Multicultural iteration: Swedish National Day as multiculturalism-in-practice

Multicultural iteration:Swedish National Day as

multiculturalism-in-practice

CARLY ELIZABETH SCHALL

Department of Sociology, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, USA

ABSTRACT. This paper examines the creation of ‘national day’ in Sweden in order tounderstand how such a holiday works to shape the Swedish nation’s relationship withdiversity. Analyzing parliamentary debates and press coverage, the author finds thatofficial national day coverage tends to invest the nation with progressive and multicul-tural meanings, foregrounding immigrant voices. However, this multiculturalism ispolysemic, vague and subject to contestation, both from far right ‘traditionalists’seeking to ‘protect’ Swedishness from outside influences and cosmopolitans who see thenation as outdated and dangerous. The creation of a new national holiday can be seenas a ‘democratic iteration’ wherein democracy is restated and reinvested with meanings,and new lines of cleavage are drawn, and also as a ‘multicultural iteration’ wheremulticulturalism is invested with new meaning. Finally, the author argues that multi-culturalism benefits from polysemy in that the concept can then adapt to changingcircumstances, and, thus, survive.

KEYWORDS: nationalism, Sweden, multiculturalism, integration, national day

Introduction

For a country of ‘old Europe’, Sweden’s National Day is remarkably young,dating back only to 2005. It is, as such, a perfect embodiment of an ‘inventedtradition’ created top-down, promoting a specific vision of Swedish nation-hood (Hobsbawm and Ranger 1983). This article exploits that newness toexamine how the nation is reconstituted in the age of multiculturalism.National days, McCrone and McPherson (2009: 1) argue, ‘are commemorativedevices in time and place for reinforcing national identity’. For Sweden, thatnational identity has become bound up with diversity, suggesting an identitythat has multiculturalism as its focal point. Multiculturalism, however, isflexible, polysemic and essentially contested. National Day in Sweden, then, isnot just a commemoration of the nation, but a sort of multiculturalism-in-practice, wherein the connection between the nation and diversity is put to thetest.

This article borrows from Seyla Benhabib’s (2006) work on ‘democraticiterations’ – events, momentous or mundane, which restate and reimagine a

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Nations and Nationalism 20 (2), 2014, 355–375.DOI: 10.1111/nana.12070

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society’s relationship with democracy. Swedish National Day can be thoughtof as a ‘multicultural iteration’ through which Sweden’s relationship withdiversity is restated and reinvested with meaning, though not wholly success-fully. The holiday itself is unpopular, and its official meanings are contestedfrom both the left and right. As such, the holiday serves to draw new cleavagesas much as to put forth a cohesive idea of the nation.

Nationalism and Sweden

The term nationalism has many meanings. Often, nationalism is construed asa ‘hot’ phenomenon in whose name movements are built and wars are fought(cf. Breuilly 1994). However, nationalism can also be a way of thinking aboutthe nation – an idiom or discourse (Brubaker 1992; Sutherland 2005) provid-ing a banal shared ‘common sense’, that determines who is included in the‘imagined community’ of the nation (Anderson, 1983; Billig 1995). Usually,these meanings are hidden at the background. Yet certain moments, like thecreation of a new national holiday, bring background assumptions to the fore,resulting in relatively frank accountings for the nation that can be analyzed (cf.Brubaker 2004). National Day provides such a moment.

Modern Sweden, despite its imperialist past, provides many more examplesof what Billig (1995) calls the ‘unwaved flag’, (an unceremonious, backgroundmarking of the nation that serves to remind nationals that they belong to anational community) than the waved flag, which may lead an army into battleor celebrate a king. This is true quite literally, given Sweden’s sometimescontradictory relationship with its own flag (Löfgren 2007), but also figura-tively in Sweden’s often ambivalent relationship with nationalism. Sweden’shistory as a nation is long and stable and is often presented as anunproblematic case of early nationalization (e.g. Conversi 2007). Yet Swedishnational identity, like all national identities, is contradictory and amorphous.It has, for instance, long contained both civic elements emphasizing democ-racy and ethnic elements emphasizing homogeneity (Schall 2012).

There are, however, common threads running throughout works onSwedish national identity: a love for nature, a romanticization of the free,democratic peasant (Ehn et al. 1993; Löfgren 1989), a high regard for indi-vidualism, even within the collective statism of the welfare state (Berggren andTrägårdh 2006) and, by the mid 20th century, a tolerant, internationalistcosmopolitanism that places Sweden ‘beyond nationalism’ (Hjerm 1998;Johansson 2001; Rodell 2009). Swede’s views of their own traditional nationalsymbols reflect to an extent this last irony. The Swedish flag is enthusiasticallywaved at sporting events, but has come to be seen by many as a racist symbolin other contexts (Löfgren 2007). Likewise, some have come to see singing thenational anthem as a provocation to Sweden’s non-ethnically Swedish popu-lation. Some supporters of a national day have argued that the holiday pro-vides a chance to rehabilitate these symbols in inclusionary ways that wouldbuild a non-racist national pride or unity. Certain symbols remain relatively

356 Carly Elizabeth Schall


free of this stigma. These tend to be those symbols attached to nature: theSwedish landscape dotted with little red summer cottages. It is notable thatthese symbols are associated with the popular midsummer holiday rather thanNational Day.

Sweden’s experience with large-scale immigration is fairly recent, and theirresponse has been characteristically social democratic: migrants have beengiven access to the welfare state (Hjerm 2005). The state is the primary locus ofintegration. Economic and political integration are pursued, with the assump-tion that cultural integration would follow naturally from structural inclusion(Westin 2004). However, cultural and economic integration do not alwaysneatly coincide, and Sweden’s state-focused multiculturalism neglects many ofthe symbolic aspects of integration (Voyer 2013). Indeed, what Swedish immi-grant integration looks like on the ground often differs markedly from the rosypicture painted by policy analysis (Lindström 2002; Pred 2000). The Swedishparliament’s creation of National Day, and its reasoning in doing so repre-sents, in part, an attempt to bring the state into the cultural processes ofintegration.

