Mid Sweden University

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.

This article critically examines the judgments issued by the Migration Court in Stockholm, particularly focusing on cases involving adolescent asylum applicants converted from Islam to Christianity. Drawing upon Max Weber's conceptualization of substantive rationality and substantial irrationality, this research explores the interplay between these elements within the court's decision-making process and the substantive rationality of asylum seekers, particularly how each party navigates complex value systems in the context of asylum claims. In the context of assessing credibility in conversion-based asylum claims in migration courts, substantive rationality entails applying general criteria consistently to evaluate asylum applicants' credibility based on objective evidence, while also acknowledging that individuals may prioritize their values over their legal conformity, as seen in the case of asylum applicant converts. The Court's credibility assessments, while intended to determine the trustworthiness of asylum claims, can lead to substantively irrational outcomes due to subjective judgment and overemphasis on written evidence. Politically appointed lay judges further complicate the decision-making process, often resulting in dissenting opinions from professional judges. In conclusion, while the court's decision-making process may appear rationalized through administrative procedures, it often embodies substantial irrationality in its disregard for the challenges faced by asylum applicant converts and the subjective biases of decision-makers.

This article explores the consequences of the Latin alphabet’s implementation in Turkey in 1928 and the imposed homogenisation processes that underwent through the transition from the Ottoman Empire to the Turkish nation-state in Turkey. Jacques Derrida’s ‘quasi-concepts’ of inheritance, autoimmunity, democracy to come, forgiving and the mondialatinisation (globalatinisation)—adding depth in discerning Turkish politics—are being discussed. The prevailing political position of AKP, Turkey’s ruling party, is scrutinised to deconstruct the Republican heritage. This paper argues that AKP ‘reaffirms’ the Republican ideology from which it inherits its legacy.

This study attempts to advance our understanding of the role gender plays in populist politics by proposing a typology of gendered populism. Our argument is that populist parties' discursive construction of “the people” against “elites” and “non-people” is a gendered process, in which gender operates as a constitutive element for determining who is included in or excluded from “the people”. We also argue that the gendered construction of “the people” intersects with parties' configurations of religion and secularism. We propose that this intersection forms a four dimensional space of gendered populism composed of inclusionary or exclusionary and religious or secular populisms. Our analysis comparatively examines the discourses and policies of the right wing populist parties (RWPPs) and their leaders in France, Sweden and Turkey. Despite sharing an exclusionary understanding of “the people”, the selected RWPPs represent a variegated gendered populism because of their diverging approaches to gender, religion and secularity. Our comparative analysis approaches national-institutional backgrounds concerning the legal status of secularism, political and socio-cultural secularization as possible explanatory factors for the formation of religious and secular exclusionary populism in the four dimensional space. We believe, a four dimensional approach to populism sheds light on our understanding of gendered populism and proposes a fruitful avenue for future comparative studies of populism. 

Extant scholarship on ontological security in sociology has focused on the significance of home as a source of security. In this article, I argue that when Iranian asylum-seeking converts lose faith in mainstream primary institutions (such as the public and political institutions formed and shaped by Iran's religious autocracy), they turn to Christianity to find a source of such significance. This conversion is a secondary institution that shields them from existential anxiety and homelessness, while the primary institution has become meaningless. The new home that this secondary institution offers increases their sense of ontological security and minimises their existential anxiety. Through conversion, they have become 'at home' in the secondary institution, and the self has been reinstitutionalised.

In this article, we comparatively analyse radical right-wing parties' intervention into the veil debate in Turkey, Sweden, and France which are characterised by different understandings of legal and normative secularism. We explore the intersection of gender and religion in the dynamic formation of populist categories and how they can be mobilised differently along the vertical and the horizontal axes by the example of the veil. In all three countries we have analysed capitalise on gender, religiosity and secularity, and the veil is exploited in drawing boundaries between the People and non-People but also between the People and the Elites. In this way, the meanings attributed to the veil are used as a mechanism of exclusion and of drawing the boundaries through gendered narratives of who belongs to the People.