Mid Sweden University

This thesis examines experiences and navigations of upward class mobility among racialized children of migrants who grew up in racialized neighbourhoods in Sweden. In contemporary political and public discourse, class mobility is often presented as both an ideal and a solution to social inequality. In the Swedish context, it is also closely tied to integration, where upward class mobility is presented as a pathway through which racialized working-class populations living in marginalized neighbourhoods can move from a position of “outsiderness” toward inclusion in the national community. This thesis is interested in how this promise of belonging through class mobility is experienced. Drawing on participants’ narratives, the thesis investigates what class mobility narratives reveal about how mobility is conditioned, valued, and lived in a racialized class society. The study adopts a relational approach that focuses on social processes and power relations in order to examine the lived, symbolic, and structural dimensions of class mobility. The thesis builds on in-depth interviews and through a thematic narrative analysis, it explores how participants make sense of their mobility and how they relate to the imagined communities they identify with, are ascribed to, or are excluded from. The findings show that racialized class mobility does not constitute an unambiguous entry into a new social position. Rather, it takes the form of conditional belonging, in which recognition and inclusion remain contingent and continuously negotiated. Participants’ narratives reveal how mobility is oriented toward two key reference points for belonging: place of departure, associated with racialized working-class communities such as the racialized neighbourhood and immigrant family, and the place of arrival, represented by a Swedish middle-class community that functions as the normative destination of integration and mobility. Within this tension, class mobility emerges as an ongoing process through which belonging is negotiated and navigated in relation to prevailing social structures and symbolic hierarchies.