The Swedish nation has had no national day for most of its long history,perhaps because there is not really a recognized moment of birth for theSwedish nation. Sweden has not had to fight for its independence in themodern era. The process of creating the national holiday, too, was long.The chosen date and the need for a national day at all was debated off and onfor fourteen years until parliament finally made June 6 a public holiday with aday off from work in 2005. For Sweden, a country where many see themselvesas somehow beyond nationalism, the timing of this decision was paradoxical.How did this national day come about?

June 6 has officially been celebrated as Flag Day in Sweden since 1916.1 In1983, the holiday was renamed National Day with little fanfare. It was not atthis time upgraded to an official state holiday entailing a day off of work, butthe suggestion to do so was put forward in 1991. The proposition failed toreceive much support, given the expense entailed in a new day off (SverigesRiksdag 1992/1993: 36). At the time, the Social Democrats (SAP) opposed themeasure for ideological reasons, too, arguing that national days were merely a‘sign of human vanity’ (ibid.) The proposition was raised again in 1997, thistime with the SAPs onboard. Debate for the proposition continued sporadi-cally until 2005, when it was finally approved with support of all parties exceptthe Left and the Greens. Much of the debate centered around which holidayshould be sacrificed to make room for a national day. The Second Day of thePentecost was finally chosen, though with some opposition from the SwedishChurch and the major Swedish blue-collar Labor Federation (LO). Theholiday has enjoyed very little popularity with the Swedish people either beforeits transformation into a public or in the years immediately following thistransformation. There has, however, been an increased effort to celebrate bymost Swedish municipalities in recent years. Participation in celebrations hasincreased somewhat since 2005, but remains low.

Multicultural iteration 357


Elgenius (2011b), in fact, calls the Swedish day ‘unsuccessful’. Few Swedeseven know what events National Day commemorates.2 Why, then, study suchan unpopular holiday? It is this very unsuccessfulness that makes it an impor-tant case. Despite national identity’s slipperiness and national symbols’ ambi-guity, the official narratives forwarded by the media focus in a unified way onthe ‘new Sweden’ and ‘new Swedes’. The term ‘new Swedes’ is used widely ingovernment documents and official sources to denote immigrants to Swedenwho are supposed to be staying long-term or permanently in the country.3

Some blowback on this term exists, both from immigrants themselves who seeit as denying their ethnic identity and from some right-wing groups that denythe Swedishness of newcomers (for more, see Blomqvist 2013). Yet it is a termthat fits the official discourse on National Day well, emphasizing as it does theability of immigrants to become Swedish. Low participation may be a reflec-tion of dissatisfaction with these official narratives. Elgenius (2011b) arguesthat attempts to incorporate multiculturalism into established national daycelebrations, like Norway’s, have met with resistance due to the stickiness oflong-standing traditions of celebration. Yet even a new holiday cut from wholecloth has faced the same resistance. The newness of this holiday presentsanother compelling reason for studying the Swedish National Day. Unlike theestablished national days elsewhere in Europe, construction of meaningaround this holiday is fresh. While Sweden is a case of a larger phenomenon ofdiversity-focused national days of varying successes (see Elgenius 2011a;McCrone and McPherson 2009), it is also a unique case unhindered by tradi-tional guidelines for celebration. This is particularly important given thecontext of declining support for many of Sweden’s traditional nationalsymbols.

Multiculturalism and multicultural iteration

Sweden is not unique in having a national holiday that reaches toward mul-ticulturalism. An interesting comparison is its neighbor, Norway, whoseexceedingly popular Constitution Day was held up by lawmakers as anexample of a progressive national day that Sweden could emulate. The Nor-wegian holiday celebrates a precociously democratic constitution, and is pri-marily a civilian, not military, celebration. The holiday was, from thebeginning, inclusive across class and regional lines and seeks now to be inclu-sive across ethnic lines (Elgenius 2011a). Norway is, like Sweden, only recentlya country of immigration. Unlike Sweden, Norway’s national day predateslarge-scale immigration. For Norway, the challenge of its national day is howto include immigrants in already established patterns of celebration with a setsymbology. This challenge was publically and clearly articulated: oughtNorway to simply extend the traditional symbols to new populations, orshould ‘new Norwegians’ be able to leave their distinctive mark on traditionsby, for instance, wearing modified Norwegian national dress? In the end, thechoice was clear: only three flags were to be allowed: the Norwegian, the Sami



(representing the indigenous people of northern Norway) and the UN.4 Immi-grants were told to adopt a regional costume, not to create a syncretic newnational dress (Hovlad and Maaland 2010). National celebrations remaininclusive, but the inclusivity is of a particular type. Immigrants are allowed andencouraged to participate in national day celebrations, but must adopt aparticular version of Norwegian identity that strips them of their culturalparticularities.

What the debate in Norway illustrated was that, even when the goal ofinclusiveness is agreed upon, the way inclusion is achieved may be contentious.For Norway, the inclusion of immigrants by encouraging them to take up thetraditional symbols of the nation won out over competing ideas about how amulticultural Norway should look. In this, Norway was hampered by theweight of tradition. For Sweden, the multicultural content of the holiday ismore up for grabs. As such, meaning-making around June 6 manages todisplay many more facets of the concept of multiculturalism.

Multiculturalism is an essentially contested concept. Contestation is partlyin the normative realm: is multiculturalism a path to the good life? Is it morallycorrect? More fundamentally, however, there is little agreement on what mul-ticulturalism actually is. Instead, multiculturalism is often used as a post hocdescription of packages of disparate policy prescriptions and/or ethical com-mitments (Hall 2010). Multiculturalism can be an ideology, set of policypractices, description of society and/or political philosophy (Vertovec andWessendorf 2010). It is both a category of practice, used by actors to conveypractical orientations to diversity, and a category of analysis intended byscholars to carry analytical weight. The current analysis focuses on the former:multiculturalism as a category of practice deployed by meaning-makers whocontemplate, declaim about and argue over the meaning of Swedish NationalDay. Furthermore, this paper addresses multiculturalism primarily as a holis-tic image of the diverse nation as envisioned by actors, rather than as apackage of policies and specific political commitments. Finally, the focus onNational Day necessitates restricting understandings of multiculturalism tothe symbolic and cultural realm, rather than the concrete societal arrange-ments of, for example, welfare or educational institutions.

