Undoing Homogeneity in the Nordic Region

"Developing the idea famously set out by W. E. B Du Bois, Stuart Hall suggested that living with difference would be the problem of the twenty-first century. Instances all across the world provide evidence of this and this insightful book, centred on the Nordic countries adds powerfully to a body of critical scholarship on race and ethnicity that shows how entangled they are within repressed histories of internal and external colonisation and imagined nationhood. By considering the treatment of indigenous minorities alongside migrant communities the editors and contributors impressively advance understandings of the ways in which difference is imagined and represented. Moreover the essays in this book skilfully analyse the peculiarity of claimed ethnic homogeneity. By linking the role of this myth to the influential model of the social democratic welfare state they show that Hall’s ‘fateful triangle’ of ethnicity-race-nation requires a fourth pillar, namely the state. Here is a book that may seem to be mainly of relevance to Nordic scholars but will I hope be read well beyond there and by all those interested in ethnicity, migration and the state, for its critical, engaged and engaging, unmasking of assumed homogeneity as well as its search for the possibilities of solidarity across difference."- Karim Murji, Co-editor of Current Sociology, University of West London, UK

"This collection is a welcome addition to the ongoing discussion on politics of difference in Europe. Offering a Nordic perspective, it combines a historical deconstruction of national myths of homogeneity (questioning notions of exceptionality, denials of colonialism/racism and claims of innocence) with policy level analysis (securitization), individual narratives and group negotiation strategies. Particularly insightful is its inclusion of diverse exclusionary discourses in one volume. This strategy highlights the similarities between discourses concerning different disadvantaged groups that are often presented and discussed separately (Samis and Romas but also migrants and asylum seekers). Discussing the interconnected nature of these exclusionary structures through a historical perspective provides a strong foundation for joint struggles from below and for co-creating new politics of solidarity." - Halleh Ghorashi, VU Amsterdam, The Netherlands

"This wide-ranging and engaging collection underlines the historical and political labour involved in producing homogeneity as a state of innocence under perpetual threat. With its emphasis on histories and practices of nation-building, bordering and race-making, the chapters not only contest the political and affective investments in Nordic homogeneity that are so pronounced in the region, and transnationally, they also foreground the reality and potential of forms of solidarity forged against and beyond homogeneity’s coercive fictions." - Gavan Titley, author of The Crises of Multiculturalism. Maynooth University, Ireland