Remapping Gender, Place and Mobility: Global Confluences and Local Particularities in Nordic Peripheries 2014042321, 9781472429698, 9781315605180

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Remapping Gender, Place and Mobility Peripheries are not merely geographically remote they are regions that are subordinated to the metropole. When the center is found in the famously egalitarian Nordic countries, there are interesting contradictions to be found in these inherently unequal relations. The Nordic welfare state model, this collection points out, has built-in blind spots about nationalism and ethnic differences. By focusing on the unique challenges facing people at the geographic edges, the authors raise important questions about intersectionality and inequality of many different kinds. Myra Marx Ferree, University of Wisconsin USA A collection of rich case studies engaging in detail with how women and men cope and struggle in situated everyday lives in the Nordic peripheries. Taking a perspective on gender and space from below, it offers students and scholars across disciplines nuanced analyses of migration and belonging. Jørgen Ole Bærenholdt, Roskilde University, Denmark

Gender in a Global/Local World Series Editors: Jane Parpart, Pauline Gardiner Barber and Marianne H. Marchand

Gender in a Global/Local World critically explores the uneven and often contradictory ways in which global processes and local identities come together. Much has been and is being written about globalization and responses to it but rarely from a critical, historical, gendered perspective. Yet, these processes are profoundly gendered albeit in different ways in particular contexts and times. The changes in social, cultural, economic and political institutions and practices alter the conditions under which women and men make and remake their lives. New spaces have been created – economic, political, social – and previously silent voices are being heard. North-South dichotomies are being undermined as increasing numbers of people and communities are exposed to international processes through migration, travel, and communication, even as marginalization and poverty intensify for many in all parts of the world. The series features monographs and collections which explore the tensions in a “global/local world,” and includes contributions from all disciplines in recognition that no single approach can capture these complex processes.

Previous titles are listed at the back of the book

Remapping Gender, Place and Mobility

Global Confluences and Local Particularities in Nordic Peripheries

Edited by Stine Thidemann Faber Aalborg University, Denmark and Helene Pristed Nielsen Aalborg University, Denmark

First published 2015 by Ashgate Publishing Published 2016 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business Copyright © Stine Thidemann Faber and Helene Pristed Nielsen 2015 Stine Thidemann Faber and Helene Pristed Nielsen have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the editors of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows: Faber, Stine Thidemann. Remapping Gender, Place and Mobility: Global Confluences and Local Particularities in Nordic Peripheries / by Stine Thidemann Faber and Helene Pristed Nielsen. pages cm. – (Gender in a Global/Local World) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Scandinavia – Social conditions. 2. Globalization – Social aspects – Scandinavia. 3. Equality – Scandinavia. 4. Group identity – Scandinavia. 5. Nationalism – Scandinavia. I. Nielsen, Helene Pristed. II. Title. HN540.A8F33 2015 320.01’10948–dc23 2014042321 ISBN: 9781472429698 (hbk) ISBN: 9781315605180 (ebk)

Contents List of Illustrations and Tables   List of Contributors   Acknowledgments   Preface   Part I

Setting the Scene

1

Centering the Periphery   Stine Thidemann Faber and Helene Pristed Nielsen

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Particularities of the Nordic: Challenges to Equality Politics in a Globalized World   Birte Siim and Pauline Stoltz



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3

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Part II Constructing Place, Space and Home 3 4 5 6

The Internal Other: Reproducing and Reworking Center and Periphery   Madeleine Eriksson, Helene Pristed Nielsen and Gry Paulgaard

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Moving to the Periphery: A Longitudinal Study of Movers and Non-Movers   Ruth Emerek and Anja Kirkeby

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At Home Anywhere? Particularities of Belonging Seen Through a Camera Lens   Stine Thidemann Faber and Helene Pristed Nielsen

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When the Strangers Take Root: Ambivalent Feelings of Belonging and Identities   Ann-Dorte Christensen

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Part III Gendered Global Circuits 7

Taking Advantage of Peripherality: Gendered and Ethnicized Mobilities in the Context of Post-9/11 Globalization   Elina Penttinen

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New Figurations of Labor in Gendered Global Circuits: Migrant Workers in the Forest Berry Industry in Norrland, Sweden   Madeleine Eriksson and Aina Tollefsen

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Women and Men on the Move: From the Philippines to Iceland   143 Unnur Dís Skaptadóttir

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Part IV Between the Local and the Global: Opportunities and Constraints 10 11 12 13

Rural Immigrant Entrepreneurship: An Arena for New Constructions of Gender in Finnmark, Northernmost Norway   Mai Camilla Munkejord

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Being Away; Being at Home; Being Both: The Case of Faroese Maritime Workers   Gestur Hovgaard

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Young in a Global Context: Gender, Mobility and Belonging in North Denmark   Lotte Bloksgaard, Stine Thidemann Faber and Claus D. Hansen

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Place Attachment, Unemployment and Masculinity: Young Men in the High North   Gry Paulgaard

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Epilogue Globalization Through the Nordic Periphery   Carla Freeman

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Index  

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List of Illustrations and Tables Tables 4.1

The estimates of risk ratios from a Cox regression for single persons in the 60-cohort in the period 1986–2010 for selected covariates.58

4.2

The estimates of risk ratios from a Cox regression for couples in the 60-cohort in the period 1986–2010 for selected covariates.

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A4.1 The estimates of risk ratios from a Cox regression for single persons in the 60-cohort in the period 1986–2010 for selected covariates – extended version. 

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A4.2 The estimates of risk ratios from a Cox regression for couples in the 60-cohort in the period 1986–2010 for selected covariates – extended version.

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5.1

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Distribution of Photos Across Participants. 

10.1 Overview of Participants’ Mode of Entry and Region of Origin.

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12.1 Gender Differences in Feelings of Place Attachment.

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12.2 Gender Differences in Place Perceptions.

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Maps 1

‘Mapping the Nordic’ xiv

2

‘Mapping the Nordic’

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1

Cox regression model

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The analyses control for some motives and constraints

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Boxes

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Figures 5.1

Woman with Camera

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5.2

Hands at Table

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5.3 Bicycle

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5.4

Sign on Building

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5.5

Path in Forest

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5.6

Bicycles for Rent

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5.7

Signpost Outside Police Station

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5.8

Schoolbook in Doorway

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List of Contributors Lotte Bloksgaard is Associate Professor at FREIA, Center for Gender Research at the Department of Culture and Global Studies at Aalborg University in Denmark. She has a PhD in Sociology of Gender and her main fields of research are: Gender; masculinity; gender segregation in the labor market; interactions between gender, age, education and belonging; work and family conflicts; parental leave; fatherhood. Recent publications include “Negotiating Leave in the Workplace: Leave Practices and Masculinity Constructions among Danish Fathers” (chapter in Fatherhood in the Nordic Welfare States, 2014). Ann-Dorte Christensen is Professor of Sociology at the Department for Sociology and Social Work at Aalborg University in Denmark. She also holds the position of Director of the Doctoral School of Social Sciences at Aalborg University. Her field of research is focused on gender, intersectionality, masculinity, everyday life and belonging. For the past five years she has been leader of the research project MARS (Masculinity, Risk and Safety). Examples of her publications on intersectionality and belonging are: “Belonging and Unbelonging in an Intersectional Perspective,” in Gender, Technology & Development, 2010; “Roots and Routes: Migration, Belonging and Everyday Life,” in Nordic Journal of Migration Research, 2011 (with Sune Q. Jensen); and “Territorial Stigmatization and Local Belonging: A Study of the Danish Neighbourhood Aalborg East,” in City, 2012 (with Sune Q. Jensen). Ruth Emerek is Professor and head of CoMID, Center for the Study of Migration and Diversity, Aalborg University Denmark. She is specialized in quantitative methodologies (statistical analysis and longitudinal register based analysis) and has a long history of research in the areas of living conditions and polarization, gender and the labor market, migrants and the labor market, integration and marginalization. She is the lead researcher on the ongoing project Emigration and Immigration in a Historical Perspective (2013–2016), which focuses on past migration streams into and away from Denmark in order to qualify current migration-related challenges. She is also participating in a project on the impact on the Danish labor market of contemporary labor migration from Eastern Europe (2013–2016). Madeleine Eriksson is a university lecturer in Human Geography at Umeå University, Sweden. She has written extensively about media representations of rurality and the Swedish North. She is currently working on a project about