Multiculturalism as a holistic vision is closely aligned with the systematicwritings of political philosophers, from whom I draw five potential meaningsfor multiculturalism. These meanings are not mutually exclusive. One couldconsider multiculturalism as both a marker of simple diversity as well as a callfor recognition. These meanings are overlapping and vary from one person tothe next, reflecting the conceptual muddle surrounding multiculturalism.

The first possible way of thinking about multiculturalism is that it is simplediversity (conception 1), with little thought to how diversity is expressed ormanaged. This usage is common in popular media, but relatively rare inscholarly work because it lacks specificity. Conception 1 provides little theo-retical leverage on questions of difference, and is a purely descriptive concep-tion. In Western Europe, the Americas and Oceania this conception is used as



a description of an already existing society, not an ideological vision for thefuture. It is the least contentious of the conceptions; it neither denotes anyparticular political philosophy nor any recommendations for shaping society.Nonetheless, this neutral version of multiculturalism is necessary to this analy-sis because its neutrality, in assuming that diversity is irreversible, implies apolitical (and cultural) stance. Conception 1 comes to play in national days inthe changing faces of celebration participants.

Multiculturalism has further been used to describe the movement forgreater recognition of ethnic, racial or cultural minorities within the civil andpolitical spheres (conception 2). Recognition amounts to the right to be seen(the politics of difference) and the right to be seen as legitimate (the politicsof equal dignity; Taylor 1994). For Taylor, the politics of recognition involvea reconciliation of liberalism with multiculturalism, and, therefore, a pro-gressive, democratic way of managing diversity. The focus on recognition bysome activists, however, has led many to criticize multiculturalism as dis-tracting from the real work of addressing inequalities of class and power(Modood and May 2001). Nonetheless, increased recognition coupled withcalls for equal worth, can represent real shifts of power that extend out ofthe cultural sphere and into economic and political spheres. The debatesover foreign flags in the Norwegian Constitution Day celebrations, and thoseover the place of former colonies in France’s Bastille Day and Britain’sRemembrance Day (Elgenius 2011b), can be seen as struggles, primarily,over recognition.

A third usage sees multiculturalism as cultural segregation (conception 3).This usage is common among both the popular media and academics (e.g.Joppke 1999). Those who adopt this conception of multiculturalism argue thatit is inherently divisive. Multiculturalism is presumed to push groups to focuson internal cohesion at the expense of societal solidarity (Sartori 1997). Muchof the left’s critique of multiculturalism comes from this perspective. Culturalsegregation is portrayed as dangerous for equal citizenship, and as aiding inthe promotion of illiberal views and practices within minority communities(Shachar 1998). Notably, however, not all critics see strengthened internalcohesion as necessarily antithetical to societal cohesion. Parekh (2006) arguesthat multiculturalism promotes a ‘community of communities and individuals’wherein communities maintain their cultural specificity, but can still formbroader solidarities.5 Multiculturalism as cultural segregation is less evident inthe celebration of national days, but can be glimpsed in some of the oppositionto a national day.

Directly antithetical to multiculturalism as cultural segregation is the ideaof multiculturalism as the hyphenated society (conception 4). The hyphenatedsociety refers to a society that permits multiple memberships, evinced inphrases such as Asian-American or Black-British. For some, this is positive:hybridity allows one to simultaneously be a member of the dominant groupand separate from that group (Waters 1990). Others, however, see hyphena-tion as furthering exclusion. Hyphenation as a mode of incorporation, argues



Alexander (2001), perpetuates the stigmatization of certain cultural qualities,leaving hyphenated members half-members at best. This tension plays out inthe question of whether, for instance, immigrants in Norway should beallowed to create distinctive syncretic national costumes. The ‘hyphenatedsociety’, Alexander (2001) argues is an ill-fitting compromise between truemulticulturalism and assimilation. Parekh (2006: 202–03), too, finds hyphena-tion to be deeply flawed, insofar as it assumes a public culture that societies canreasonably expect immigrants to assimilate into, but is separate from a privateculture that can be fully multicultural. Instead, both point to a multicultural-ism that would entirely reorganize host societies around the central ideal ofdifference.

In this fifth conception multiculturalism is a distinct mode of incorporation,or way of integrating individuals into society. Multiculturalism is conceived ofas a source of unity, not division. Kymlicka (1995) uses this idea in his liberaldefense of multiculturalism, bolstered by the case of Canada as a place wherelove of diversity has become a central defining national character.6 Alexander(2006), similarly, argues that multiculturalism is the only mode of incorpora-tion that de-stigmatizes both individuals and their unique cultural qualities,integrating them fully into a civil (normatively positive) sphere. This ideal,however, is difficult to realize in practice. Similarly, the problem of minoritygroups with illiberal cultural practices is not solved. The call for assimilationinto liberalism that arises as a response to multiculturalism cannot beappeased just by placing difference at the center of national identity (see e.g.Joppke 2012; Lægaard 2007; Meer and Modood 2009).

Nonetheless, we glimpse such a unifying conception in the discourse sur-rounding National Day in Sweden. In fact, all five of these conceptions appearin this discourse, creating a muddled, sometimes contradictory picture of themulticultural Swedish nation. In what follows, I examine that discourse andtease out the different working definitions of multiculturalism found therein.While the muddled meanings of multiculturalism pose a challenge to scholarlyanalysis, I argue that such vagueness may be unavoidable given the history ofthe term (Faist 2009; McGhee 2008). In fact, such vagueness may be beneficialto the ideology of multiculturalism itself. In arguing this point, I considerNational Day as an instance of what Benhabib (2006) calls ‘democratic itera-tion’ – a process by which the concept of democracy is restated, clarified andadapted in response to events. While Benhabib focuses on major events, sheacknowledges that more mundane happenings can affect the way democracy isunderstood. Swedish National Day provides such a mundane, but symboli-cally powerful event that, both helps to shape the Swedish common-senseunderstanding of democracy and makes visible already existing understand-ings of democracy. Given National Day’s status as a holiday about the nationand one that has become specifically about the multicultural nation, I arguethat National Day also represents a multicultural iteration, wherein Sweden’srelationship to diversity is restated and clarified, and where new lines ofconflict become evident.7



National Day’s ‘official meanings’

Both in the parliamentary debates and media coverage of National Day, adistinct official narrative emerged. This official meaning crystallized around(1) an affirmation of the need to have a national anchor in a globalizing world,and (2) a promotion of a progressive, diverse and multicultural Sweden. ThatNational Day was connected, first and foremost, to cosmopolitanism anddiversity and not to a glorious past is unsurprising given long-standing inter-nationalist currents in national identity and the decline of traditional nationalsymbols in Sweden.

