Cosmopolitan Swedishness between the national and the global

Abstract

Drawing on the concepts of white cosmopolitanism and white cosmopolitan femininity, this article analyses the ‘cosmopolitan narratives’ of Swedish women who lived abroad for an extended period before eventually returning to Sweden. Based on ethnographic research involving 46 in-depth interviews, it aims to examine how national borders are maintained and transgressed in the construction of cosmopolitanism. The women’s identification with a cosmopolitan ethic is shaped by the intersection of whiteness, nationality, and class, which provide them with continuous mobility and a sense of ‘worldliness’. As symbolic representatives of the Swedish nation, they embody national ideals that sustain and reinscribe the nation within the global context. Therefore, within the global inequalities inherent in white cosmopolitanism, the body emerges as a site where global hierarchies reconnect with Swedishness and whiteness, which enables Swedish women to navigate contemporary global settings as self-defined cosmopolitan subjects.