Introduction and Background

Immigration and crime are at the core of many political agendas in Europe and the USA. The securitization of migration, and anti-immigrant sentiments, have become a dominant political concern (Buonfino 2006; Huysmans 2006). Politicians emphasize the link between immigrants and crime in debates that are often heated and antagonistic (Barker 2013; Melossi 2015). These debates are centered on the stereotype of the dangerous, criminal immigrant, i.e., the crimmigrant, creating racialized fears about immigrants, and legitimizing punitive practices (Franko 2020, 2011; Franko Aas and Bosworth 2013; Brown 2016; Lousley 2020; Stumpf 2006, 2020).

A rhetoric of ‘othering’ has historically been at the center of populist, radical-right parties, which have experienced a resurgence over recent decades, and can now be found in almost all European parliaments (Krzyżanowski et al. 2018; Rydgren and van der Meiden 2019). These parties, but also many mainstream ones, are expressing a powerful criticism of immigration, and demanding harsher, exclusionary, penal practices. This renascent anti-immigrant rhetoric has led to numerous legislative changes in the European Union in the field of immigration, mobility, and border control (Huysmans and Buonfino 2008; Krzyżanowski 2018; van der Woude et al., 2017). These intensified nationalist and xenophobic discourses have contributed to fortified ‘crimmigration control systems’ in the EU, which have reinforced Europe’s borders and restricted free movement (Koulish and van der Woude 2020: 9). This shows that political debates about immigrants and crime result in practical, negative consequences for immigrant populations, as they are stigmatized, policed, excluded, and deported (Barker 2018; Boréus 2021; Franko 2011, 2020; Lousley 2020; Stumpf 2006). The intensified crimmigration practices are often directed at Muslims and people of color (Griffiths 2017; Koulish and van der Woude 2020; Stumpf 2020) and have come with huge negative consequences for the targeted individuals, as they experience state racism, fear, shock, and distress (Bhatia 2015, 2020a).

In line with developments in other European countries, crime policy in the Nordic countries has taken a punitive and anti-immigrant turn in the last decade, and the narrative of the foreign criminal has become increasingly central also in Nordic politics (Rydgren and van der Meiden 2019; Shammas 2016; Tham 2018; Todd-Kvam 2019; Widfeldt 2017). Discussions have become less and less human rights-oriented, and politicians in the Nordic countries are increasingly describing immigrants as a threat to national security (Barker 2018; Franko 2011, 2020). This has coincided with the so-called Syrian refugee crisis that occurred in Europe in 2015–16, which amplified nationalistic and radical-right politics (Krzyżanowski et al 2018). Lately, the global COVID-19 crisis intensified nationalistic policies even further, and was reinforced by the political, anti-immigrant rhetoric around Brexit, and the white nationalist presidency of Trump (Koulish and van der Woude 2020; Mukumbang 2020). The crisis rhetoric in Europe and the USA has been strongly linked to immigration, and racist expressions have further strengthened exclusionary policies and national security measures focused on immigrants (Koulish and van der Woude 2020; Stumpf 2020; van der Woude, 2020).

Sweden has traditionally been described as both a Nordic and a European exception, being open to refugees and resisting populist, radical-right sentiments (Boréus 2021; Rydgren and van der Meiden 2019). However, as some researchers have noted, Sweden in fact has a long history of racism but the country’s public and self-image does not acknowledge that ‘racism has been, and continues to be, part of the Swedish social fabric’ (e.g., Antoine 2022: 94; Mulinari and Neergaard 2017). This became more explicit in 2010, when the radical-right and anti-immigrant party, the Sweden Democrats, entered the Swedish parliament. The entry of the radical right into parliament, together with a parallel change in the rhetoric of the dominant right-wing party, has slowly but undoubtedly shifted the parliamentary discourse toward a strong focus on immigrants and crime (Boréus 2021; Rydgren and van der Meiden 2019; Widfeldt 2018; Williams 2018). Racist sentiments have once again become normalized in the Swedish political discourse (Antoine 2022; Mulinari and Neergaard 2017).

This article seeks to look more closely at the current debate on immigrants and crime in the Swedish parliament. Its aim is to deepen our understanding of how and why politicians link immigrants to crime. It is of special interest to examine how the new, radical-right party in the Swedish parliament, the Sweden Democrats, has influenced the crimmigrant debate, and to study how the more mainstream parliamentarians have navigated this novel political discourse. The article will further use theoretical discussions of ‘the stranger’ to deepen the analysis of how immigrants are linked to danger. The study will assist us in understanding how and why politicians construct immigrants as dangerous, criminal strangers.

Immigrants and Crime in Nordic Politics

Criminological research has shown that crime rates in general have been stable or declined in the Nordic countries during the last decade even though there is an overrepresentation of immigrants and their offspring in official crime statistics (see, e.g., Skardhamar et al. 2014; Brå 2021). Also in Sweden, there seems to have been a decline in self-reported offending and conviction levels over recent years, especially among immigrant youth and men with an immigrant background (Bäckman et al. 2021; Vasiljevic, Svensson and Shannon 2020). Still, the public and political debate on immigration and crime has intensified, and immigrants have continuously been viewed as dangerous and threatening (Herz 2019). The narrative of the crimmigrant is both deeply racialized and also gendered (Anderson 2013), but this article’s focus is on the linkage between immigration and crime.