Supporters framed the creation of National Day as a necessary counterbal-ance to increasing globalization. The motion that created the new nationalholiday, for instance, reads:

The Swedish language, Swedish history, Swedish cultural heritage and the Swedishsocial system make up a large part of our national identity which becomes moremeaningful in times of increasing globalization. To make National Day into a publicholiday in Sweden would be a way to show that National Day deserves greater recog-nition than it has today (Sveriges Riksdag 2004/2005: 23).

Barbro Hietala Nordlund (SAP), one of the most vocal proponents of anational day, argued that having a solid base of national identity increasesefficacy in a globalized world. She argued that ‘to know where one belongs –one’s identity, if you want to call it that – and where one is at home isfoundational in order to know where one is going in this wide world’ (SverigesRiksdag 2004/05: 37). Peter Eriksson (Greens) further pointed to the possibil-ity that strengthening national identity could strengthen Sweden’s voice in theEU, noting that Sweden has

transferred power from the Swedish parliament to the European Union. The Swedishpeople’s ability to govern themselves is not as strong as it was even a few years ago.Consequently, a sleeping Mother Sweden is appropriate, but that’s not what [support-ers] want when they propose to make National Day a holiday (Sveriges Riksdag1997/98: 35).

Eriksson went on to explain that supporters of a national day sought a strongSweden empowered to act in the European arena, though Eriksson himselfwas skeptical that National Day would achieve this.

Supporters were careful to note that it was a strong but progressive Swedenthey sought to honor on National Day. Norway’s Constitution Day andFrance’s Bastille Day were cited as models of progressive patriotism, celebrat-ing democratic traditions (Sveriges Riksdag 2004/05: 37). June 6, they empha-sized, was the day that Gustav Vasa was elected, not crowned, and the 1809constitution was also a step toward democracy, if only a small one (Larsmo,DN 06/06/2008).8 Sweden’s progressive nationalism, then, could not truly be ahot nationalism: ‘Swedish nationalism – however parochial and smug it mightbe at times – has not had the same catastrophic consequences as in many othercountries. Often, it has been utilized by liberal and social-democratic forces tocreate a more or less open and tolerant society’ (Lerner, DN 06/05/2007).



Other progressive values such as freedom and equality are similarly associatedwith Sweden in reflections about the holiday. One writer states she is ‘proud ofher national belonging and that she lives in a free country’ (Lindberg, DN06/05/2007), while another celebrates Sweden’s ‘relative equality, and that somany Swedes see that as a self-evident value’ (Larsmo, DN 06/05/2008).Another argues that while centuries ago Swedes may have been proud ofimperialistic conquests, today people ‘think that the Swedish parental insur-ance is something to be proud of’ (Bratt, DN 06/05/2003).

At the same time, a certain anti-nationalistic nationalism playing on theidea that Sweden is too progressive for nationalism, comes through in com-ments (cf. Smith, 2003’s ‘anti-nationalist modernism’). One commentatorasks, for instance, whether one is allowed to be proud of one’s nation (Lerner,DN 06/05/2007). Another goes further and wonders whether ‘nationalism isun-Swedish’:

Swedes are a little ambivalent when it comes to nationalism. A study presented on theradio today revealed that only about a third of respondents wanted to celebrate anational day (in some way other than having the day off). Many see it as ‘un-Swedish’to be nationalist – a paradox worth considering (Larsmo, DN 06/05/2008).

Indeed, the possibility is raised of a national day that is not too nationalist butis ‘a manifestation of today’s Sweden and today’s Swedes, where we all can beproud without ending up with chauvinism or exaggerated nationalism’(Götblad, 06/05/2007; also Öhrström, DN 06/09/2007). That Swedes connectnationalism to a set of values (especially welfare statist values) is indicative ofthe civic nationalism that has long been a characteristic of the Swedishnational image (Schall 2012). Civic nationalism has become the acceptableversion of nationalism in Sweden. Yet its restatement in this context allows usto characterize National Day as a democratic iteration that allows Sweden toreconcile the desire to remain influential as a nation-state in the world with anambivalent attitude toward nations as a concept. This tension between inter-national cosmopolitanism and the strong nation-state is, in fact, a recurrenttheme in Swedish politics (Johansson 2001). This may not be an entirelysuccessful reconciliation, but anti-nationalist nationalism highlights a centralelement of national identity that has direct bearing on the type of democracySweden aims to be.

The progressive content of the holiday also extends to National Day’srelationship with the ‘new Sweden’, giving the holiday a multicultural, not justdemocratic meaning. Supporters argued that a newly created national daycould combat racism and xenophobia. Nils Frederik Aurelius (Conservatives),for instance, argued that ‘reasonable order and a healthy national feeling finelyarranged can combat extreme tendencies’ (Sveriges Riksdag 1997/98: 35).Mikael Johansson (Greens) echoed this, saying

the thought that National Day can develop into a national demonstration in[an anti-racist way] is interesting . . . I think that this is a possibility. Out in our



communities, for us within the party, in the trade unions, the business world andeverywhere in our society, National Day can be a gathering against far right powers(Sveriges Riksdag 2005/06: 10).

Others spoke of reclaiming national symbols, ‘taking the weapons out of thehands’ of far right and xenophobic groups (Kvist, Greens, Sveriges Riksdag2004/05: 37). Pär-Axel Sahlberg (SAPs) put it like this:

For me, the Swedish flag refers to a national Sweden developed from many differenthistories, cultures and religions coexisting in our country. Should only the extremistscarry our Swedish flag or should it represent a common Sweden we can all support? Ithink that is the most important question. I don’t know better than anyone else howthis will pan out. But I think it could be catastrophic if we passively dismiss theimportant symbols that can represent and unite the new Sweden (Sveriges Riksdag1997/98: 35).