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transnational labor migration to the Swedish forests berry industry, and on a project about the changing livelihoods of the Swedish Sámi population. Stine Thidemann Faber is Associate Professor of Sociology at FREIA, Center for Gender Research at the Department of Culture and Global Studies at Aalborg University in Denmark. She is also head of EDGE, Centre for Equality, Diversity and Gender, also at Aalborg University. Her research interests revolve around social differentiation in contemporary societies, and the intersections of gender, age and class, in both rural and urban settings. She is the co-author of The Hidden Class Society [Det skjulte klassesamfund], published in Danish in 2012. Together with Helene Pristed Nielsen she was Project Coordinator of the Global Periphery project (2011–2014) and part of several of the sub-projects, including ‘Images of the Periphery’ (a project in which photos and photo-elicitation were used to explore meanings of place and belonging) and ‘Youth in the Periphery’ (with a focus on regional differences in the educational attainment of young Danes). Carla Freeman is Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and Senior Associate Dean for Faculty at Emory University. She is the author of High Tech and High Heels in the Global Economy: Women, Work, and Pink Collar Identities in the Caribbean (2000), Global Middle Classes: Ethnographic Particularities, Theoretical Convergences (co-edited with Rachel Heiman and Mark Liechty, 2012), Entrepreneurial Selves: Neoliberal Respectability and the Making of a Caribbean Middle Class (2014), and articles about globalization, neoliberalism, gender and class in such journals as American Ethnologist, Cultural Anthropology, Critique of Anthropology, and Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society. Freeman is currently Series Editor (with Li Zhang) of Issues of Globalization (Oxford), and President Elect of the Association for Feminist Anthropology. Claus D. Hansen is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the Department for Sociology and Social Work at Aalborg University in Denmark. His research interests are focused mostly on inequality in health, sickness absence and gender. Among his key publications in English are “Going Ill to Work: What Personal Circumstances, Attitudes and Work-related Factors are Associated with Sickness Presenteeism?” (2008, together with Johan H. Andersen) in Social Science & Medicine, and “‘Making a Virtue’ of Going Ill to Work: Reflections on the Necessities of Everyday Workplace ‘Suffering’” (2010) in Tidsskrift for Forskning i Sygdom og Samfund [Journal of Research in Illness and Society]. Gestur Hovgaard is Associate Professor at the University of the Faroe Islands, Department of History and Social Science. He has conducted research on peripheral communities in the Northern Atlantic for several years, and holds a PhD from Roskilde University with the title “Globalization, Embeddedness and Local Coping Strategies” (2001). He is co-author (with Sámal Matras Kristiansen) of the contribution, ‘Villages on the Move: From Places of Necessity to Places of

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Choice’ in Granås and Bæhrenholdt (eds.) Mobility and Place: Enacting Northern European Peripheries (2008). Anja Kirkeby is currently a PhD student with the Department of Cultural and Global Studies at Aalborg University, Denmark. She has a Master’s degree in Sociology (2012) and since 2013 she has been a member of the research group CoMID (Center for the Study of Migration and Diversity). The title of her thesis is “Central and Eastern European Migrant Workers and the Danish Labor Market”. She specializes in longitudinal quantitative analysis of migration and labor markets and as employee at the research center EDGE (Center for Equality, Diversity and Gender) she has been working with Professor Ruth Emerek on one of the subprojects within the Global Periphery project. Mai Camilla Munkejord holds an interdisciplinary PhD from 2009 in social anthropology/rural sociology/human geography/gender studies from the University of Tromsø, the Arctic University of Norway. The thesis was also published as an academic book in 2011. She has published articles in Sociologia Ruralis, Sosiologisk Tidsskrift, Norsk Antropologisk Tidsskrift and Tidsskrift for Kulturforskning and some book chapters. She currently works on a research project on gender and immigrant entrepreneurship in Finnmark, northernmost Norway. She has a double institutional affiliation, being employed as a senior researcher at Uni Rokkan Centre in Bergen and as Associate Professor in social sciences and gender studies at the UiT The Arctic University of Norway. Helene Pristed Nielsen is Associate Professor at FREIA, Center for Gender Research at the Department of Culture and Global Studies at Aalborg University in Denmark, and she was, together with Stine Thidemann Faber, Project Coordinator for the Global Periphery project (2011–2014), which focuses on gender and diversity and how globalization is affecting place practices and place attachment at the social level. Her general research interests revolve around issues of inclusion and participation of minorities at the political as well as the social level. Previous research projects have focused on the inclusion of indigenous peoples in decision-making in Australia and New Zealand, women’s participation in the European public sphere, and ethnic minority women’s mobilization in Denmark. Recent publications include: “A Strange Familiarity? Place Perceptions Among the Globally Mobile,” in Visual Communication (2014), and “Joint Purpose? Intersectionality in the Hands of Anti-racist and Gender Equality Activists in Europe,” in Ethnicities (2013). Gry Paulgaard holds a PhD in pedagogics and is Professor at the Department of Educational Research at UiT, The Arctic University of Norway. Her research includes studies of social learning and cultural identity, globalisation and local belonging, marginalization and social exclusion, with special emphasis on constructions of center–periphery, in theory as well as in the political, economic

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and individual implications of center–periphery differences. She is the author of a number of publications within these areas. She is a member of the editorial board for the Norwegian Journal of Youth Research [Tidsskrift for Ungdomsforskning], a member of the board of the Barents Institute in Norway and member of the board of the North Norwegian Film Centre. Elina Penttinen is Lecturer in Gender Studies at the Department of Philosophy, History, Culture and Art Studies, University of Helsinki. She is the author of Joy and International Relations: A New Methodology (2013). In her research Penttinen explores experiences of joy, relief, compassion and forgiveness in war and postwar situations, through the use of testimonies, biographies, film and ethnography. She has written extensively on heartfelt positivity and emotional intelligence in the context of crisis management and peacekeeping, gender and violence, and the relevance of post-humanism for feminist research on violence. She is also the author of Globalization, Prostitution and Sex-Trafficking: Corporeal Politics (2007), in which she theorizes globalization as a form of bio-power that produces gendered and ethicized subjectivities. Birte Siim is a political scientist and Professor in Gender Research in the Social Sciences, at the Department of Culture and Global Studies, Aalborg University, Denmark. She is a member of FREIA, the Center for Gender Research, and the Danish coordinator of several EU projects: Hate-speech and Populist Othering in Europe through the Racism, Gender, and Age Looking Glass (RAGE, 2012–2015) and Barriers to EUropean citizenship (bEU-citizen, 2012–2017). She is the Danish member of the ESF Network, Responding to Complex Diversity in Europe and Canada (RECODE, 2010–2014). Her main areas of expertise are gender theory and comparative studies of gender and diversity in Europe. She has over the years published extensively on intersectionality, diversity, citizenship, democracy, migration/multiculturalism and the welfare state. Unnur Dís Skaptadóttir is Professor of Anthropology at the Faculty of Social and Human Sciences, University of Iceland. Her research interests include gender, work, mobility, integration processes and transnationalism. She has studied social and economic transformations in Icelandic fishing communities. Her primary research in recent years has been concerned with diverse aspects of the international employment-related geographical mobility of workers from the Philippines and Poland to Iceland. Pauline Stoltz is Associate Professor at FREIA, Center for Gender Research, at the Department of Culture and Global Studies at Aalborg University in Denmark. Stoltz holds a PhD in political science from Lund University and an associate professorship in political science from Malmö University, both in Sweden. She is specialized in research on equality, diversity and citizenship in local, transnational

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and global contexts. She was Chief Editor of Nora: Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research during 2013–2015. Aina Tollefsen is Associate Professor in Geography at the Department of Geography and Economic History, University of Umeå, Sweden. She has written on labor migration, critical development studies and globalization. Her publications include Transnational Corporations from the Standpoint of Workers (with Nora Räthzel and Diana Mulinari, 2014), Globalisering [Globalization] (with Tommy Jensen, 2012), “Of Berries and Seasonal Work: The Swedish Berry Industry and the Disciplining of Labour Migration from Thailand” (with Madeleine Eriksson, in Disciplining the Transnational Mobility of People, 2013).

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‘Mapping the Nordic

Source: Design by ‘Louder than Words’

List of Contributors

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‘Mapping the Nordic’

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Acknowledgments The process leading up to this book started at a four-day seminar in December 2012 at Klitgården Refugium, located at the sand dunes of Skagen at the very northernmost point of Denmark. Here the contributors met, most of them for the first time, in order to search for research synergies and to discuss new ideas for collaborative writing. As a special guest professor, Carla Freeman from Emory University, Atlanta was invited to raise theoretical arguments and questions on the particularities of Nordic countries and their specific cultural and historical trajectories. We are deeply grateful to the Department of Culture and Global Studies, Aalborg University, for financing this seminar. The discussions at the seminar, the conversations we had when walking on the beach and the magical atmosphere of Klitgården and the surrounding nature covered in snow all provided us with new perspectives and a new appreciation for this northern part of the world (which the majority of the contributors inhabit), and all its diversity and ongoing change. We would also like to thank The Obel Family Foundation for co-funding the research that forms the basis for some of the chapters in the book (Chapters 4 and 5 and parts of Chapter 3) and for making it possible for the editors to allocate time for the book. Last but not least, we would like to thank the series editors and the entire team at Ashgate for their dedicated engagement in this book.