The Nordic welfare states have been described as encompassing both inclusionary, collective practices, and exclusionary, nationalistic practices. Despite their reputation for welcoming immigrants and embracing human rights, the Nordic countries have tended to preserve the well-being and security of their citizens, while excluding and deporting foreigners (Antoine 2022; Barker 2013, 2018; Franko 2020; Gundhus 2020). Powerful, racialized narratives of the criminal immigrant are utilized by Nordic politicians to defend their exclusionary penal practices (Franko 2020; Todd-Kvam 2019). Hence, stories about crimmigrants are used to validate criminalization and punitiveness, as well as nationalistic politics (Barker 2013; Franko 2020). The current study will look in more detail at how crimmigrants are described by politicians and will thus provide further analysis of the crimmigrant concept.

In Nordic politics, there was a resurgence in the danger posed by ‘foreign criminals’ as a prominent topic in governmental debates on immigration. The crimmigrant has become a useful folk-devil who can be blamed for most of the things viewed as having gone wrong in society (Barker 2018; Elgenius and Rydgren 2019; Franko 2011, 2020; Griffiths 2017; Todd-Kvam 2019). This is not really a new phenomenon, since far-right, fascist, and extremist parties have significantly shaped the political debate in Europe during the twentieth century (Hainsworth 2016). After the Second World War, however, the Swedish right-wing was divided into smaller parties, and the Social Democrats were for decades the dominant political party. In the early 1990s, Sweden had a short-lived radical-right party in parliament, which promoted neo-liberal ideas together with a nationalistic and racist rhetoric (Boréus 2021; Mulinari and Neergaard 2017). Simultaneously, the radical-right Sweden Democrats developed from a small extremist party that was strongly intertwined with neo-Nazi organizations. Efforts by the party leadership to, at least publicly, sanitize the party’s racist past have been successful, gaining them entry into parliament. Lately, the party has become one of the largest parliamentary parties, and ‘a significant political force’ in Sweden (Widfeldt 2018: 11). For a long time, the other parliamentary parties kept the Sweden Democrats at arm’s length, but this changed in 2014, when the liberal-conservative Moderate party shifted its rhetoric and started to explicitly describe immigrants as a threat, and later opened up to collaboration with the Sweden Democrats (Boréus 2021).

Some researchers have argued that immigrant-friendly, mainstream parties have to accommodate to the radical right’s racist narratives focused on dangerous strangers (Heinze 2018; Widfeldt 2018), while others have argued that the mainstream parties have both the power and the agency to decide whether or not to tap into an anti-immigrant and racist discourse (Brown et al. 2023). In Europe, for example, social democratic and center-left parties have also expressed a desire to tighten borders, claiming that they are responding to public opinion (Mondon 2022). Consequently, to understand the latest emergence of the radical right in politics, it is crucial to also study the so-called mainstream parties and their actions and discourse. In such an analysis, one needs to keep in mind that the mainstream is a fluid position which changes over time, and that the mainstream is not always good or rational (Brown et al. 2023). For example, the election of Trump mainstreamed nationalist and fascist ideas and brought them into the White House (Koulish and van der Woude 2020). Thus, the analysis in this study will specifically focus on the interplay of the radical-right parties with the other (currently) mainstream parliamentary parties in the debate on immigrants and crime.

Looking at the European political discourse on immigration, comparative studies show that the debate differs somewhat. In some countries, political debates have emphasized the need for security in relation to immigrants, while in others, they point to the negative impact of immigrants on welfare resources. However, the element of threat is present in the discourse on immigration in all European countries (Boréus 2021; Tsoukala 2005; Vollmer 2011). One analysis of descriptions of immigration in seven European countries showed that ‘security and crime’ was the most common way in which immigration was framed by politicians and journalists (Berkhout 2012). Another, later analysis confirmed the continuing dominance of a ‘threat perspective’ in six out of seven European countries’ political rhetoric on immigrants (Boréus 2021). Political narratives on immigration in the UK have centered on ‘the wrong sort of immigrant,’ and on those who manipulate the immigration system, which creates racialized narratives about immigrants (De Angelis 2020; Lousley 2020). In the French parliamentary debate on immigration, politicians have not only systematically cast suspicion on immigrants, but also on their presumed allies (van der Valk 2003). Thus, the European political debate on immigration seems somewhat varied, but is nonetheless deeply embedded in a racialized security discourse in which immigrants are depicted as a threat, and are closely linked to crime.

Radical-right politicians have been especially successful in directing the political debate toward the dangers of immigration and multiculturalism, demanding restricted immigration along with harsher sentencing practices. In parliament, radical-right parties describe immigrants as a threat, danger, and risk (van der Valk 2003). Besides the direct impact produced by such parties through governance, radical-right parties can also indirectly influence mainstream parties to adjust their political programs in line with those of the radical right (Williams 2018). At the same time, mainstream parties can seize the opportunity and actively choose to engage in a populist and racist debate as a way of gaining voter support (Brown et al. 2023). In Sweden, the key priority of the radical right is anti-immigration, in combination with law-and-order, packaged in terms of anti-establishment populism and the support of traditional values (Widfeldt 2018). Hence, the control of both crime and immigration is intertwined in the rhetoric of the radical right (Stumpf 2020; van der Woude 2020).