Some, of course, worried that the holiday would instead embolden far rightnationalists. Gustav Fridolin (Greens) argued that ‘playing with nationalism’was inherently dangerous and that creating a national day ‘gave xenophobicand narrow-minded nationalists a chance to take over’ (Sveriges Riksdag2004/05: 37). In actuality, the new holiday seems to have done both. June 6has, indeed, become a day of action for far right nationalists (and the anti-fascists that oppose them). At the same time, a multicultural and inclusiveSweden has been promoted, both in official ways, such as the swearing in ofnew citizens on June 6 and less official ways like news coverage which featuresphotographs of mostly ‘new Swedes’, waving the very same Swedish flags thatthe far right nationalists march under. This forwarding is done in ways thatboth complicate and clarify what it is to be different in Sweden.

Concern with the ‘new Sweden’, in fact, has pervaded coverage of theholiday since its 2005 instatement. This ‘new Sweden’ is decidedly diverse. Interms of simple diversity (conception 1), National Day coverage tends tohighlight ethnic/religious others. For instance, responses to a call to describethe meaning of the new National Day from the Nordic Museum returned thetypical answer that ‘National Day is here for everyone. It can be celebratedby everyone who lives in this country, Christians as well as Muslims’ (quotedin DN 06/05/2007). Visually, pictures of people who look like immigrantsdominate, a fact that one editor notes has inspired both complaints andpraise from readers (DN 06/05/2003). Swedes with immigrant or nonwhitebackgrounds are commonly featured as speakers at National Day events.This includes speakers highly critical of Sweden’s integration record (DN07/25/2004).

Others point out that National Day is potentially a tool for integratingimmigrants. Barbro Nordlund, for instance, celebrated the passage of themotion creating National Day, saying:

It is not least important for all of those who have come from other countries to be ableto strengthen their national belonging and identity so that they can shape their own



future in Sweden . . . Many municipalities try to make National Day into a day forintegration and fellowship, where new Swedes are the focus (Svenska Risdakgen 2004/2005: 35).

In many municipalities, National Day is the day when ‘new Swedes’ are swornin as citizens. Several observers have pointed out that watching citizenshipceremonies made them feel proud to be Swedish. For example, one journalistwrites:

When I search in my memory for a moment when I felt nationalistic, I recall an episodeof the program Stina med Sven from the late 80’s where new citizens were sworn in onlive television, under the Swedish flag, while Tomas di Leva sang Vi har bara varandra(‘We only have each other’). It made the hair on the back of my neck stand up, and justthen, I thought that Sweden was beautiful (Larsmo, DN 06/05/2008).

Sometimes this foregrounding of immigrants is a celebration of assimilation orhyphenation (e.g. a story about ‘medelsvensson’, the ‘average Swede’, featuringan interracial family; By, DN 06/06/2011). The quote above points to some-thing else: it is precisely Sweden’s diversity that makes it beautiful. As anothercommentator notes, ‘today, Sweden is the whole world’ (Lerner, DN 06/06/2007), and the seemingly innocuous statement that National Day is for Swedesis avoided. National Day is, instead, for everyone (e.g. DN 06/05/2007) or‘everyone who lives in Sweden’ (e.g. DN 06/06/2009). There is an attempt inthe coverage of National Day to distance Sweden’s national symbols fromtheir exclusive meanings. One writer questions the Swedish flag, asking ‘whydo we hold onto a national icon that symbolizes Christendom in the form of across, that has been flown in war and conquest and now is widely used as asymbol by xenophobic groups’ (Ahlsen, DN 06/04/2009)? Sweden is consist-ently portrayed as a progressive, tolerant, place. Exclusive nationalism may bedenounced as ugly, an alternative, and inclusive nationalism placing immi-grants and diversity in the center might be acceptable and proper.

As it is, immigrants themselves are among those commentators mostfavorable towards National Day, adopting a sort of immigrant nationalismthat sometimes encompasses both Sweden and their homeland. Many wereeloquent about the meaning they assign to belonging in Sweden:

With my Kurdish background, I know how it feels to not have a real citizenship. Forme, acquiring Swedish citizenship became the decisive moment when I could leave theold behind me. I, and many with me, want to show how proud we are to be a part ofSweden. For us, national symbols such as the Swedish flag and the royal family areimportant signs of our new belonging (Pekgul, DN 03/24/2006).

Immigrant commentators also remark on the possibilities for hybrid member-ship, adopting an explicitly hyphenated multiculturalism (conception 4).Kurdish immigrant Cesar Nujen, for instance, argues that ‘nationalism isbeautiful’ but that it need not be exclusive. He notes, ‘I am a Kurd who livesin Sweden. I’m proud to be a part of two cultures. To have two languages, andtwo places to belong – that is a treasure’ (DN 06/06/2007). Nujen, and theother immigrant nationalist commentators seem to be taking the opportunity



of nationalism to make a concerted call for recognition (conception 2), claim-ing their rightful place within the Swedish nation.

Yet alongside these calls for recognition among these immigrant national-ists is a call for Swedes to be proud of being Swedish-Swedish. They argue thatit is ‘okay’ to love one’s country, and that not doing so is even a brand ofarrogance. Here one finds, again, the idea that one needs to know what it is liketo have an ethnicity and belong to a culture, to achieve culturally competency.One writer exhorts Swedes to ‘dare to wave the flag’, writing that:

The Swede who doesn’t appreciate his/her Swedishness does not attain greater respectfor immigrants. Quite the opposite. To be able to respect others, one has to respectoneself. For a person with fast roots, encounters with the new are a challenge, anexchange and a source of knowledge. Today, on National Day, it is, therefore, hightime to gladly wave the flag and sing the national anthem – for your sake and forimmigrants’ sake! (Hakim, DN 06/06/2004).

It appears that the taboos on appearing too nationalist that many Swedes seemto abide by do not apply to those with immigrant backgrounds. Immigrantsare permitted, even encouraged, to be ‘nationalist’ in a way that ethnicallySwedish Swedes are not. This can be seen as an opportunity for growth forSwedes: ‘New Swedes perhaps can teach us old Swedes to be proud of theSwedish flag, and to see how important it is to protect freedom and democ-racy, to get us to appreciate National Day’ (Kättström Höök, DN 06/05/2007).

