WUNRN
Nordic Gender Institute - NIKK
Sweden - "Immigrant" Girls as
a Political Symbol
23 June 2010 - The
debate on honour-related violence over the last decade has engaged, mobilised
and divided Swedish feminists within both the media and public gender equality
politics. Two doctoral theses analyse the official Swedish policy on this issue
and the consequences of the focus on the culture of honour.
By Trine Lynggard
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Illustration:
Anne Aagaard |
The murder of Fadime Sahindal in 1992 triggered a polarised
debate on honour, violence and the “culture” of immigrants in Sweden. A few
weeks after the killing, the government presented its first programme for
“vulnerable girls in patriarchal families”. A new political concept had been
established. The young women’s plight had been made into a cultural symbol and
a boundary marker – between what is Swedish and what is non-Swedish.
Since 2007, Sweden has had a coherent action plan for “male
violence against women, honour-related violence and oppression, and violence in
same-gender relations”. The plan says that “the honour rationale can take
on various expressions, depending on cultural notions and religion, but it is
not connected to a specific culture or religion. Honour rationale can also
exist in non-religious contexts”. It is further noted that “as is all male
violence against women, honour-related violence and oppression is based on
gender, power, sexuality and cultural notions of these" (p. 12-13).
According to this action plan, honour-related violence differs
from other forms of violence in its collective nature; that is, that there can
be several perpetrators of both genders, and that the victims can be both women
and men, girls and boys. These formulations illustrate an ambivalence which has
characterised, and still characterises, Swedish debate and research. Violence
against immigrant girls: Is this an expression of the patriarchal violence
which can strike women in general, or of a special, culturally based violence
which strikes only “immigrant” girls – so called honour-related violence?
Conflicting values and cultural violence
The explanation of violence against "immigrant” girls as a
“cultural” issue gradually started to become dominant in Swedish politics. At
the same time, this special kind of violence was described as the prime example
of there being a conflict of values between what is “Swedish” and what is
“non-Swedish”. This is shown by political scientist Maria Carbin in her recent
doctoral thesis (2010). She has studied the public discourse in Swedish
politics in this area from the first so-called debate on honour-related
killings in 1995 and up to 2008. Carbin analyses the negotiations that have
been made on how this violence should be defined and explained, and she has a
special focus on the portrayal of young immigrant women.
A policy of diversity was introduced in the 1990s in Sweden, emphasizing mutual change and tolerance across communities. At the same time, the murder of Fadime Sahindal resulted in a polarised debate on honour, violence and the “culture” of immigrants. Researchers played a prominent role in the debate. Carbin mentions, among others, the Norwegian scholar Unni Wikan, who claimed that the murder of the young girl should be understood from a non-Western notion of honour and an ideology of honour. Others, such as Paulina de los Reyes (2003), strongly argued against using cultural explanations for violence. She said that this created a distinction of violence into “Swedish” and “non-Swedish”. Violence among immigrants was understood as specific to a culture, while violence among Swedes was dissociated from culture.
“Vulnerable girls”
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Schoolchildren
in the National Day Parade in Oslo. Photo: Bosse Parbring |
These debates revealed how central a symbolic function the
representation of the “immigrant” girl had in Swedish integration policies.
“The actual integration policy is regarded as unsuccessful when it is
discovered that society has failed to handle the situation of young women
exposed to violence,” Carbin writes (2010:64).
In public documents cultural affiliation is ascribed a pivotal
role and is linked to the oppression of women. One year after the murder of
Fadime Sahindal, the Swedish government introduced measures against what they
called “honour-related violence”. In parallel to this, fathers with a minority
background were portrayed as bearers of patriarchal values and thus as those
responsible for the violence. Gender equality is formulated as a Swedish value,
which may be seen to be helping the integration of immigrants.
Structural discrimination
The new policy emphasized value-based differences between
“immigrants" and “Swedes”, and it met with a lot of criticism. Those who
criticised the programme underlined structural discrimination, where young
girls were not primarily positioned as potential victims of violence, but
rather as exposed to ethnic discrimination and prejudiced attitudes, Carbin
summarises (2010:80). She also shows how the critics lost ground when the
value-based policy was strengthened with the shift to a right-wing government
in 2006.
However, the parallel discussion as to whether violence against
minority women is different from violence against ethnically Swedish women
continues: Can the reason for violence be found in culture and values, or is
violence associated with gender, power and male dominance?
According to Carbin, what she calls the discourse of gendered
power (Ibid:90), does not emphasize race/ethnicity, since it is an issue of a
general power structure traversing class and ethnicity and functioning
“regardless of ethnicity”. The reason for violence is seen as being the same
for all, and thus the situation of Other women does not need to be studied
specifically. It is, so to say, a priori assumed that “immigrant” women are
exposed to the same oppression as “Swedish” women.
Carbin notes that public policy has, during the right-wing
government, shifted “from politics of similarity to politics of difference,
from the relative lack of interest of the discourse of gendered power in the
situation of girls to the great interest of the value discourse in particularly
girls exposed to honour-related violence” (Ibid:114).
Immigrant boys – a double role
While young women are at the centre of Swedish policies and the
survey of honour-related violence, “immigrant” boys have been ascribed a double
role as both perpetrators and victims of the honour culture. Here, the
government measures aim at a changing of attitudes; boys with a minority
background should learn about gender equality and a correct way of behaviour in
relation to their sisters and women in general.
Researcher Nils Hammarén has followed boys in so-called
multi-cultural areas of Göteborg. In his doctoral thesis Förorten i huvudet.
Unga män om kön och sexualitet i det nya Sverige (The suburb in one’s head.
Young men on gender and sexuality in the new Sweden. 2008), Hammarén shows how
the young men are influenced by the images presented in, among other places,
the media of the “suburb” and of the young men living there. The
problematisation of boys in these suburbs has increased with the political
focus on cultures of honour, where these boys have been depicted as living in
the shadow of their family’s and particularly their father’s patriarchal
culture.
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Illustrationphoto:
Colourbox |
The most common notion of a boy with a minority background
living in the suburbs is in terms synonymous with those of a person who is
“dangerous” and “criminal” and defined as the masculine Other. The young men
were familiar with these problematic images and in various ways had to take a
stance on them, while they also made use of and played with these images in a
construction of expressive and acting-out forms of masculinity.
Hammarén interprets this “suburban masculinity” as a
compensatory revenge for the stigma they experience as having been ascribed to
them. There were also manifestations of a contrasting behaviour of
under-communication of their "foreign" background, or solidarity with
what they saw as the majority culture’s view of “immigrant” boys.
According to Hammarén, forms of behaviour, expressions and style associated with
the image of the “immigrant” boy, seemed to strengthen the feeling of many of
the young boys of being in a less privileged position in Swedish society.
“The brother” – a repellent symbol
The issue of honour-related violence was raised in the
interviews by the young men themselves, particularly in connection with the
role of brothers in relation to their sisters. “The brother” then primarily
appeared as a repellent symbol associated with the brother of a potential
partner. Several of the young men protested against being placed in a category
constructed in advance of "honour-related violent problem boys".
Hammarén here points out that the problem with honour-related
violence seems to be to find ways of making this type of violence visible
without constructing it as separate from other forms of violence and thus
stigmatising whole population groups. He thinks that the debate on
honour-related violence runs a risk of contributing to the patriarchy being
placed outside of the Swedish borders. The violence of “Swedes” against other
“Swedes” is made invisible, while the control and violence of
"immigrants" is culturalised.