Radical-right parties in Europe frame the threat of immigration in several ways: as a threat to cultural and national identity, as the cause of criminality and unemployment, and as an exploitation of the welfare system (Rydgren 2018). These parties’ ideologies are rooted in ethnic nationalism, i.e., ethnonationalism, and they aspire to strengthen the dominance of the perceived national ethnic group, and to ‘defend’ the (fictional) homogenous nation state. At their ideological core lies an idealized and racist view of the ethnically and culturally ‘pure’ nation. Ethnonationalists want to remove dangerous outsiders since these do not, and cannot, share the same history, culture, and blood as true members of the nation state (Bar-On 2018; Elgenius and Rydgren 2019). However, Pettersson and Augoustinos (2021: 266) have noted that talking about ‘the Nation’ has also become a strategy used by mainstream politicians to express anti-immigrant sentiment. According to Sharma (2020), the discursive separation of national natives from immigrants is a form of political rhetoric currently used by parties across the entire political spectrum.

This article will interlace elements from the crimmigration research with studies of political debates on immigration and crime, with a special focus on the radical right. Juxtaposing the research in this way will contribute new perspectives on crimmigration to political research, while introducing new aspects of politics to the study of crimmigration. To theoretically understand why the political discourse on immigrants and crime has such an appeal, we may turn to theories concerning ‘the stranger.’

Theorizing the Stranger

In populist rhetoric, strangers are easy to blame, securitize, and criminalize. Our unstable world can lead people to seek control and search for scapegoats. According to Bauman (2016), strangers such as immigrants, refugees, and asylum seekers embody our existential insecurities, and we project our fears onto the stranger. An anti-immigration rhetoric ‘appeal[s] to diffuse anxieties, disaffection, and resentment’ (Betz 2018: 10). Hence, we need the stranger, in relation to whom we can regain power and form a sense of community by reinforcing our boundaries (Ahmed 2000). Strangers at our borders may consequently cause moral panics characterized by fear, anxiety, nationalism, and racism (Bauman 2016). Immigrants, migrants, and asylum seekers constitute the ultimate ‘dangerous’ strangers, and their transgression of borders is viewed as a contamination of our valued (white) society (Ahmed 2000; Best 2019). In today’s world, Muslims tend to be described as one of the main threats to national security. Muslim migrants in particular are characterized by politicians as terrorists, which sensitizes the public to think of Muslims as dangerous (Brown 2016; Rydgren 2018; Stumpf 2020). In this way, immigrants, and especially Muslim immigrants, are suitable strangers who are used by politicians in their ethnonationalist scapegoating (Thorleifsson 2017, 2019). Islamophobia is expressed in both liberal and mainstream discourses, in which the ‘evil Arab’ is a well-known trope embodying society’s suspicions and concerns (Mondon and Winter 2017; Shammas 2018).

Even though the stranger is someone unfamiliar, we recognize the stranger as a person out of place, a body out of place (Ahmed 2000). According to Simmel (1908/1950), a stranger is someone ‘who comes today and stays tomorrow,’ while a wanderer is someone ‘who comes today and goes tomorrow.’ Consequently, even if the stranger stays for a long time, or even forever, he is still characterized as not belonging to society. Wood (1934: 45) has interpreted Simmel’s ‘stranger’ as a person who is in the group but can never become part of the group. Hence, a stranger can be described as a newcomer or immigrant who is always approaching (Schuetz 1944).

Because strangers are considered to bring ‘the outside into the inside,’ they are seen as disrupting the existing order (Bauman 1991: 56). Communities are described as being polluted by the stranger and his baggage, thus endangering the wonderful life lived by the ‘good citizen’ (Ahmed 2000: 31). In this racist ‘stranger danger’ discourse, the stranger is considered guilty even before any crime has been committed; he is instead judged by what might happen (Ahmed 2000: 22, 33; Bauman 2016: 43). Strangers such as asylum seekers are continuously viewed as inherently dishonest and dangerous, thereby justifying the crimmigration system’s actions and inactions (Bhatia 2020a; 2020b). Societies’ encounters with strangers expose racialized insecurities and brutal, exclusionary practices toward strangers (Parmar 2020).

Ahmed (2000) has argued that our meeting with the stranger can be interpreted as a bodily encounter, in which the perceived dirty, black bodies of strangers meet the white social body. Borders can thus be said to have undergone a shift from being geographical to instead having become embodied in the foreigner (Khosravi 2010; Weber and Pickering 2011). Thus, the metaphysical border can be seen as being performed by the stranger (Tazreiter 2020; Wonders and Jones 2019). To summarize, theories about the stranger may show us how immigrants are used as scapegoats for crime and how people project their racist fears onto the stranger. These ‘foreigners’ are viewed as disruptors of the societal order, bringing danger via their crossing of the border.

Methodology

This article focuses on how immigrants and crime have been discussed in Swedish contemporary politics over three years: 2018, 2019, and 2020. The study material comprises all parliamentary debates that have mentioned immigrants and crime in the Swedish parliament (Riksdagen). It has been argued that it is in parliamentary debates that politicians position themselves by strongly articulating their ideological visions and thereby also legitimizing the ways in which topics may be debated in public (Huysmans and Buonfino 2008). The Swedish parliament can be described as a ‘working parliament’ (Ilie 2017), with a focus on legislative proceedings and committee work rather than an on rhetorically skillful and heated confrontations between adversaries, even though such interactions do also occur.

The year 2018 was selected as the starting point for the study because a general election for the Swedish parliament was held in September of this year. Further, this election was ‘characterised by a particularly significant preoccupation with law and order’ (Hermansson 2019: 4), and it was also the election that established the radical-right Sweden Democrats party as the third largest party in the Swedish parliament. The largest party is the Social Democratic Workers’ Party (hereafter referred to as the Social Democrats), followed in this election by the Moderates, a liberal-conservative party. Table 1 summarizes the political parties in the Swedish Parliament, their ideologies, and the percentage of votes received in the 2018 general election.