What these calls for Swedes to be proud of being Swedish highlight is acertain comfort with the expectations placed on immigrants to integrate intoSweden. Immigrants in this forum tend to connect Swedish identity primarilyto its civic aspects: the Sweden they are imagining is one they have access to,if they adopt its democratic values (cf. ‘assimilation into liberalism’, Kivisto &Faist, 2009). Positivity toward Swedish nationalism also indicates a comfortwith the idea of human communities bounded by nation-states. Immigrants,perhaps more than Swedes themselves, recognize that there is a unique core toSwedish identity that is worth acknowledging, perhaps celebrating. National-ism, for these speakers, is a way of asserting that there is a reason beyondeconomics that they have come to Sweden, that Swedes do something right,and that Swedes who take this for granted may be putting their rights at risk.

Celebrations

A full analysis of the content of national day celebrations in Sweden is beyondthe scope of this article, but a few brief observations, based on an informalsurvey of national day programs culled from municipal Web sites, reinforcesthe picture of the official meanings that newspaper discourse gives. UnlikeNorway or France, which have a set program that is centrally focused andwhich varies little from year to year, Sweden’s celebrations are decentralizedand vary a good deal from year to year. The national broadcaster SVT broad-casts celebrations from the outdoor museum Skansen. This celebration focuseson the royal family, who appear in blue and yellow national dress and listen to



a musical program that comprised primarily of pop music. The royal aspectsof the celebration at Skansen are framed as a continuation of the Flag Daytradition that preceded the creation of National Day. In the old city in Stock-holm, the royal castle is open and admission is free, continuing the royaltheme. Most municipalities, meanwhile, celebrate with a program thatincludes local musicians and other entertainment groups as well as speeches bylocal notables. Many municipalities hold parades. Larger cities and munici-palities may secure more famous personalities, but the basic structure is thesame.

Something of a pattern in municipal celebrations can be discerned.Swedes with immigrant backgrounds are overrepresented among speakers atNational Day festivities in the municipalities. The content of these speechesis not analyzed here, but if immigrant speakers follow similar patterns toimmigrant writers, we may infer that a good deal of immigrant nationalismappears in these speeches. A second component of many celebrations thatpoints to similar dynamics is, as noted above, that they coincide with cer-emonies celebrating the receipt of citizenship for ‘new Swedes.’ This acts asanother signifier of Sweden’s nationalism as being a harmless multiculturalnationalism. A final pattern is that, apart from the content of speeches, thereappears to be very little specifically Swedish content to the municipal cel-ebrations. There is some folk music and dance, but the vast majority of themusical program, for instance, is pop and classical music that is not neces-sarily of Swedish origin. That these celebrations are by and large genericfestivals rather than Sweden-specific is, perhaps, another indication ofSweden’s ambiguous relationship with nationalism. Rodell (2010) points out,too, in a much closer analysis of the content of official celebrations, thatwhere Swedish values enter celebrations, they are overwhelmingly civicvalues.

The official celebrations are complemented by unofficial celebrationsand/or demonstrations. As Rodell (2010) has indicated in his careful geo-graphical analysis of Stockholm’s celebrations, these unofficial celebrationscontain a much greater multitude of meanings, and are often explicitly politi-cal. Far right nationalist demonstrations and gatherings are common, butequally common are counter-demonstrations by organizations like Anti-Fascist Action (AFA. Other groups, too, take the day as an opportunity todemonstrate on issues that have little to do with nationalism as such. Forinstance, one group took the opportunity of National Day to stage a demon-stration in support of domestic abuse victims.

Contestation, left and right

Indeed, the political undercurrent of some of these unofficial celebrationspoints to the fact that the official meanings of National Day are deeplycontested. One DN writer noted that National Day has become a day for hate:



‘Every year it’s the same thing: The extreme right nationalists, some of who areopenly Nazi, march around Stockholm on National Day. And AFA gathers toprotest. Hatred, anger and contempt have become routine’ (Fredén, DN06/06/2006). Another writer feared that ‘National Day risks becoming asymbol of a divided Sweden instead of a united Sweden’ (Götblad, DN 06/05/2005), connecting the far right protests back to a perversion of the intendedpurpose of National Day.

Extreme right (sometimes neo-Nazi) groups9 have, in fact, put on marchesevery June 6 since the holiday was created. Violent clashes with oppositionalgroups have sometimes resulted. The far right marchers attempt to ‘makeNational Day into their own, where Swedishness is celebrated’ (Götblad DN06/05/2007). Stefan Olsson, then a member of the far right political party theSweden Democrats, argued in a reflection over Swedish National Day that,‘For me nationalism is loving one’s fatherland, to want to have things likethey were when I was younger. Everything has changed so quickly, and noone cares for our traditions.’ Olsson blames this on the fact that ‘Sweden hasaccepted too many refugees, too quickly and that creates problems. No oneknows what is Swedish any longer’ (quoted in Lerner, DN 06/05/2007).Others are more extreme. The Swedishness they put forward is a narrow one:an exclusive, inward-looking, wholly white Swedishness. Far right groups seeJune 6 as both celebration and protest: celebration of Sweden’s imperial pastand a protest against the internationalist, multiculturalist intrusions on thetrue Swedish culture. Some groups march with Nazi insignias, and declarethe wish to ‘Keep Sweden Swedish’. One commentator notes that, in thebattle over the meaning of Swedish National Day, ‘the far right extremistshave an enormous advantage. Their image of national identity is written instone: one race, one culture, one politics. Fascists are a fractious bunch,permeated by internal fights and mutual distrust. But one day of the yearthey can all unite: on National Day’ (Lindén, DN 06/06/2006). True,these groups lie on the fringe, and are actively opposed, but June 6 givesthem an opportunity to prominently promote their vision of the Swedishnation.

Contestation, however, comes from the left as well. The leftist camp sees‘playing with nationalism’, as Green Gustav Fridolin (Sveriges Riksdag 2004/05: 37) put it, as inherently dangerous. This side, drawing on over half acentury of internationalist cosmopolitanism in Sweden, dismisses the con-tinued importance of nation-states. The geographic and symbolic bounds ofnationhood are seen as unnecessary, dangerously exclusive and a sign ofhuman arrogance. Some deny the existence of a ‘Swedish nation’ as such. Oneargues, for instance, that ‘Swedishness is an empty bag that anyone can fillwith anything’ (Lindén, DN 06/06/2009). Others disagree with that assess-ment, but instead argue that to celebrate the nation is wrongheaded. On theone hand, Sweden is not all that great as nations go (Öhrström DN 06/05/2009) and, on the other hand, the whole concept of borders is regressive (e.g.DN 12/01/2004).



