“And They Cannot Teach Us How to Cycle”: The Category of Migrant Women and Antiracist Feminism in Sweden

Abstract

The aim of this chapter is to provide some analytical elements to understand both continuity and change in the construction of the category of migrant women in Sweden, with specific focus on the interaction between the field of cultural representation and the field of political economy. Theoretically, the analysis is framed through two dimensions of racism, exploitative and exclusionary, legitimated in recent decades through a racist grammar of caring racism. Methodologically, the chapter is inspired by Black /Chicano feminist tradition of intellectual activism, accepting the dilemmas of “taking sides”. It is crafted using two types of empirical material. First, it follows the category of migrant women exploring how antiracist identified feminists; many of them of migrant background aged between 25 and 30 act upon the category. Critical discourse analysis is the source of inspiration for the second section of the chapter that further elaborates on the construction of migrant women as a problem, a burden and a threat in Swedish governmental policy documents over four decades.