Table 1 The political parties represented in the Swedish Parliament 2018–2020
Full size table

All Swedish parliamentary debates have easily accessible protocols, which contain verbatim transcriptions of everything that is said, and by whom. These protocols are available at the parliamentary website, and for the purposes of this study, all protocols were selected that included the two words: ‘immigrant/s’Footnote 1 and ‘crime.’ This resulted in a collection of 114 protocols (see Appendix 1). The protocols are generally very extensive, with the longest involving a debate that lasted for 11 h and resulted in a protocol of 173 pages (2018/19_107), while the shortest debate was 50 min, resulting in a 15-page protocol (2019/20_16). The selected material includes all types of debates: party leader debates, general policy debates, debates on specific topics, interpellations, legislative proposals, etc. Hence, these debates encompass a range of contexts in which parliamentarians express their political views on immigrants and crime. In the analysis process, the sections of the protocols in which politicians referred to immigrants in relation to crime were first highlighted, and then, a new document was created that consisted of 120 pages of text segments, which constituted the final sample.

During the reading, and re-reading, of the final text segments, they began to look more and more like stories told by politicians about ‘the immigrant,’ and thus a focus on the crimmigrant as a narrative character seemed appropriate. Narratives are described as crucial in politics, since they enable politicians to connect with the public, formulate problems, and propose solutions (De Fina 2017). Sandberg (2016) has highlighted different types of narratives that are relevant for criminology, and describes how repeated characters may be interpreted as narratives in themselves. However, this article does not conduct a full narrative analysis, it simply makes use of the concept of the narrative character in order to analyze how ‘the crimmigrant’ is described, promoted, and contested in Swedish politics.

The first stage of the analysis was exploratory, and involved examining various characters found in the final sample. The analysis then became more selective and focused on recurring narrative characters, trying to see how they were defined in relation to each other, and to the crimes they were associated with. The analysis of the text segments showed that immigrants were associated with three specific types of crime; terrorism, honor-related crime, and organized theft. These formed the core of the first three narrative characters: the Islamic Terrorist, the Crimmigrant Stranger, and the Crimmigrant Wanderer, with the two latter names being borrowed from Simmel (1908/1950). Further, many political debates did not link immigrants to specific crimes, but to crime in general, or to a variety of crimes, while simultaneously pointing out that immigrants are not, and do not want to be, part of society. This third type of crimmigrant was therefore labeled the Dangerous Outsider. Finally, the link between immigrants and crime was also contested via a competing image of the immigrant as a law abiding, hard-working contributor to society, and this character was labeled the Good Worker. The article will now move on to further explore these five characters.

The Political Debate on Crimmigrants

The Islamic Terrorist

The Islamic Terrorist is an image heavily promoted by the radical-right party the Sweden Democrats. This party both launched and reinforced this narrative character throughout the years examined in the study. They promoted it so successfully that it was included in practically every debate on immigrants and crime that they participated in. The constant repetition of the Islamic Terrorist has forced the other parties to take a stand, with the other right-wing parties for the most part choosing to support this narrative, while the Social Democrats and the other traditionally left-wing parties tried, but failed, to challenge it. The Islamic Terrorist is described as an imminent threat that needs to be averted. Foreign terrorists are said to be using migration flows to sneak into the country, and once inside, they change and damage Swedish society:

‘Over recent years the Islamists have been given an increasing amount of space here in Sweden. They have acquired an increasing amount of influence and an increasing amount of power both in Western Europe and here in Sweden. It is not only the case that we have been subject to a long list of horrendous terrorist attacks in recent years, in which radical Muslims have attacked innocents with everything from lorries to bombs, guns, axes and knives. We can also see the way the Islamists have advanced their position—and in the case of the situation here in Sweden, actually with the approval of the government—for example through the permitting of calls to prayer and different forms of oppression against women. Islamism is not least being spread from many of the mosques that today exist on Swedish land. There is a long list of mosques with links to rogue Islamist states’

(The Sweden Democrats 201718_139).

Hence, we have a ‘terror crisis’ (SD 201718_73), and Islamic terrorists are a ‘terror threat’ against Sweden (SD 201718_103). The evil Arab stereotype (Shammas 2018; Stumpf 2020) recurs constantly in the rhetoric of the Sweden Democrats, and their anti-Muslim racist discourse is very evident (see also Mulinari and Neergaard 2017; Thorleifsson 2019). However, the party’s Islamic Terrorist rhetoric is also to some extent rooted in a specific Muslim terrorist, who killed five people in Sweden in 2017. The radical-right parties often highlight specific acts of violence by Muslims, and by decontextualizing these events, Muslims in general can be described as an ethno-religious threat to the entire nation (Thorleifsson 2019). By continuously referring to an exceptional, violent case to exemplify the Islamic Terrorist, the threat is made more frightening.

However, the danger often seems to originate from the Islamic religion itself, rather than from terrorism (e.g., SD 2018/19_32). Muslim immigrants are described as forcing Swedes to abide by sharia law, as subjecting ‘us’ to honor cultures and Islamization, and requiring women to wear a veil (e.g., SD 201920_38). This focus on the Islamic religion and culture as a threat can be understood in light of the racist core of the Sweden Democrats, which is centered on ethnonationalism (see Bar-On 2018; Wodak 2015). Islam has become a central focus of the political debate in many European countries (Bar-On, 2018). Immigrants, migrants, and refugees are continuously linked to terrorism (Galantino 2022), while there is an ongoing ‘Islamization of criminal behaviour’ (D’Amato 2019: 332), which is also evident in the Swedish parliamentary debate on the Islamic terrorist.