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Preface Remapping Gender, Place and Mobility commences from the premise that we have much to learn about global processes associated with mobility and belonging through an examination of their convergence in the Nordic periphery – comprised of Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Iceland, Finland and the Faroe Islands. No geographic region remains self-contained and the Nordic case is no exception. The intriguing proposition for the book is that the Nordic peripheries offer a powerful lens into “peripherality” under globalization precisely because the region has come to be associated with relative affluence and progressive gender-positive social policies. And yet, processes of mobility (or indeed movement) are not merely spatial, they are also social; mobility for some may represent immobility for others. As this book demonstrates, the very nature of mobility/immobility needs to be interrogated in light of some Nordic local practices and social, economic and political realities. How then, contributors to this creative volume ask, does globalization systematically reconfigure local processes to bring about a pervasive yet uneven co-production of new patterns of equality and inequality with respect to mobility, immobility and belonging? To address this line of questioning, the volume includes case studies from the full range of Nordic peripheries, each of which explores the gendered, ethnicized, classed, etc. processes of globalization at large. The various chapters emphasize the dual character of globalization, whereby some places experience economic development and growth, while others must contend with political, economic and social deterioration or stagnation. As the editors remind us in their theoretically sophisticated introduction, a mobility perspective reveals a porous region in terms of the arrival and departure of people, goods and information, but an emphasis upon mobility can also disguise the constraints on movement experienced by some women and men. Related to this, the authors deliberately include discussions of the way that global restructuring affects women and men differently. Men and women may be differentially included and excluded due to processes of global restructuring. In addressing such processes in individual chapters, the authors offer nuanced analyses of the multiple strands of social stratification associated with who gets cast as victims and/or key players in global/ local processes. A unique feature of this volume is the ethnographic emphasis on place and the local realities that are revealed as intertwined and mutually influential with distinctive global phenomena. We found the volume inspirational for its sophisticated rendering, both theoretically and ethnographically, of the many complex debates in the literatures on mobility and belonging, read carefully against the grain of various processes associated with globalization. The book also focuses upon a particular region and the places within it where life is lived and decisions are made in light of the contingencies of political economy and

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social possibilities in those sites. The volume will capture the attention of an interdisciplinary audience interested in a reinvigorated discussion of globalization, its social consequences and “spatial embededness,” relative to how women’s and men’s lives and engagements with mobility/immobility and belonging are experienced in the Nordic periphery as compared to the European core. Pauline Gardiner Barber Jane Parpart Marianne Marchand

Part I Setting the Scene

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Chapter 1

Centering the Periphery Stine Thidemann Faber and Helene Pristed Nielsen

The objective of this book is to enhance our understanding of how people and places are affected by local particularities as well as global confluences at the level of everyday interactions within “Nordic Peripheries.” Hence, the book sheds light on how global processes shape and influence the Nordic countries at the social level: Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Iceland, Finland and the Faroe Islands. Yet, these countries and their geographic and social peripheries are not themselves the objects of study in the book, but rather the contexts for people’s lived lives in these places. The objects of study in the book are global processes, mobility and belonging, and how these phenomena contribute to ruptures and/or stability in the lives of men and women living in and/or moving within these northern localities. We argue that the Nordic peripheries offer a powerful lens on “peripherality” in a globalizing world, because the region as a whole is traditionally perceived as relatively affluent, stable and with high levels of social and gender equality—yet, as the case studies in the book demonstrate, global confluences, with attendant economic restructuring and social transformations, produce ruptures, tensions, possibilities and new social, cultural and political constellations also at the rims of Nordic societies, well beyond the cushioning of comprehensive social welfare regimes. Although the Nordic countries are known for their relatively high levels of social equality and political stability, aspects such as geography, gender, ethnicity, education, labor market participation and discourse mark some people and places within these countries as peripheral. Hence, the book contains a series of case studies related to Nordic peripheries, which are going to illuminate gendered, ethnicized, classed, etc. processes of globalization at large. According to Jones and Olwig, the Nordic countries are particularly fruitful sites when it comes to examining the “ever-evolving meaning of landscape and region as place” (Jones and Olwig 2008, xii). Although the Nordic countries are characterized by diverse historical developments and different geographical proportions and relations, they all have one important feature in common: namely their historically shared political goal of securing social (including gender) equality, e.g. by way of universal welfare provisions, which the Nordic social model is especially renowned for. In many ways, this means that global confluences can be argued to pose a particular set of challenges for the Nordic welfare states. Hence, one of the underlying premises for producing this book is that there is an added value in taking a Nordic perspective on the everyday transformations of men’s and women’s lives

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in these localities and the ways in which they experience and cope with global processes. Often celebrated for their alleged social equality (see Chapter 2), the Nordic countries arguably showcase the geographic extent and social depth of different global processes, affecting key aspects of the everyday lives of men and women in a part of the world which otherwise seems to epitomize the global North. We are interested in how global and local processes co-produce the creation of equality and inequality in patterns of mobility and belonging, and epistemological constructions and attendant material productions of difference and sameness within these places, often designated as peripheral regions. Building from theoretical debates about the gendered (and ethnicized, classed, etc.) effects of globalization on mobility and belonging, we argue that these effects are particularly interesting to study within a part of the world that has traditionally been conceived as relatively affluent, with high levels of gender and social equality, partly due to the encompassing and universalistic character of the so-called “Nordic welfare state.” While some chapters directly showcase the potentials and limits of Nordic politics in the face of globalization, other chapters do so more indirectly. Jointly, however, the book displays the uneven but all-pervasive character of different global processes, while at the same time continually bringing to the forefront the local reconfigurations and transformative social, cultural and political practices also enabled by global flows and restructurings. The purpose of this introductory chapter is not only to explain why we choose to locate our studies in these Nordic peripheries, but also how we conceptualize the terms center and periphery and the prominent concepts of mobility, belonging, space and place, their gendered characteristics as well as discussions of interrelations between the local and the global, and how we theoretically and methodologically approach the study of equality- and inequality-creating mechanisms stemming from such interrelations. Putting the Periphery Center-Stage We start from the simple premise that places which are marked as marginal or peripheral, in fact are the center of life for a great number of people. Thus, one of our interests lies in illuminating whether and how such constructions affect these places and the lives of people living here, what feeds into such social, cultural and political constructions of marginality or peripherality, and how reconstructions of the periphery may be orchestrated. Sharing Shields’ interest in “the social level of collective myth” (Shields 1991, 29), the book does contain perspectives on individual-level responses to places, but the main interests rest with understanding social-level patterns of inclusion and exclusion, meaning-making and responses to the center/periphery dichotomy in a context of “global restructurings” (Marchand and Runyan 2011 [2001]). The center/periphery is a dichotomy which we fundamentally wish to question—but also a dichotomy which we simultaneously consider neither

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unimportant nor without effects. Massey argues that space is relational and that “this intrinsic relationality of the spatial is not just a matter of lines on a map; it is a cartography of power” (Massey 2005, 85). Paulgaard, who has engaged directly with the problem of deconstructing the center/periphery dichotomy, argues that some constructions such as center/periphery are related to layers of other constructions (e.g. modern/outdated, civilized/primitive) and therefore may show greater durability and stability than others (Paulgaard 2008, 59). Based on her studies of local communities in northern Norway, Paulgaard argues that what is peculiar about the changes since the 1990s in these places is that they are not peculiar at all. These changes (e.g. greater need for education, access to nationally and internationally owned chains of stores, consumption of globally available products) are found everywhere in Norway in this period. Furthermore, her study exemplifies that what is considered peripheral to some people may very easily be considered central for others. Hence, Honingsvåg, in a Norwegian context, is rather peripheral to the rest of the country, yet serves as a local center for shopping and education possibilities for small townships in its vicinity. Moving the boundary of the periphery from the national to the regional or local level may fundamentally alter the cartography of power pointed to by Massey. Places that are constructed as peripheral need not necessarily be “passive recipients” of global processes, as Nagar et al. (2002) write. Freeman puts forward the same point of view, when she states that “global processes are simultaneously shaped, limited and redefined by these very sites and actors, even if in small ways” (Freeman 2001, 1014), thereby underlining that places, conceived as peripheral or not, continuously reshape themselves, and are reshaped, due to changes in the global economy and this layers on to existing social and economic relations and cultural meanings that have particular contours and effects. While some places are considered peripheral from a national perspective, these may also have the potential to act on and transform global processes and some may even, on different scales, constitute nerve centers in a global trade context. This is true for example of the region of Norrland in Sweden, which is often presented as peripheral in a Swedish context (see Chapter 3), but is central to the global forest berry industry (see Chapter 8). Drawing on Said’s concept of “positional superiority” (1978), we argue that such cartographies of power need to be examined not simply in terms of the economic or material effects of globalization, but also in terms of “othering” and the creation of social and cultural distance. Shields argues that marginal places may not necessarily be geographically marginal, but rather places on the periphery of cultural systems: “They carry the image, and stigma, of their marginality which becomes indistinguishable from any basic empirical identity they might once have had” (Shields 1991, 3). Hence, there is no causal link between ontological/ geographic marginality and epistemological marginality, as the development of peripherality at the cultural level occurs through complex social processes. The combined insistence on the relevance of Said’s concepts of “positional superiority” and “othering,” in juxtaposition with a rejection of any simple center/periphery