These two sets of confrontations with National Day reveal that there aretwo entirely different struggles playing out. On the one hand, the far right seesthe official National Day as aiming at the wrong sort of nationalism. Theyobject to the multiculturalist content of National Day, but not the nationitself. They gladly take the opportunity of a nationalist holiday to demon-strate, but are unlikely to be found at officially sanctioned celebrations. On theother hand, challenges from some leftist camps lie in an objection to the veryconcept of a national day. For this group, any celebration of nation is not onlymisguided, but hopelessly outdated. This suggestion is far more radical thanthat made by the radical right in that it suggests a departure from the primarypolitical and cultural mode of organization of the modern era. Yet, while thefar right traditionalist nationalists offer a realistic, if drastic, alternative visionfor the Swedish nation (a purely ethnic nation), those who object on thegrounds of cosmopolitanism offer only a negative critique: nationalism, evenif civic and inclusive, is simply wrong.

National Day and multiculturalism

This article opened with a paradox. Many Swedes see nationalism asun-Swedish, but Sweden has a brand new national day. This fact, and the factthat it is a contested holiday – so much so that it may be an unsuccessfulholiday – is significant. Ambivalence about nationalism abounds, and thediscourse reflects this. Yet, at the same time, some common ground forSwedishness is also evident. The identities called forth by the official narrativeof National Day are not necessarily particularistic identities, but they areSwedish. Much of the writing about National Day serves to affirm that indi-viduals can draw identities from collectivities outside of the traditionallydefined nation. The National Day discourse forwards an ecumenical definitionof Swedishness at least partially rooted in a polysemic, sometimes contradic-tory multiculturalism-in-practice that stands in opposition to long-standingtraditionalist and cosmopolitan versions of the Swedish nation.

Modood (2007) argues that the multi- in multiculturalism should not justrefer to multiple cultures, but to the multiple ways groups relate to each otherand to the mainstream (44–5). The multiculturalism-in-practice that emergesout of the analysis of Swedish National Day does not neatly fit a singledescription of the relationship between difference and society. What occurs inthis case, instead, is a process of multicultural iteration, where Sweden’s rela-tionship to diversity is restated and refined. This process pulls Sweden directlythrough four of the competing conceptions of multiculturalism outlinedabove. Contestation over the holiday hints at the fifth.

At the most basic level, coverage of National Day reflects the new reality ofSweden as a diverse place. That ‘new Swedes’ are among the celebrators is anillustration of the simple diversity definition of multiculturalism, though itgives us little leverage to understand the meanings ascribed to that diversity



(conception 1). The fact that immigrants and those with immigrant back-grounds are foregrounded, however, both in pictures and among commenta-tors, tells us more. From the standpoint of recognition, the choice to publishpictures of ‘new Swedes’ and to highlight, in particular, their understandingsof the Swedish nation gives a wider audience to these voices and invests themwith legitimacy (conception 2), a legitimacy that is not uncontested (e.g. com-plaints about too many photos of ‘new Swedes’ in coverage of National Day).The prevalence of immigrant nationalist narratives is particularly telling.Immigrant nationalist writers insist, to paraphrase Kymlicka and Post (2006),that being an immigrant is one way of being Swedish.10

Multiculturalism as a mode of incorporation is, however, the most preva-lent thread in the meaning-making surrounding National Day. Whether thisincorporation entails the kind of wholesale reorganization of Swedish societythat Alexander (2001; 2006, conception 5) calls for, or stops at a hyphenatedsociety (conception 4) is unclear. On the one hand, the focus on citizenshipceremonies, with its focus on immigrants becoming Swedes in the sense of civicassimilation supports hyphenation as a mode of incorporation. Likewise, theforegrounded immigrants’ full acceptance of traditional symbols of Swedishidentity (e.g. Pekgul’s reference to the royal family and the Swedish flag) hintsthat a fully transformative reorganization of Swedish identity, whether desir-able or not, has not occurred. Indeed, the use of immigrants as spokespeoplefor a national holiday may be merely a conciliatory gesture. National Day, thisline of argument would go, cannot possibly be nationalist if it is immigrantswho speak for Sweden.

On the other hand, the idea that immigrants are the ideal bearers of Swedishnational identity who can ‘teach us to be proud of the Swedish flag’ (KättströmHöök DN 06/05/2007), and the idea that National Day’s primary purpose is to‘combat racism and xenophobia’ rather than to celebrate the nation’s history,points to a more radical notion of unifying around diversity, one more similarto Alexander’s definition of multiculturalism than hyphenation. It certainlyseems, in any case, that the official meanings of National Day tend toward adefinition of multiculturalism that is uniting, rather than dividing, settingdifference in the center of a Swedish national identity.

The presence of far-right nationalist demonstrations on National Day,points to the fact that this definition of the nation is far from universallyaccepted. Multiculturalism in Sweden is neither straightforwardly dividing noruniting. Multiculturalism, theoretically, has the potential to become uniting,and it is this version of multiculturalism that comes through in official dis-course. In reality, however, it is the idea of multiculturalism that has been themost divisive. In Sweden, as in all of Europe, multiculturalism is highly con-tested, and the current moment is more accurately a moment of backlash thanof embrace (Alexander 2013; Vertovec and Wessendorf 2010). Both activehostility on National Day (far right demonstrators) and a passive lack ofenthusiasm may be partly attributed to the multicultural nationalist contentof the day. Multiculturalism has divided in this case not so much because of



barriers between ethnic groups, but because, as a mode of incorporation inwhich National Day is potentially a contributor, it has become itself an objectof contestation.