The threat from Islam, and Islamic terrorism, is viewed as something that needs to, and can be stopped at the border (e.g., SD 2017/18_128). The radical-right parliamentarians depict themselves as the protectors of the nation, tapping into the discourse of the white, masculine, heroic rescuer (Thorleifsson 2019). An accusatory finger is pointed at the other parties within the Swedish parliament, who have not prevented Islamic terrorists from entering Sweden:

‘Today (…), I wonder whether other parties wish they had thought differently before allowing thousands of potential terrorists to settle in our beautiful summery country. That the government has not taken any measures worthy of the seriousness of the situation is perhaps due to the fact that it lacks the capacity to see how serious the situation is for those families who have for a time now been living as neighbours to terrorists capable of crimes against humanity. That there are radicalised Islamic terrorists living among us is one of the most absurd security risks our country has ever witnessed, and this is a result of the government’s and the social-liberal establishment’s long-standing and irresponsible migration and security policy. There is nothing we can do but express regret at the naivety of other parties and continue our struggle against the social-liberal establishment’s long-standing and irresponsible policies’

(The Sweden Democrats 2018/19_103).

An anti-establishment discourse is central to the radical-right parties’ rhetoric, and is underlined by a narrative focused on liberal elites having ‘sacrificed the purity and innocence of Sweden on the altar of multiculturalism’ (Thorleifsson 2019: 532). Since Islamic terrorists are described as having already managed to enter Sweden, this means that the Islamic terror threat is also coming from within the country. Islamic State terrorists and ‘monsters’ are roaming our streets, according to the Sweden Democrats (SD 2017/18_128; SD 2018/19_57). The strangers are thus not only at our door (cf. Bauman 2016), they have crossed our borders, and are living among us. This makes these immigrants even more frightening, since they are not only an anticipated threat, they are already here. The Islamic Terrorist character clearly reflects worries about border crossings by the wrong sort of immigrants, an anti-Muslim racism, as well as a fear of contamination of our (white) nation (cf. Ahmed 2000; Best 2019).

While the Islamic Terrorist is predominately a narrative of the radical right, it is also explicitly supported by the conservative and right-wing parties, which would have been unthinkable in Sweden only a few years earlier. As in the other Nordic countries, the radical right’s rhetoric on immigrants has ‘begun to spill over into the political mainstream’ (Pettersson and Augoustinos 2021: 270), and the right-wing parties are also actively constructing immigrants, as well as Muslims, as a threat (see Boréus 2021). However, the Swedish right-wing and conservative parties do not fully accept the Islamic Terrorist narrative, instead emphasizing that some immigrants constitute a threat to the nation’s security (e.g., M 2019/20_41), and thus alluding to the presence of ‘rotten apples’ among the immigrants. By contrast, certain politicians, particularly from the Social Democrats, try to challenge the narrative of the Islamic Terrorist, and clearly position themselves as being opposed to this rhetoric, which will be developed further on in this article. Hence, even though some politicians express an opposing narrative, they are simultaneously involved in the debate. Thus, they are contributing to the narrative about the Islamic Terrorist initiated by the radical right, thereby strengthening the rhetorical link between immigrants, Muslims, and terrorism.

The Crimmigrant Stranger

While the principal association made between immigrants and crime relates to terrorism, immigrants are also held accountable for many other types of crime, especially according to the radical right. These politicians describe immigrants as rapists, murderers, robbers, human traffickers, ‘welfare criminals,’ organized criminals, and smugglers of weapons, drugs, goods, and sweets (sic) (SD 2017/18_128; SD 2019/20_14; 2019/20_38). However, there are two types of crime for which all parliamentary parties seem to agree that immigrants can be blamed: crimes related to ‘honor,’ and organized thefts and burglaries. These two types of crime can be described as being committed by the Crimmigrant Stranger, and the Crimmigrant Wanderer, which will be developed below.

When it comes to honor-related crimes, these are understood as crimes committed within immigrant families with the aim of protecting the family’s honor. They include both physical violence and psychological oppression directed by immigrant fathers and sons against women and girls within the family. There appears to be a common view among politicians, across party lines, that there is a well-established ‘honor culture’ among some groups of immigrants. ‘Honor-related norms’ are described as being based on patriarchal structures that lead to an extreme control by immigrant men over women and girls. According to the politicians, the immigrant men not only subject women to violence, but also control their freedom and sexuality through child marriages, forced marriages, and ‘virginity controls’ (e.g., M 201920_125; S 2019/20_27; LIB 2017/18_80; CD 2018/19_33; C 2019/20_51). This view is shared by many of the parliamentarians, who state that honor-related violence and oppression are something that does not ‘belong’ in Sweden:

‘Last week our Prime Minister was clear in saying that he wants a harsher tone in relation to honour crime. He said: It does not belong here. It suffocates people’s freedom, not being able to choose the way you move about the community, and whom you spend time with, are in love with, want to marry. It is a powerful restriction of people’s freedom. That is not Sweden. He also said that we have done too little for too long and that this issue will be combated with tougher sanctions, so that those who commit crimes with an honour motive will be sentenced particularly harshly, but also by changing attitudes and increasing knowledge. This violence and oppression involve serious violations of women’s and girls’ rights to physical integrity and to self-determination in relation to their sexuality, child-bearing, relationships, education, and their financial situation. It is based on powerful patriarchal and heteronormative views, and is also directed at young men, boys and LGBTQ-persons’

(The Social Democrats 2018/19_69).

