Securitized Intimacies, Welfare State and the "other" Family

Abstract

Analyzing policy documents that aim to tackle violence in minority families, the article examines how normativities related to family, ethnicity, and race are created and challenged. The article develops an analysis of how neoliberal governmentality operates in two Nordic welfare societies. It shows how the governing of ethnicized and racialized minority families is built on three logics: the normalizing family, normative (liberal) individuality, and securitized border rhetoric. Identifying three policy frames (violence, immigration, and security frames), the article argues that the presented ideas of family life and individuality are based on normative whiteness.