In fact, each of the major objections to National Day suggests potentialalternative modes of incorporation. For the traditionalists of the far right, thesuggested mode of incorporation ranges from total assimilation to completeexclusion. On the other hand, perhaps less obviously, if it is the very idea ofnation that is invalid, that also suggests an alternative to multiculturalism. Forcosmopolitans, national belonging is either meaningless or, less radically, onlyone of many meaningful belongings. This is a transnational (Glick Schilleret al. 1995) or cosmopolitan (Benhabib 2006) mode of incorporation. Here,immigrants ought not to be Iranian Swedish, but Iranian and Swedish (andsocialist, heterosexual, Muslim). More importantly, immigrants are individ-uals free to pick and choose identities and group memberships. This is similarto the official mode of incorporation put forth in connection with NationalDay. However, this particular multiculturalism-in-practice does not presumethe declining influence of nation or national identity. Far from it, the multi-culturalism promulgated by elites and the media is a multiculturalism thatattempts to be constitutive of national identity.

Conclusions

The established parties and major media in Sweden have gotten behind mul-ticulturalism for Sweden with unusual force. This is a particular type ofmulticulturalism, too, that aims to become a vital part of Swedish liberaldemocracy. In a sense, National Day is both a multicultural iteration and ademocratic iteration quite similar to the one Benhabib (2006) proposes wheredemocracy itself is reinvested with new meanings as a result of contact betweencultures and the appearance of new democratic dilemmas. Swedish democracyis recast as multiculturalist. Immigrants are given an institutionalized(sometimes critical) voice in the mainstream media. They have been able toparticipate in this democratic iteration, shaping Swedish discourses of multi-culturalism, and, therefore, nationhood. At the same time, lines of cleavage areredrawn, not necessarily between immigrants and Swedes, but betweenmulticulturalists, traditionalists and cosmopolitans. Multiculturalist views ofvarious stripes have been privileged, but the newness of the holiday leavesspace for opponents to air their views and have them remarked upon in thewider civil sphere.

Diversity, however, is an already established fact in Sweden. Benhabib(2006) argues that democracy retains its vitality because it is ambiguousenough to produce iterations. Similarly, multiculturalism, perhaps, benefitsfrom a good degree of polysemy or even vagueness. Vagueness creates a spacefor iteration that allows an ideology to change with new contexts. It seems tobe also true that a multiculturalism that can adapt to shifts in political,



economic and social context, and, as such, is more likely to survive (Meer andModood 2009 on ‘civic re-balancing’). National Day seems, in Sweden, tohave provided both a space for democratic iteration and one for multiculturaliteration in which Sweden’s relationship toward difference has been restatedand reinvested with meaning in a way which may further the national conver-sation in a positive way.

Yet this iteration has not been entirely successful. We should be careful notto extend the analogy between democratic and multicultural iteration too far.Democracy has nearly universally positive connotations in the modern world.Multiculturalism, may have by now become too negative or contentious tosurvive. The process of iteration, thus, has the potential to rehabilitate theconcept of multiculturalism as an organizing concept for modern, diversedemocracies, but it is a potential that is by no means certain of realization.

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Chad Goldberg, Mara Loveman, the partici-pants of the Race & Ethnicity Training Seminar at the University of Wisconsinand the anonymous reviewers at Nations and Nationalism for their helpfulcomments on an earlier draft of this article.

Notes

1 Celebrations of the flag had taken part on June 6 in other forms, however, since 1893 (Elgenius2011b).

2 June 6, in fact, marks the election of Gustav Vasa and the ratification of the 1809 Basic Law.3 Whether ‘new Swedes’ extend beyond the first generation is an object of dispute, just as when

a person ceases to be an immigrant is an object of dispute. Given that the term emphasizes thenewness of a person’s Swedish status, one might logically limit its usage to the first generation. Yet,in practice, the term remains imprecise, and sometimes is applied beyond the first generation toanyone who is not ethnically Swedish.

4 The right to carry Sami flags was also fought for around the same time as immigrants soughtthe right to carry their flags. The fact that the Sami flag was allowed while immigrants’ flags werenot is indicative that the expectations of integration (or not) are different for a national minorityand an immigrant.

5 Parekh’s report to the Commission provoked strong responses, however, many of whichcentered around this phrase, and which, essentially, disagreed that promoting internal solidarityfor cultural groups was compatible with wider societal solidarity.

6 See also Joppke, 2004 on Australia. I disagree with Joppke in his argument that multicultur-alism becomes entangled with national identity only in settler societies such as Australia andCanada. The Swedish case, I think, provides a good counterexample.

7 This paper focuses on the symbolic construction of idioms of nationhood, drawing from textmaterials. Two main sources of data are used. First, parliamentary debates regarding the creationof National Day were examined. These documents were accessed through the Swedish Parli-ament’s Web site (http://www.riksdagen.se) and were located using the search term nationaldag*(national day). This search returned twenty-one debates from between 1992 and 2005. Second,Sweden’s largest daily newspaper, Dagens Nyheter (DN) provided news coverage of National Day.



http://www.riksdagen.se

Again, the search term nationaldag* was used to identify sixty relevant articles in the online archivefrom the years 2003 through 2011. These sources focus on official discourse, providing thetop-down perspective on the creation of National Day and the history of top-down multicultur-alism in Sweden in general (Voyer 2013). Data were analyzed qualitatively, with the aid qualitativesoftware package, N*Vivo 9 (NVivo qualitative data analysis software; QSR International PtyLtd. Version 9, 2010). Following conventions for qualitative research laid out by Miles andHuberman (1994), broad codes drawn from the literature (multiculturalism, cosmopolitanism,Europeanization, attitudes toward nationalism) were applied first. Concepts and themes were thenadjusted and refined as coding continued, introducing codes such as ‘immigrant nationalism’,‘anti-nationalistic nationalism’ and ‘contestation’. Given the research questions noted above, themain focus of the analysis is national day as multiculturalism-in-practice, though other readingsare possible (e.g. Heinö 2009 on ‘individualization’ and Rodell 2010 on national geographies).

8 Mats Einarsson (Left) doubted national day could take on the same progressive meaning asNorway and France’s days because Sweden lacked a moment of liberation (Sveriges Riksdag2004/05: 37)

9 A cataloging and history of far right, anti-immigrant groups is beyond the scope of this article.For background on these groups, please see Pred (2000), Odmalm (2011) and Widfeldt (2008).10 Kymlicka and Post (2006: 141) noted that one strain of multiculturalism in France was theassertion that ‘being Muslim is one way of being French’.

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Multicultural iteration: Swedish National Day as multiculturalism-in-practice

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