The above quote illustrates the way the debate on honor-related violence is packaged as a ‘foreign culture’ issue. Instead of openly expressing racism, it is voiced as a concern for women, children, and LGBTQ-persons. Honor-related criminals are viewed as disrespecting Swedish, liberal values. This framing also makes it possible for the traditionally left-wing and Social Democratic parties to adopt a firm stance against honor-related culture, while not being explicitly racist when they associate groups of immigrants with violence, oppression, and a ‘foreign’ (Muslim) culture. This consensus on honor-related crime differs from the way these politicians act when immigrants are linked to other types of crime, a view which they commonly challenge (e.g., S 2017/18_118; LEFT 2019/20_100). According to Pettersson and Augoustinos (2021), political rhetoric that refers to differences in culture enables politicians to express racist opinions more subtly. Politicians can refer to liberal values, to justify illiberal prejudices (Pettersson and Augoustinos 2021), which can clearly be seen in Swedish political discussions of honor-related crime. This form of liberal racism is much more normalized and can appear progressive, while still expressing a cultural essentialism (Mondon and Winter 2017).

Even though the ‘honor-related criminals’ live in Sweden, the politicians strongly link them to a foreign culture, as well as to a religion, values, and practices that are non-Swedish. These criminals are viewed as strangers, in line with Simmel’s (1908/1950) and Schuetz’s (1944) understanding of the concept. In the debate, it does not matter whether the immigrants are newcomers or second-generation Swedes; their honor-related culture keeps them forever categorized as the Crimmigrant Stanger.

The Crimmigrant Wanderer

Another type of crimmigrant is the criminal who is involved in a transnational, mobile, criminal group, committing organized thefts and burglaries. This character can be labeled as the Crimmigrant Wanderer. These organized gangs are highlighted by politicians across party lines, who describe criminal groups as coming to Sweden with the explicit purpose of committing thefts and burglaries, and then returning ‘home’ to sell their stolen goods:

‘The anti-crime mission of the Customs Service needs to be significantly strengthened, not least in order to stop the ravages caused by foreign theft gangs in Sweden. Foreign theft gangs are responsible for large numbers of residential burglaries and a majority of other serious thefts of car parts, boat motors, and agricultural machinery. But despite calls from the agencies of law enforcement, the Customs Service still lacks the authority to stop stolen goods being transported out of the country. According to the police, this trend in the activities of theft gangs is only going to continue’

(The Moderate Party 2020/21_17).

The politicians’ narratives about these types of criminal groups are very similar, lack any nuance, are presented as facts, and are not contested. Nor is this a debate driven by the radical right; instead, the issue is raised by parties from across the political spectrum. Since these organized criminals are described as coming from abroad, primarily from post-Soviet states, they need to be firmly stopped from entering or exiting via Sweden’s borders, according to both right-wing conservatives and Social Democrats, and also radical-right parliamentarians (e.g., M 2018/19_68, S 2020/21_26; SD 201920_44). At the same time, these organized criminals are not described primarily as a foreign threat, but more as a nuisance that needs to be dealt with firmly. In these political narratives, thefts, and burglaries are depicted as something that is to be expected from (certain) foreigners. According to Anderson (2013: 45), Eastern Europeans tend to be viewed as not ‘properly’ white, and they are associated with criminality, poverty, and ‘illegal’ immigration. In the Swedish political debate, it is noticeable that organized criminal gangs are not openly associated with any ‘foreign’ culture or religion. Instead, politicians emphasize that these criminals are from the post-Soviet states and that they plan to return to these countries. Theoretically, such organized criminals can be labeled ‘wanderers’ (Simmel 1908/1950), since they always leave eventually, not aspiring to become a part of the nation, and hence, they are not perceived as threatening. Honor-related criminals, on the other hand, are strangers who do not intend to leave, and who also bring their ‘foreign’ culture, religion, and violent practices with them, threatening our liberal values. Hence, we fear crimmigrant strangers since they threaten our national identities, but when it comes to the crimmigrant wanderers (i.e., international, organized criminals), we do not fear them, we put up with them.

The Dangerous Outsider

Another narrative character formulated in the parliamentary debate about immigrants and crime is the ‘Dangerous Outsider.’ This character is predominantly promoted by the right-wing parties and the radical right. These politicians stress the social exclusion, which they argue is characteristic of immigrants, as well as the immigrants’ dangerousness. The message is that they are not like us, and they do not want to be like us. In parliament, these politicians speak of an ‘integration crisis’ (M 2018/19_103), with some immigrants preferring to create ‘parallel societies’ within Sweden, rather than becoming integrated (CD 2017/18_80). A story is told about outsiders who are resisting integration, which leads to criminality:

‘One could also paint a much darker picture. A picture of the integration crisis, gang crime, explosions and shootings. Of unemployment among immigrants being four times as high as among those born in this country. Of children who do not speak Swedish well, and adults who do not speak Swedish at all. A picture of a growing shadow society, and now of this completely incomprehensible electricity crisis. Mr. Speaker, the government has lost control over what is happening in Sweden’

(The Moderate Party 2018/19_103).