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dichotomy, results in a seeming deadlock. One way forward could be Shields’ concept of “social spatialisation,” which can be used: … to designate the ongoing social construction of the spatial at the level of the social imaginary (collective mythologies, presuppositions) as well as interventions in the landscape (for example, the built environment). This term allows us to name an object of study, which encompasses both the cultural logic of the spatial and its expression and elaboration in language and more concrete actions, constructions and institutional arrangements. (Shields 1991, 31)

In our view, the concept of social spatialization leaves sufficient room for individual and collective agency and emotional feelings of belonging, while not denying the relevance of co-considering the impact of “positional superiority” or structured power relations in social interaction amongst men and women and societal institutions impacting on people’s lives in the Nordic peripheries—or, indeed, anywhere on the globe. Contextualized Understandings of Global Processes The concepts of globalization, space and place are central to this book, and so are the ways in which these concepts are related to one another. We have already above made reference to the notion of “global restructurings” (Marchand and Runyan 2011 [2001]), as this concept seems to capture well the complexity and multi-directionality of changes in lieu of global processes and transformation, which as Marchand explains elsewhere “occur at differing speeds and involve a re-articulation of boundaries between the public-private, global-local, nationalinternational, as well as state-market-civil society” (Marchand 2001, 3). Similarly, we view global processes as multi-causative and multi-directional, precisely leading to global transformations, tensions, ruptures and new possibilities as well as serving to preserve and/or invent local particularities. These processes take place at the level of material/economic transactions, such as when goods, capital and persons move across space. They take place at the level of social relations, such as when acquiring “a good education” assumes increasing significance, or maintaining geographically dispersed family ties becomes a possibility. And they take place at the discursive or imaginary level, when urbanization and mobility manifest themselves as new norms epitomizing modernization and progressiveness. Quite simply, global processes take differential expression in different places. While some places experience economic development and growth, others are left behind having to deal with deterioration or stagnation. This double aspect of globalization includes whole countries or continents, regions in a country or certain groups in society. Such observations also tie into discussions about mobility, which tends to disguise who can and who cannot move. As McDowell argues, “for many people in the world, everyday life continues to take place within

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a restricted locale” (McDowell 1999, 2–3), which is one reason why a focus on the local contexts of global processes becomes interesting, as do the ways in which global processes and associated changes impact on social relations and people’s sense of place, or sense of belonging (see also Nagar et al. 2002). Others have put forward similar notions, for example Freeman, who states that “macrostructural accounts are insufficient in describing the lived realities of globalization” (Freeman, 2001, 1011). Massey argues about the relationship between the global and the local that “there is an overwhelming tendency both in academic and political literature […] to imagine the local as the product of the global but to neglect the counterpoint to this: the local construction of the global” (Massey 2005, 101), and she points to how this deprives local places of their agency, meaning that these places are figured as the victims of globalization. Freeman empirically challenges this very tendency in her analysis of how the practices and agency of Caribbean higglers illustrate that globalization “works through many economic and cultural modes and is effected both through large powerful actors and institutions as well as by ‘small-scale’ individuals engaged in complex activities that are both embedded within and at the same time transforming practices of global capitalism” (Freeman 2001, 1008). According to the writings of Massey, an understanding of space must be premised upon the three assumptions 1) that space is the product of interactions, 2) that we should understand space as the sphere of possibility of the existence of multiplicity—as coexisting heterogeneity—and 3) that space is neither static nor fixed but rather fluid and provisional (Massey 2005, 9). Massey not only considers spatiality as the product of intersecting social relations, she also relates the concepts of space and place to issues of gender (Massey 1994, 2005). Likewise, we argue that spaces and places often have a significant impact on and different consequences for the lives of women and men. For example, Munkejord (2009) finds that the choice of where to live circumscribes constructions of gender and gender roles for the individual inhabitant of the locality of Finnmark in Northern Norway. Hence, we are inspired by those who have argued that global processes “occur in concert with a range of changing meanings of gender roles and identities and struggles over masculinity and femininity” (Nagar et al. 2002, 267). The processes connected with globalization not only concern economy, they also affect social relations in society as a whole; that is, the relationship between men and women, between women, between men and between generations. In this way, processes connected with globalization ultimately influence imaginaries about for example possible life courses, occupational and settlement choices, family forms, and ways of “doing gender” (West and Zimmerman, 2009), but also ways of “doing” class, ethnicity, parenthood, rurality or any other kind of marker of social distinction one may think of. This, however, does not mean that every possible imaginary pathway is opened up—rather, as the case studies in the book demonstrate, each individual is circumscribed by particular material, political and social contexts which facilitate some courses of action and imaginative

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(re)positionings, while alternative pathways seem blocked or increasingly hard to navigate. Given our focus on the creation of equality and inequality in patterns of mobility and belonging, and epistemological constructions of difference and sameness in different localities and social contexts, Massey’s argument that “any serious recognition of multiplicity and heterogeneity itself depends on recognition of spatiality” (Massey 2005, 11) is one that we take seriously. And so is Massey’s argument that “what space gives us is simultaneous heterogeneity; it holds out the possibility of surprise; it is the condition of the social in the widest sense, and the delight and the challenge of that” (Massey 2005, 105). Hence, we approach Nordic Peripheries within this book explicitly as holding out the possibility of surprise and simultaneous heterogeneity. Such an approach is also compatible with the notion of “global restructurings,” because, as argued by Marchand, “the emergence of new inequalities, mixed with or super-imposed onto old ones, and of new opportunities [ … ] is very much tied to the re-articulation of identities and attendant constructions of space and spatiality” (Marchand 2001, 1–2). The Gender in Globalization and Place Some of the inequality-creating mechanisms often pointed to in those writings on globalization which foreground its social consequences are particularly gender, age, class and ethnicity, which are often singled out as strands of stratification whose significance may increase in the wake of global confluences (e.g. Marchand and Runyan 2011 [2001]). In a review by Davids and van Driel of existing literature on gender and globalization, they argue that much of the early literature on gender and globalization uniformly presented women as victims of globalization rather than active agents within it (Davids and van Driel 2005, 6). They also point out that in some of this literature “gender” is taken to mean simply “women.” In contradistinction to this approach, they present globalization as a set of multi-faceted processes that both exclude and include women—and men, we would add—as women, as well as men, may be both victims and players in global processes. Thus, in putting this book together, we have made deliberate efforts to also include discussions of the ways in which men are included and excluded due to processes of global restructurings, and in general we have aimed at expanding and nuancing the discussion of how and which strands of social inequalities are produced and reproduced through these processes. Hence, we hold that multiple strands of social stratification need to be thought into analyses of who figure as victims and/or players in global/local processes, adding also place of residence to such potential strands of stratification. As Nagar et al. write, “constructing women as universally exploited by global capital and neoliberal policies obscures the way in which gendered subjects in particular historically and geographically specific places engage in complex and contradictory experiences of, and in response to, global processes” (Nagar et al. 2002, 269). As expressed by

