Nedläggningen av BB Sollefteå. Känslor, rumslighet och motstånd

Abstract

This study explores expressions of emotions, space, and resistance in narratives of the closure of BB Sollefteå, a maternity ward that used to be located in a sparsely populated Swedish municipality. The closure took place in a context of healthcare restructuring and centralization politics, causing basic services to close down in rural municipalities and regions. Interviews with eight pregnant women were conducted between March 2017 and June 2018 and the interviews were subjected to narrative analysis. Theoretically, the study leans on a feminist and relational approach to emotions, space, and gender, and specific attention is paid to women’s emotional positioning in relation to spatial objects such as the longer distance to the hospital, the town of Sollefteå, the regional assembly, etcetera. Three narratives are repeated in the interviews with pregnant women: a narrative about the longer distance to the closest maternity ward; a narrative about the experience of peripherality; and a narrative about resistance. The results reveal how women’s positioning in relation to specific objects made certain emotions stick to both the women and the objects in ways that were determined by place and space. Feeling ignored by decision-makers in the region, women performed acts of microresistance, including avoiding giving birth in the region’s biggest town and renegotiating the narrative of the town of Sollefteå.