In this ‘shadow society,’ trouble is linked to immigrants’ bodies and is localized to the places in which they congregate. The immigrant body can be seen as a border in itself, a metaphysical border within the nation (Khosravi 2010; Tazreiter 2020), and such borders need to be policed carefully. Bauman (1995: 2) has theorized that we have a need to annihilate the stranger via assimilation or exclusion, with the former being preferred by liberals, and the latter by nationalists/racists. This is clearly reflected in the material examined in this study, where the mainstream parties describe wanting to integrate immigrants, and the radical right wanting to deport them. Integration is viewed as both a means of entry into society and a means of controlling the foreigner and defusing his dangerousness. Hence, integration can be seen as the modern border crossing. As long as the Dangerous Outsider is not fully integrated, s/he can never really be part of the ‘group’ (cf. Wood 1934), nor of society. Once the outsider is integrated, the dangerousness is neutralized and the border crossing is complete.

However, according to the radical-right Sweden Democrats, immigrants have managed to build an unrecognizable ‘New Sweden’ (SD 2017/18_56) and are destroying the nation from within, creating a true dystopia:

‘The results of the mass immigration and multiculturalism of recent decades are very clear. Sweden, which was once a safe and homogenous country, is today characterised by increasing divisions, segregation, exclusion, and insecurity. Imported crime, involving conflicts and shootings, stone-throwing and arson, sexual assaults and gang-rapes, is tearing Sweden apart. Added to this we have a Swedish welfare system that is well on the way to falling apart in parallel with this increasing immigration. Among other things, we can see how schools, the care sector, and geriatric care are no longer coping. We can see how newly arrived immigrants are given precedence in the labour market and in housing queues, at the same time as illegal immigrants are given access to a welfare system that is in many ways already under pressure. Swedes are slowly but surely on the way to becoming a minority in their own country. We can also see how the other parties have made it possible for anti-democratic, misogynistic, violent Islamism to grow strong even in our own part of the world. This is a monumental failure’

(Sweden Democrats 2018/19_8).

Not surprisingly, the members of the radical right tell a nightmarish story of Sweden, in which the ethnonationalist rhetoric is apparent, reflecting the racist roots of the Sweden Democrats. Immigration is viewed as a threat to the nation state itself. This view of a Swedish dystopia is not only used by the Swedish radical right, but also by its equivalent parties in Norway, Hungary, and the UK. By means of a nostalgic narrative of a mythical, lost, white Sweden, these politicians promote the view of a Swedish dystopia to nurture a racist moral panic about Muslim immigration and criminality, supporting the discourse of a cultural and race war (Thorleifsson 2019).

According to the Swedish radical-right and right-wing parliamentarians, immigrants are not only bringers of problems (Bauman 1991), but are also stealing our welfare, our housing, and our jobs, and spreading their foreign culture and religion (e.g., SD 2018/19_103; SD 2017/18_93; M 2018/19_107). This image of a danger to national identity is very much in line with the findings of previous research on the political rhetoric of the radical right (see Barker 2018; Elgenius and Rydgren 2019; Rydgren 2018; Todd-Kvam 2019). However, in this study, it is apparent that the narrative character of the Dangerous Outsider is also present in, and an important part of, the rhetoric of the liberal-conservative Moderate party when they discuss immigrants and crime. Through the narrative character of the Dangerous Outsider, the radical-right and right-wing politicians are attempting to show that the nation is under threat, and that immigrants are the root cause of Sweden’s problems:

‘Integration problems run like a common theme through almost all of Sweden’s major problems: crime, benefit dependency, unemployment, segregation, and poor school results. We now have to ensure that those who have already come to Sweden also enter into Swedish society, and a precondition for this is reduced immigration today’

(The Moderate Party 2019/20_20).

‘Outsiders’ are clearly depicted as bringers of danger and disruptors of the national order (see also Bauman 1991; Griffiths 2017). The Social Democratic, Left, and Green parties, on the other hand, voice a counter-rhetoric (e.g., S 2018/19_79; S 2019/20_63; LEFT 201920_41; MP 2019/20_44), and a fifth, alternate narrative character is provided.

The Good Worker

The narrative character the Good Worker is described as an immigrant who is doing everything s/he can for Sweden, first and foremost through hard labor:

‘What I was alluding to in my remarks is that for the vast majority of people who come to Sweden, things actually go very well. Over 1 million people who wake up every morning, go to work, and work hard for the sake of Sweden have their roots in another country. That is something that I am at heart very proud of, and it strengthens Sweden as a nation’ (Applause)

(Social Democrats 2018/19_107).

Here, there are similarities to the ways in which other elites, such as journalists, react to demonisation and provide opposing images to contest the dominant, racist narrative (Schclarek Mulinari, 2017). The Social Democrats are trying to transform the narrative of immigrants as bringers of problems (Bauman 1991) such as terrorism and criminality, into bringers of hard work. This underlines that acceptance in Swedish society requires one to become part of the group (cf. Wood 1934), which means being integrated, contributing to society, and being transformed into the Good Worker. As Griffiths (2017) has noted, integration has become equated with making an economic contribution to the Nation, and not relying on welfare benefits. If those requirements are fulfilled, the immigrant is no longer a newcomer or someone continuously approaching (Schuetz 1944), but has rather earned his/her place in society. Implicitly this does not apply to Swedes, since they do not have to be good workers to be viewed as belonging to the Nation, already having a firm place in society by birth. Thus, even though the narrative character of the Good Worker is utilized to contradict the right-wing, racist narrative of the crimmigrant, it can also be seen as being embedded in conceptualizations of national membership. This ‘welfare nationalism’ builds on a citizenship based on ethnicity, culture, and blood, as described by Barker (2018).

