Sammendrag

I denna artikel låter Catrin Lundström ett svenskt sexualitetsideal möta föreställningar om ras, etnicitet och klass genom intervjuer med unga kvinnor med bakgrund i Latinamerika. Medan de unga kvinnorna exkluderas ur den svenska nationella berättelsen om vithet kan de konstituera sig som svenska genom att knyta an till idéer om sexuell frigjordhet. Men dessa sexuella distinktioner är sammanflätade med koloniala diskurser om ras och klass som drar upp gränser för det respektabla och det icke-respektabla.

English abstract

White respectability. The Swedish nation’s gender symbolism and young women’s cultural practices

This article engages with social and cultural constructions of Swedishness from a perspective that highlights the intersections of gender, sexuality and race. It argues that racialised discourses around heterosexuality constitute an important aspect of the notion of the nation and its boundaries of belonging. Empirically, the study is based on interviews with 29 young women of Latin American descent, born and/or raised in Sweden. By considering ideas of nation, race, gender and sexuality as being intertwined, complex processes of inclusion and exclusion are illuminated. While the young women experience exclusion from the Swedish narrative of whiteness, they define themselves as Swedes by culturally associating with sexual liberty: a central part of the idea of «a Swedish sexuality». In this way, they simultaneously distance themselves from virginity or abstinence, a practice associated with young Muslim women, and in a broader sense, with the notion of «immigrants». Since non-white women are not defined as symbolic to the nation in the same way as white women are, however, it is argued that they, as young Latin women, do not embody Swedishness and the kind of respectability inherited in the construction of whiteness. Thus, by exploring national identity through interconnected practices, the article argues that the often discussed and criticized dichotomy of «Swedes» and «immigrants» appears even more complex when gender and sexuality are introduced into the analysis.

Keywords:Sweden, national belonging, racialisation, sexuality, whiteness, femininity, respectability, young women.