Ungdom och multikulturalism

Abstract

Extensive immigration to Sweden during the last twenty-five years has resulted in a widespread rhetoric of multiculturalism. At the same time, many Swedes are suspicious and even hostile towards immigrants. In this battle between multiculturalism and xenophobic Swedish nationalism, young people are a special target. In this paper I discuss how teenagers living in a highly multi-ethnic district south of Stockholm respond to these two scenarios. How do they experience ethnic and cultural diversity in their everyday lives? What does ethnicity mean to them in their own process of identity construction? How is ethnicity expressed and managed in different social situations? Can one see any signs of a developing cosmopolitan, "syncretic", youth culture? One of my conclusions from the interviews with some thirty teenagers of mixed origins is that ethnicity and multiculturalism among them is operationalized mainly through the de-emphasizing of ethnic difference and the creation of culturally "neutral", bridging, arenas of interaction. Official Swedish multiculturalism seems here to have been transformed into a public non-culturalism.