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Marchand, “global restructuring is not a neutral set of processes but is mediated through gender, ethnicity, class, etc., thus producing and reproducing inequalities, but also providing new opportunities” (Marchand 2001, 6). Feminist scholars have argued that gender relations both reflect and affect the spatial organization of society, and feminist geographers in particular have tried to shed light upon the spatialized construction of femininity and masculinity (as ideology, materiality and practice). They have convincingly shown that “spaces and places are experienced differently by different people, and come to be associated with presence or absence of different groups of people” (Nelson and Seager 2005, 15; see also McDowell 1999). Gender is one salient dimension in these experiences and associations, and so are class, ethnicity, age, sexuality, and so forth. Indeed, our aim is to co-consider these issues, thereby avoiding the, according to Massey, tendency “to romanticise public space as an emptiness which enables free and equal speech [and] not take on board the need to theorise space as the product of social relations which are most likely conflicting and unequal” (Massey 2005, 152). Hence, gender and gendering as a social and spatial process is a cross-cutting interest running through the chapters in this book, in most of the chapters co-occurring with an interest in ethnic or class relations, urban/rural distinctions, geographic and/or economic relations, generational links or other types of social stratifications. In extension of the argument that places and spaces are gendered, some researchers have gone further, even arguing that “place ends up by being coded feminine” (Simonsen 2008, 17). While rather skeptical of such generalizations, it seems worth asking the question, with Freeman (2001), of what it means for globalization theory—and the empirical study of global processes—that the local/ global distinction is often presented as being similar to the feminine/masculine distinction. Hence, one of our empirical research interests in this book is whether such gendered patterns of relationships with places may be present in a Nordic context. At a more general level, we also have an ambition to contribute to the discussions about the relationship between gender, space, place and globalization, aiming to nuance the scholarly debate in which global processes are often presented as either gender neutral or as processes having added to the pressure on women in particular. Global processes are many and complex and they have significant consequences for men as well. Thus, needless to say, the impacts of global restructuring on masculinities are equally important to address. Some places have been left severely marked by the effects of deindustrialization and the decline in manufacturing and in primary industries (e.g. agriculture and forestry being closely associated with men and masculinity). Thus, as Brandth and Haugen write, it is possible to argue that global processes have led to new gender images and ideologies and, today, in some areas in particular, “women tend to be seen as the modern gender being capable, influential and independent, whereas rural/farm men are no longer pictured as active, decisive and in control, but as backwards, lonely, vulnerable and marginalised” (Brandth and Haugen 2006, 14) (see also Kenway et al. 2006; Bye 2009). What is central here is the importance of place

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and the context in the lived experience of gender relations and identities in which it is important to explicitly recognize the spatial embeddedness of female and male practices in local places and the interplay between the local, regional, national and transnational level. Globalization, (Im)Mobility and Gender Like any other geographic entity, “The Nordic” is not a self-contained unit, but may—from a mobility perspective—be seen as a porous entity with a number of people (as well as goods and information) arriving in as well as departing from the area. While a lot of research tends to focus on incoming migrants, often within a framework emphasizing global trends, we find it important also to stress that these new arrivals are not the embodiment of globalization, although globalization certainly does have embodied effects. And it is these embodied effects that have our attention in some of the empirical chapters in this book—in terms of looking at the consequences of globalization for new arrivals, for those who stay and for those who leave the local place where they grew up. Faist (2013) argues that rather than hailing mobility as a new kind of social norm, scholars need to reflect more critically on the underlying assumptions between spatial and social mobility. As Cresswell thoroughly demonstrates through historical examples of studies of mobility and movement, mobility is implicated in ideological constructions, causing him to talk of “moral geographies of place and mobility” (Cresswell 2006, 26). A similarly cautionary point is raised by King, who points out that “in explaining why people move, we have taken our eyes off the crucial counterfactual question: why do so many people not move?” (King 2012, 26), the point being that we need more nuanced analyses of mobility which include considerations of the social, economic, political and family structures people are embedded in—whether they are leading sedentary or migratory lives. What, in fact, counts as “staying” or “leaving” may even be debated, as witnessed by the life stories of Faroese sailors recounted in Chapter 11. We also need to take account of the fact that time matters. Time and space are both the context for movement as well as a product of movement. “Each time we enter a new place, we become one of the ingredients of an existing hybridity, which is really what all ‘local places’ consist of” (Lippard 1997, 5–6, in Cresswell 2004, 49). Some people may be on the move for parts of their lives while leading quite settled lives during other times. Or the type of mobility they are involved in may take different forms during different periods of their lives, such as when making a one-time move as a “love-migrant” to northernmost Norway and subsequently going on holiday or business trips to other destinations—a kind of mobility pattern brought out by analyses in Chapter 10 on migrant entrepreneurs in Finnmark, Norway. As brought out by the empirical examples in several chapters in the book, mobility is oftentimes not a question of moving from A to B, but may also be a

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question of circulating between several destinations, or repeatedly moving from one destination to several different ones each in turn. In fact—expanding on Cresswell’s (2006) distinction between “movement” and “mobility”—the actual movement involved may be between the same points A and B, but the social meaning and power relations involved in the pattern of movement may lead to distinctly different conceptions of the mobility involved. Taking up an example from Chapter 10, “Chen” is a “love-migrant” who has entered Norway through a one-time movement from China to Finnmark. In originally arriving from Beijing to Finnmark, she could be assigned the social category of “migrant.” Yet now, several years down the line, Chen is repeatedly travelling along the exact same route as before—with the interesting difference that by now, her mobility pattern could be ascribed to the social category of “business traveler,” as she goes to Beijing to look at fashion trends and select the right pieces of clothes for her shop in Finnmark. This echoes Cresswell’s point that the notion of mobility must be understood as “a thoroughly social facet of life imbued with meaning and power, [ … and it] is composed of elements of social time and social space” (Cresswell 2006, 4). As King argues, the mobility “hype” has tended to lead to a celebratory stance towards any kind of mobility, overshadowing the fact that “access to mobility is one of the fundamental axes of class division both on a global scale [ … ] and within countries” (King 2012, 26). Scholars such as Cresswell (2006), Uteng and Cresswell (2008), and King (2012) also point out the importance of including gender perspectives in analyzing mobilities. As argued by Cattan (2008), mobility and place are in a difficult relationship, where gender requires a hearing, too. Hence, we need to integrate the scale of body, household, community and the transnational dimension to arrive at comprehensive understandings of how mobility and place relate to each other—a goal we pursue in several chapters in this book, for example by looking at cross-border migrations of men to do manual labor (Chapter 8) and women to engage in transnational marriages and exchange of kinship (Chapter 9). However, while the migration patterns of men and women often differ in significant ways, it is not sufficient to simply describe these differences, it is also important, as King points out, “to understand to what extent, if any, migration itself reshapes gender relations” (King 2012, 27)—an ambition we also pursue in the third section of this book. Situating Everyday Life in a Local/Global Context In accordance with points raised above, this book is based on an approach which sees spatialization as central. However, we would also like to emphasize the point that local communities cannot be regarded as a priori social fields, because social interaction and community-making may also be enacted across distinctions such as center/periphery or local/global (Saugestad 1996, in Bærenholdt and Granås 2008). As pointed out by Bærenholdt and Granås, “the making and remaking of

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periphery places involves crucial transports, connections and mobilities towards physically distant people and places” (Bærenholdt and Granås 2008, 1), and therefore, they argue, mobility may accentuate the meaning and value of place. This means that we approach the issue of people’s physical or geographic location in the world as an open signifier, attempting to open up for new interpretation of its significance in relation to their social practices and everyday lives. Appealing to scholars to rescue the everyday from oblivion, de Certeau argues that studying the ways in which ordinary people are moving around in the places where they live “should lead us to a theory of everyday practices, of lived space” (de Certeau 1984, 96). Scott further argues that asking how “the specific daily activities of individuals combine to create and sustain a sense of order, stability and predictability in their local worlds, and how [ … ] these worlds combine to form a larger scale culture” (Scott 2009, 5) may inform us about how large-scale events (such as for example global trade flows, global production networks or global care chains) are (also) precipitated upon micro-scale events. Inspired by Bennett’s (2005) considerations, one could argue that everyday life becomes significant as the physical site in which the interplay between local and global cultures and structures is rendered visible. However, while Bennett writes about how the “convergence of the local with the global has a significant impact on the everyday experience itself” (Bennett 2005, 4), we also argue that local particularities do persist in the face of global restructurings—a phenomenon which is clearly made visible through a number of contributions to this book (e.g. Chapter 5). Further, in relation to situating everyday life in a local/global context, we are equally interested in the concepts of mobility and belonging, and do not see these as eo ipso oppositional concepts. As Cuba and Hummon argue “there is considerable disagreement about the precise effects of mobility on place affiliation” (Cuba and Hummon 1993, 550). Not only do we think it advisable to question the notion that mobility may undermine a sense of belonging, but, like Massey, we consider it advisable to frame the question of belonging in a new way, which simultaneously unsettles “the givenness of place” (Massey 2005, 151). Hence, we adopt a perspective which considers mobility and belonging as potentially interconnected. Turning focus to the relationship between place and mobility, rather than belonging and mobility, Simonsen argues that place and mobility are not opposites, and in fact can co-constitute each other through the way in which moving out of and moving into places can affect these: “Of course, mobility affects place (and vice versa) but the relationship between them should be seen, not as one of erosion, but as a complex intertwining contribution to the construction of both” (Simonsen 2008, 14). As Simonsen argues, practices or ways of enacting life in a place constitute our sense of the world and our sense of the place in which we live. Different place practices and ways of engaging with place are a major interest in this book, and in particular, various chapters aim at uncovering new and emergent forms of place practices, as well as investigating which forms of local, and possibly gendered, practices may be enduring in the face of global restructurings.

