line with the imposed requirement. The study shows that the LLMPs reproduce disability inequality but at times also create spaces of inclusion by questioning the idea of a ‘real job’.

Over the past 15 years, there has been an increased interest in urban gardening. Queues for getting a gardening spot have grown, as many urban citizens seek a spot to cultivate vegetables, and studies have stressed how urban gardens can be one ingredient in creating more sustainable cities. Following the work of urban theorists Henry Lefebvre and Edward Soja, this study explores urban gardens as thirdspaces. Interviewing allotment gardeners and community gardeners in small Swedish cities, we explore allotments as ‘lived places’, where experiences, meanings and a sense of place are developed. Thirdspace suggests us to think beyond binary constructions of space and analysing narratives of urban gardening through that lens shows that allotment spots can be understood as places where certain dualisms have, if not a transgressed, at least a more flexible and expansive logic. The result illuminates how allotment gardens are a kind of nature-human crossing point and a practice connecting city residents with countryside life and non-landowners with the land.