Feminist scholars have shown ways in which denial of racism in Sweden is shaped through a powerful self-image of Sweden as ‘the best country in the world’ regarding both gender equality and human rights. This is an image that continues being at the heart of national narratives but, at the same time, the growing support for right-wing racist and fascist parties and organisations is connected with, and manifested through, an emotional regime of hate directed towards feminism and towards women embodying feminist agendas. Feminism as an idea, a political agenda and a community of belonging is threatened and challenged but, paradoxically, feminist-inspired concerns about gender equality are often mobilised and appropriated for racist and anti-immigration arguments.

The presentation outlined some of the specificities of the anti/feminist turn in Sweden, including its connections to racist and anti-immigration mobilisations. There was a particular focus on the concept of care racism, developed by Diana Mulinari and Anders Neergaard (2014), and on how anti-feminist agendas act upon notions of gender equality and trygghet (safety) and connect these to a nationalist and racist agenda.

The specific context at stake is the responses to the last few years’ increased attention towards issues of migration, refugees and borders in Sweden and Europe, and the strongly gendered responses to recent years’ migrations entailing demonization and criminalisation of male migrants and lack of representations and visibility of female migrants.

Maja Sager, PhD in Gender Studies, is associate senior lecturer at the Department of Gender Studies, Lund. Her research interests and areas of teaching cover feminist intersectional approaches to citizenship, nation, migration, asylum rights and anti-racist & migration rights activism. More specifically her research has focused on the ways in which restrictive European migration policies produce spaces of irregularity and deportability – and how those spaces are experienced and contested by migrants and activist networks. She has also focused on the gendered experiences of these processes of exclusion and resistance.