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We understand place practices as the ways in which a particular place or locality may facilitate or hinder different types of actions or practices (Møller and Pristed Nielsen 2014)—both in terms of the physical reality providing certain opportunities for action, but also in terms of the social structures or “social rules and values [which] contribute to the stability of practices” (Sahakian and Wilhite 2014, 30). As argued by Cresswell, “spatial structures and the system of places provide historically contingent but durable ‘schemes of perception’ that have an ideological dimension” (Cresswell 1996, 16). Social equality and in particular gender equality may be seen as one ideological dimension of life in the Nordic region. To understand how such “schemes of perception” work, we have to study the emplaced practices, because, as Cresswell puts it “people read places by acting in them” (Cresswell 1996, 16). This is very concretely brought out by analyses particularly in Chapter 5, which amongst other things documents how newcomers to the region of North Denmark perceive gender relations in their new place of residence. A concrete example of changing place practices in light of changing physical realities may be found in a study from the Faroe Islands, where geography has traditionally put limits on local people’s mobility—also between individual villages (Hovgaard and Kristiansen 2008). However, following new opportunities brought about by technological advances, their study points to the importance of tunnels, bridges and roads in facilitating new reflexive settlement choices. With new mobility patterns, residence has become a mobile practice and the municipalities respond to this by attempting to provide attractive childcare and school facilities, as childcare becomes a competitive parameter for getting people to settle—and also a growing necessity with long commuting times. However, this also means that “mobility capital” (Kaufmann et al. 2004) becomes important; e.g. do people have (access to) a car? As everyday functions become increasingly segregated, mobility versus immobility becomes a major social fault line, which easily disadvantages certain social groups such as the very young and the very old, as well as women. In this perspective, the important question becomes not mobility or belonging, but wanting to stay or having to stay. These theoretical perspectives are further debated through empirical contributions in this book. The Structure of the Book All chapters in the book evolve around different sets of key concepts: home and belonging, mobility and immobility, local/global/transnational, gender/age/class/ ethnicity, place and periphery, agency and structure—although, naturally, some of the case studies focus more on some concepts/conceptual pairs than others. All the different case studies in the book (Chapters 3–13), as well as the theoretical debates, take on a gender perspective, often in combination with other social categories, and sometimes also drawing in more complex intersectional analyses.

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The book is divided into four parts: The first part sets the scene, whereby the present introductory chapter outlines the content of the book and discusses the key concepts around which the book evolves, and the main theoretical traditions and strands the book enters into dialogue with. In the second chapter (Siim and Stoltz, Chapter 2), two renowned scholars of the Nordic welfare states and gender regimes explain the particularities of the Nordic peripheries and why it is particularly relevant to study the impact of and responses to globalizing processes in this region. This chapter also serves as a timely reminder that the national level and national “politics of belonging” (Yuval-Davis 2011) continue to play a role in the evolving relationship between gender, space, place and global processes. The second part of the book is about constructing places, spaces and home, debating dichotomies of center and periphery, belonging and unbelonging/longing to be elsewhere, and feeling at home or like a newcomer. It particularly contributes to a problematization of what may constitute a core and a periphery in a global and globalizing context (Eriksson, Pristed Nielsen and Paulgaard, Chapter 3), and it further questions distinctions between belonging/unbelonging (Christensen, Chapter 6) or being a newcomer versus feeling at home (Faber and Pristed Nielsen, Chapter 5). This part of the book revolves around images and imaginaries of places and feelings of being at home or not being at home, drawing on diverse material in the form of interview data, photography, film, news articles and more. In addition, the debate about center, periphery and mobility is advanced through an analysis of internal migration using longitudinal data from North Denmark (Emerek and Kirkeby, Chapter 4). The third part of the book consists of empirical case studies of mobility and gendered circuits precipitated upon global restructurings. It investigates gendered and ethnicized mobilities in a global world, looking into, for example, seasonal labor migration from various countries to the Swedish berry industry in northern Sweden (Eriksson and Tollefsen, Chapter 8) with people often traveling from one periphery to another; or gendered and ethnicized rooms for maneuver for Finnish female peacekeepers on international peacekeeping missions far from their country of origin (Pentinnen, Chapter 7). Another chapter in this part looks into how and why women and men from the Philippines end up in Iceland (Skaptadóttir, Chapter 9). The fourth part of the book looks into the opportunities and constraints afforded at the local level, asking whether there may be gendered differences in what is offered and what is embraced. One particular focus is on the opportunities available for young men and women facing educational choices, which in some instances in the more remote regions of the Nordic peripheries may go hand in hand with a necessity to relocate and leave the family home (Bloksgaard, Faber and Hansen, Chapter 12 and Paulgaard, Chapter 13). Furthermore, the section focuses on choices and options available within the labor market, looking specifically at how a career in the marine sector requires reflections by male Faroese sailors on whether to stay or to leave (Hovgaard, Chapter 11), and how entrepreneurship and self-employment may be seen as an option for those unwilling or unable to leave a

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specific locality (Munkejord, Chapter 10). These two chapters together also serve to demonstrate how mobility strategies may be interwoven in complex ways with different types of gendering and/or deliberate gender strategies. Finally, Professor Carla Freeman from Emory University, Atlanta has written an epilogue for the book, discussing what can be learned from the Nordic countries and why people should care from a global perspective about the changes in patterns of mobility and attendant production and reproduction of femininities and masculinities taking place in this particular region. References Bennett, Andy. 2005. Culture and Everyday Life. London: Sage Publications. Brandth, Berit and Marit S. Haugen. 2005. “Doing Rural Masculinity: From Logging to Outfield Tourism.” In Journal of Gender Studies, 14 (1): 13–22. Bye, Linda Marie. 2009. “How to Be a Rural Man: Young Men’s Performances and Negotiations of Rural Masculinities.” In Journal of Rural Studies, 25 (3): 278–88. Bærenholdt, Jørgen Ole and Brynhild Granås (eds). 2008. Mobility and Place: Enacting Northern European Peripheries. Aldershot: Ashgate. Cattan, Nadine. 2008. “Gendering Mobility: Insights into the Construction of Spatial Concepts.” In Tanu Priya Uteng and Tim Cresswell (eds). 2008. Gendered Mobilities. Aldershot: Ashgate. Cresswell, Tim. 1996. In Place/Out of Place: Geography, Ideology and Transgression. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Cresswell, Tim. 2004. Place: A Short Introduction, Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. Cresswell, Tim. 2006. On the Move: Mobility in the Modern Western World. New York: Routledge. Cuba, Lee and David M. Hummon. 1993. “Constructing a Sense of Home: Place Affiliation and Migration Across the Life Cycle.” Sociological Forum, 8(4): 547–72. Davids, Tine and Francien van Driel (eds). 2005. The Gender Question in Globalisation: Changing Perspectives and Practices. Aldershot: Ashgate. de Certeau, Michel. 1984. The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley: University of California Press. Faist, Thomas. 2013. “The Mobility Turn: A New Paradigm for the Social Sciences?” In Ethnic and Racial Studies, 36(11): 1637–46. Freeman, Carla. 2001. “Is Local: Global as Feminine: Masculine? Rethinking the Gender of Globalization.” In Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 26 (4): 1007–1039. Hovgaard, Gestur and Sámal Matras Kristiansen. 2008. “Villages on the Move: From Places of Necessity to Places of Choice.” In Jørgen Ole Bærenholdt and Brynhild Granås (eds). 2008. Mobility and Place: Enacting Northern European Peripheries. Aldershot: Ashgate.