The Good Worker was introduced into the debate by the Social Democrats on several occasions during the years covered by the study. These politicians presented a picture of an immigrant who ‘goes to work every day to work for the country that constitutes our shared home – Sweden’ (S 2019/20_25). Immigrants are said to work as industrial workers, teachers, doctors, and nurses: ‘They work for us, they work for our children, and they will work for us when we get old and eventually enter geriatric care’ (S 2019/20_25). Immigrants constantly need to live up to being good workers by proving themselves to be (economically) worthy and hard-working taxpayers (Anderson 2013; Griffiths 2017). Sharma (2020) also points out that immigrants are expected to accept risky and flexible jobs, while nationals have more workplace rights and higher wages.  This creates a primary and a secondary labor market, characterized by otherness and a nationalization of work (Preston and Perez 2006; Sharma 2020).

Despite the Good Worker character being launched to counter the radical-right and right-wing narratives of the crimmigrant, it is also sometimes supported by parliamentarians from these political parties. For example, the social, Christian conservative party, which usually points to the problems associated with immigration, stresses that immigrants are ‘doing the right thing’ when they provide for themselves and their children and pay taxes (CD 2017/18_80). Research has shown that even immigrants with permanent residency status still feel that they have to justify their place in society (Fox et al. 2022), and also that immigrants are more accepted if they have jobs (e.g., Fabini 2017). Being a Good Worker is clearly something that is at least expected, and sometimes demanded, from immigrants by Swedish politicians.

Even parliamentarians from the radical right sometimes make use of the character of the Good Worker, but give the character a different meaning from that presented by the Social Democrats. The radical right’s Good Worker is a Swede, in contrast to the Social Democrats’ Good Worker, who is an immigrant. Radical-right politicians contrast ‘bad immigrants’ with the ‘good citizens’ (Ahmed 2000: 31), and state that the latter have been working their entire lives for the benefit of the country. These parliamentarians focus in particular on setting elderly, good, working Swedes against immigrants, stressing how immigrants are receiving welfare benefits at the expense of the low pensions provided to elderly Swedes. This rhetoric is recurrent throughout the years examined in the study (see SD 2018/19_103; SD 2018/19_68; SD 2019/20_40; SD 2020/21_34) and is supported by the liberal-conservative Moderates (e.g., M 2018/19_107). This political rhetoric replaces the picture of the hard-working immigrant with a stranger who exploits the welfare system (see also Stumpf 2020). According to the radical-right and right-wing parliamentarians, the welfare state should prioritize its Swedish citizens who have been working their entire life for Sweden. Thus, there is a rhetorical battle among politicians regarding the nationality of the Good Worker. Similar to the Hungarian political debate on immigrants, there is a discursive struggle over the immigrant as either being useless or valuable, a burden or a benefit to society (Thorleifsson 2017). The Swedish Social Democrats try to establish immigrants as Good Workers/good strangers, while the radical right claim that only Swedes can be Good Workers/good citizens. Meanwhile, the right-wing, conservative parties occasionally support both sides.

Conclusion

To sum up, first and foremost this article has nuanced the concept of the crimmigrant. It has shown that crimmigrants can be described in different and complex ways in political debate, rather than as only a single character. The analysis has highlighted the way in which the political debate on immigrants and crime in Sweden revolves around five narrative characters: the Islamic Terrorist, the Crimmigrant Stranger, the Crimmigrant Wanderer, the Dangerous Outsider, and the Good Worker. This contributes additional insights in relation to previous studies on crimmigration by showing how the character of the crimmigrant is nuanced, promoted, and contested in political rhetoric.

Secondly, the article has demonstrated the complexity of the political debate on immigrants and crime, and challenges the notion that the link between immigrants and crime is first and foremost being promoted by politicians from the radical right. Instead, this article shows that all parliamentary parties in Sweden are contributing to the crimmigrant debate. Even though the radical-right party dominates many of the political discussions, it is not constantly driving this debate. By conducting a more in-depth analysis of the parliamentarian debate, this article has been able to show that representatives from a range of political parties are contributing to, and sometimes challenging, different narrative characterizations of crimmigrants (see Table 2).

Table 2 Narrative characters in the Swedish political debate on immigrants and crime, and the parties that primarily promote the different characters
Full size table

Thirdly, this analysis has contributed to the way the stranger is theorized, by furthering our understanding of the reasons that some strangers are racialized and considered more dangerous than others (see Table 3). Strangers who are linked to Islamic terrorism or to a ‘foreign,’ honor-based culture, are considered to be the most dangerous and ‘bad’ strangers. Strangers viewed as outsiders are slightly less threatening, but are still deemed dangerous if we cannot control them via integration or deportation. Crimmigrant wanderers, who steal or commit burglaries, are not linked to a foreign culture or religion. It is assumed that they are only short-term visitors, which makes them less threatening and merely an unwanted nuisance. In contrast, good strangers are good workers who contribute to society through their labor, instead of bringing with them crime or a ‘foreign’ religion or culture. Hence, to be accepted in society, the stranger needs to be transformed into a good worker, thereby becoming a good stranger.

Table 3 Categorizations of crimmigrants based on discussions in the Swedish political debate on immigrants and crime
Full size table

To conclude, this article has shown that even firm stereotypes such as the crimmigrant have nuances. It has highlighted how and when radical-right and mainstream parties contribute to the crimmigrant stereotype, or dispute it, and has shown that certain narrative characters are more popular than others within different political parties. The study has also examined why certain strangers are racialized, and described as more dangerous than others. Altogether, this article contributes to furthering our understanding of how, when, and why politicians link immigrants to crime, and strangers to danger.