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Jones, Michael and Kenneth R. Olwig. 2008. Nordic Landscapes: Region and Belonging on the Northern Edge of Europe. Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press. Kaufmann, Vincent, Manfred Max Bergman and Dominique Joye. 2004. “Motility: Mobility as Capital.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 28 (4): 745–56. Kenway, Jane, Anna Kraack and Anna Hickey-Moody. 2006. Masculinity Beyond the Metropolis. Houndsmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan. King, Russell. 2012. “Theories and Typologies of Migration: An Overview and a Primer.” In Willy Brandt Series of Working Papers in International Migration and Ethnic Relations, 3(12): 1–48. Massey, Doreen. 1994. Space, Place and Gender. Cambridge: Polity Press. Massey, Doreen. 2005. For Space. London: Sage. Marchand, Marianne H. 2001. “Gendering Globalization in an Era of Transnational Capital: New Cross-border Alliances and Strategies of Resistance in a PostNAFTA Mexico.” Research Center on Development and International Relations (DIR) Working Paper No. 103, available online at: http://vbn.aau. dk/files/33642303/DIR_wp_103.pdf. Marchand, Marianne H. and Anne Sisson Runyan. 2011 [2001]. Gender and Global Restructuring: Sightings, Sites and Resistances. 2nd edition. Abingdon: Routledge. McDowell, Linda. 1999. Gender, Identity and Place: Understanding Feminist Geographies. Cambridge: Polity Press. Munkejord, Mai Camilla. 2009. Hjemme i nord. En analyse av stedsopplevelser med utgangspunkt i kvinnelige og mannlige innflytteres fortellinger om hverdagsliv i Havøysund og Vadsø, Finnmark. Avhandling for graden philosophiae doctor i kultur- og samfunnsfag. Institutt for planlegging og lokalsamfunnsforskning. Universitetet i Tromsø. Møller, Karina Torp and Helene Pristed Nielsen. 2014. “Studying Place Practices and Consumption Through Volunteer-employed Photography.” Journal of Consumer Culture, published online May, 21 2014. DOI: 10.1177/1469540514536195. Nagar, Richa, Victoria Lawson, Linda McDowell and Susan Hanson. 2002. “Locating Globalization: Feminist (Re)readings of the Subject and Spaces of Globalization.” In Economic Geography, 78 (3): 257–84. Nelson, Lise and Joni Seager. 2005. A Companion to Feminist Geography. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. Paulgaard, Gry. 2008. “Re-centering Periphery: Negotiating Identities in Time and Space.” In Jørgen Ole Bærenholdt and Brynhild Granås (eds). 2008. Mobility and Place: Enacting Northern European Peripheries. Aldershot: Ashgate. Sahakian, Marlyne and Harold Wilhite. 2014. “Making Practice Theory Practicable: Towards More Sustainable Forms of Consumption.” Journal of Consumer Culture, 14(1): 25–44. Said, Edward. 1978. Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books.

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Scott, Susie. 2009. Making Sense of Everyday Life. Cambridge: Polity Press. Shields, Rob. 1991. Places on the Margin: Alternative Geographies of Modernity. London and New York: Routledge. Simonsen, Kirsten. 2008. “Place as Encounters: Practice, Conjunction and Coexistence.” In Jørgen Ole Bærenholdt and Brynhild Granås (eds). 2008. Mobility and Place: Enacting Northern European Peripheries. Aldershot: Ashgate. Uteng, Tanu Priya and Cresswell, Tim (eds). 2008. Gendered Mobilities. Aldershot: Ashgate. West, Candace and Don H. Zimmerman. 2009. “Accounting for Doing Gender.” In Gender & Society, 23 (1): 112–22. Yuval-Davis, Nira. 2011. The Politics of Belonging: Intersectional Contestations. London: Sage.

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Chapter 2

Particularities of the Nordic: Challenges to Equality Politics in a Globalized World Birte Siim and Pauline Stoltz

The Nordic countries are in international rankings included as some of the most gender equal societies in the world (see e.g. the Global Gender Gap Index and the Gender Equality Index developed by the European Gender Equality Institute, EIGE), and scholars have demonstrated that the discourse and politics of women’s rights and gender equality has become an intrinsic part of the Nordic national identities and politics of belongings (Gullestad 2006). In spite of these achievements, Nordic scholars suggest that the increasing impact of globalization presents major challenges for addressing multiple inequalities in power and resources (Melby et al. 2008; Siim and Skjeie 2008). This chapter aims to analyze the challenge from globalization to the Nordic1 welfare and gender regimes and discuss the potentials and limits of this approach to equality from historical and comparative perspectives. The main research question is how to redesign equality politics to address intersecting inequalities according not only to gender and class, but also to age, ethnicity and nationality. This in turn raises theoretical and normative questions about how to reframe the Nordic approach to equality and justice from intersectional and transnational perspectives. The first part gives a brief overview of the historical roots of the emergence of the Nordic equality policies and welfare states from a dual class and gender perspective. The second part presents debates about contemporary challenges to equality policies against the background of changes in the political landscapes of the different Nordic countries. The concluding section reflects upon the theoretical and normative challenges of redesigning the Nordic approach to equality and reframing (gender) equality policies. It proposes that one of the main challenges for Nordic feminist theory and research is to transcend the bias of their own national contexts in order to reframe the notion of equality and social justice from intersectional and transnational perspectives.

1 The Nordic countries include five states, Iceland, Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden, and the Scandinavian countries only three, Denmark, Norway and Sweden. In the following the focus is mainly on the last four Nordic countries and sometimes only on the three Scandinavian countries, because of the limits in the comparative Nordic research.

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The Particularities of Nordic Equality Policies Social equality became a core value in the Nordic welfare states as these emerged in the middle of the twentieth century. Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden have all been characterized as having a “passion for equality” where social programs attempt to transform ideas about social justice into reality (Graubard 1986). The expansion of the welfare state was supported by the major political parties and the social partners, i.e. the labor unions and the employer organizations. It implied the gradual development of social equality within welfare states, which were focused on universal social rights rather than selective forms of redistribution tied to labor market participation known from the continental welfare models like France and Germany. One of the implications is that the equality regime in these welfare states has in the past emphasized public responsibilities of welfare and state interventions in the lives of “private” families in order to ensure the civil, political and social rights of the individual. This type of welfare state has been associated with what Esping-Andersen (1990) called the “Social Democratic Welfare State Regime.” The extensive public responsibilities for welfare and care work distinguish the Nordic welfare states from other continental European welfare states and especially from countries like the US and UK. Feminist scholars have noticed that the close public–private cooperation between the state and the family distinguishes the Nordic gender model from both the dominant Anglo-American model, where the state should not intervene in the “private” family, and from a conservative European family model (Siim 2000). Nordic state intervention is not a new phenomenon and cannot be understood primarily as the result of the emergence of the universal welfare state and the growth of social democracy. Social democracy did play a major role in the development of the universal Nordic welfare states during the twentieth century, but in cooperation with both Liberal and Conservative parties. The Social Democratic parties have been in power for shorter or longer periods in the Nordic countries, but since the 1990s social democracy has been in decline in all these countries. From a comparative perspective, one particularity of the evolution of the Nordic welfare states concerns the close link to the democratic struggles of the peasants’, workers’, and women’s movements and organizations for access to equal citizenship rights. Scholars have emphasized that the struggle for women’s rights and women’s suffrage was based on broad alliances with men in political parties as well as on alliances between civil society organizations representing workers, peasants and women. As a result, Nordic women gained political rights relatively early, 1905 in Norway and Finland, 1915 in Denmark and 1918 in Sweden (Bergqvist et al. 1999; Fiig and Siim 2012). Another Nordic particularity concerns the public intervention in patriarchal families from the 1920s and the public regulation of reproduction from the 1970s. One of these was the radical reform of marriage legislation in Denmark, Norway and Sweden in the mid-1920s, later followed by Finland and Iceland, “enhancing

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women’s individual rights and ending the husband’s legal power over his wife” and having major impacts on gender relations (Melby et al. 2008, 1–24). This modernization of gender relations with the early introduction of a basic equality between spouses was unique from a European—and indeed a global–perspective. As a result of coordinated Scandinavian reforms of the marriage legislation, married women gained the right to dispose over their own private property and income, full disposal of the common estate as well as custody of the children. In most European countries, women had to wait until the 1960s before similar legislation was introduced. Historians conclude that the reform created a Nordic model of marriage questioning the male-breadwinner model, since it gave married women the obligation to provide for their family. According to Melby, CarlssonWetterberg and Ravn this basic gender equality in marriage should be interpreted as one of the preconditions for the universal Nordic welfare model (Melby et al. 2008, 2). After the Second World War, social democracy was strengthened and was able to establish a broad political consensus about the evolution of a universal welfare state and social equality. Since the early 1970s, one of the hallmarks of Nordic welfare policies has been the emphasis on employment together with ”defamilialization” of the responsibility for providing for welfare. The extended public responsibility for care for children below the age of three years has contributed to women’s economic independence and is a precondition for the high level of women, including mothers, participating on the labor market (Borchorst and Siim 2002). From the late 1960s, the women’s movement evolved, and during the late 1970s and 1980s women entered political institutions. Reflecting on the Scandinavian political developments, the Norwegian political scientist Hernes (1987) argued in her seminal book Welfare State and Woman Power that Scandinavian social policies had a potential for being “women friendly.” She further proposed that Scandinavian citizenship was based upon the synergy between women’s political and social rights and upon what she called Scandinavian “state feminism” defined by a combination of “feminism from above in the form of gender equality and social policies and the feminization of welfare state relevant professions” and “feminization from below” through the mobilization of women in political and cultural activities (Hernes 1987, 153). The influential terms “state feminism,” “reproduction going public” and “women-friendliness” aimed to conceptualize the close relationship between feminist mobilization and state responsiveness in Scandinavia in relation to work life as well as family responsibilities. Nordic gender research has emphasized that the close ties between the public and private, the local and national, the state and civil society gave space for women’s agency. Since the 1970s, one key aspect of the specific Nordic gender model has been the close interaction between Scandinavian political institutions and public policies on the one hand and women’s organizations and feminist movements on the other hand (Bergqvist et al. 1999; Borchorst and Siim 2002; 2008). Nordic feminists have used different strategies in their struggle for gender equality either through social movements “from below” or within political

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organizations “from above.” In a comparative study of the relations between gender, politics and democracy in the Nordic countries (Bergqvist et al. 1999) scholars from each country focus on how equal women and men are in the Nordic countries and how homogeneous the gender models are. In the study, important national variations concerning models of feminist mobilization were found and it was concluded that there is one Nordic gender model with different gender profiles: the Danish being the most bottom-up, whereas the Swedish and Norwegian profiles are based upon a high degree of institutionalization of gender equality (Bergqvist et al. 1999, 286–89). In spite of these differences in gender profiles, women’s agency and the democratic inclusion of women in civil society and politics have played a significant role in the political culture in all the Nordic countries, from the suffrage movement to the present day (Siim 2000; Freidenvall et al. 2012). Finally, scholars have pointed towards the importance of social trust, political alliances across the left/ right divide and the incorporation of social partners in policy processes aimed at improving social equality, which have been more prevalent in the Nordic context than in other parts of the world (Lane and Ersson 2008). They conclude that these broad political consensuses and alliances around class and social equality have also led to advances for gender equality policies. This consensus may paradoxically become a barrier for rethinking the Nordic approach to equality, since it can contribute to hiding new forms of inequalities, for example between natives and immigrants. In this case the previous equality discourses may become barriers to addressing multiple inequalities. Debates about the Nordic Approach to Gender Equality Global processes, European integration and increased mobility and migration have since the late 1960s and 1970s sparkled social, political and cultural transformations of the Nordic countries towards de facto multi-ethnic societies. Historians have noticed that the Nordic countries have for the last 150 years been characterized by a relative cultural and religious homogeneity. Up until the 1960s, immigrants came primarily from other Nordic and European countries. As the Nordic countries become increasingly diverse, inequalities are also opening up between more “culturally distant” immigrants from the Middle East, Africa and Asia, and the rest of the population. From a gender perspective, this development has challenged Hernes’ grand vision of a “women-friendly” society “where injustice on the basis of gender would be largely eliminated without an increase in other forms of inequality, such as among groups of women” (1987, 15). In the 1970s and 1980s, Nordic feminist scholars were primarily concerned with gender inequalities in terms of categorical differences between men and women, as these cut across the class-based categories of capital and labor. This approach can be criticized for resting upon “epistemological blind spots,” since it has problems incorporating inequalities of

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race/ethnicity and more particularly the intersections between gender, class and race (de los Reyes et al. 2002; Kabeer 2008). Recent globalization and Europeanization movements of mobility have inspired new feminist debates about the potentials and limits of the Nordic approaches to social and gender equality. One contested question is whether the universal welfare states still represent an alternative model in the face of globalization. Another controversial issue is the implications of the European approach to antidiscrimination policies for Nordic gender equality (Borchorst et al. 2012). Sylvia Walby has addressed this question in the influential book Globalization and Inequalities: Complexity and Contested Modernities (2009). Here she paints a relatively idealized picture of contemporary Nordic social democracy. Walby suggests that there are two basic forms of modernity in the global North, social democracy and neo-liberalism. These two are competing projects that differ according to the depth of democracy and the extent of inequality, and Sweden is used as the positive example. While Walby makes a useful distinction between intersection of gender and class components, her approach to globalization and inequalities seems to be blind to the impact of mobility and immigration on gender equality in the Nordic countries. It thus neglects the failure of welfare policies to include immigrant minorities and address multiple inequalities. Naila Kabeer’s (2008) approach is more critical concerning the current state of the Nordic equality policies. Kabeer acknowledges the evidence of progress on some of the key dimensions of gender equality, but she also finds evidence in the literature that the pace of change on other dimensions has been far slower, suggesting the persistence of male dominance in central spheres of Nordic society. She finds that the welfare state in the Nordic context was the product of the social democratic imagination. This meant that the language of equality drew on the discourse of social solidarity, which was based first and foremost on a discourse of class solidarity. These social democratic values can contribute to explaining the dominant gender-neutral formulations of equality policies, illustrated by the case of Sweden. One of the implications of this neutrality is the difficulty of putting gender-specific measures, such as domestic violence, on the political agenda, since they could be interpreted as a threat to the discourse of gender equality. Walby and Kabeer present two alternative theoretical approaches to the welfare state with different analytical foci and normative perceptions of the Nordic vision of equality. This especially concerns different interpretations of the challenge of dealing with social and gender equality in the face of globalization, multiple inequalities and cultural and religious diversities. From the perspective of diversity the “passion for equality” can be problematized since it appears to be premised on an underlying “antipathy to difference.” Feminist researchers from Norway and Sweden, the two countries with the most extensive forms of state feminism, have also pointed out that the high degree of political consensus in these countries can be perceived as both a blessing and a curse. They argue that the strong hegemonic social democratic discourses on equality based primarily on class and gender categories have made it difficult

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to address complex and multiple inequalities (see Skjeie and Teigen 2003; Eduards 1991). Scholars have argued that one of the implications of this hegemonic approach to gender equality has been that intra-categorical differences between women or between men from different social categories were largely ignored (McCall 2005; Phoenix 2006; Yuval-Davis 2011, 6–8). This tends to create a problematic split, since most gender research has taken the perspective of Nordic women while research on ethnicity has mainly focused on immigrant men. As a result, immigrant women have been relatively invisible in the dominant gender studies, or have been represented as passive, victimized and trapped in their cultures. Such representations serve to ignore that cultures are negotiated and transformed through interactions with others and shift attention away from wider issues of racism that can permeate these interactions (Kabeer et al. 2008, 266–269; de los Reyes 2000; Longva 2003; for attempts to address these issues see also Langvasbråten 2008 and Stoltz 2000). In sum, from a comparative perspective the Nordic countries have until recently been perceived as relatively homogeneous in relation to religion, ethnicity, language and nationality. They have historically been characterized as having a particular Nordic approach to equality policies based upon consensus across Left and Right about support for the universal welfare state, extended social policies and a dual breadwinner model based on gender equality on the labor market and within the family. In spite of the differences between the five nation states, pathdependent developments in universal welfare policies continue to influence the present visions of and challenges to welfare and gender policies in the region. These observations contribute to explaining the current challenges to gender and welfare research to address complex diversities and multiple inequalities, but can also contribute to explaining why the notion of equality and equality issues still hold a prominent place on the Nordic political agenda across the breadth of the political spectrum. Transformation of the Nordic Political Landscapes Recent transformations of the political landscapes due to globalization, European integration and migration processes within and beyond Europe have produced new political projects and politics of belonging.2 Sweden, Denmark and Finland (but not Norway and Iceland) are today part of a close European cooperation as members of the European Union. Socio-economic migration processes and EU integration have contributed to transforming the national political landscapes 2 Nira Yuval-Davis distinguishes between belonging and the politics of belonging: “Belonging is about an emotional attachment, about feeling ‘at home’,” while “the politics of belonging comprise specific political projects aimed at constructing belonging to particular collectivity/ies” (2011, 10).

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and challenging the previous Nordic approaches to equality. One example is the EU’s anti-discrimination policies, which have placed multiple in/equalities on the political and academic agenda (Borchorst et al. 2012). As a result of the dual economic and political processes, the Nordic countries have undergone profound cultural, social and political transformations compared to the heydays of the Nordic welfare and gender model. Socio-economic cleavages, and a left/right division which divided politics into a socialist block with often one large Social Democratic party and one more left party (Left-Socialist or Communist), and a non-socialist block, characterized the previous political landscape. Basically, Sweden and Norway had large Social Democratic parties (40–45 percent support); the party was smaller in Denmark (35 percent), Finland (25 percent) and Iceland (15 percent). The non-socialist block often consisted of one Conservative party, a Liberal party and—due to the predominantly rural character of most of the Nordic countries—an agrarian or so called “Centre” party. Since the 1980s, green parties and populist parties also emerged and formed the beginning of a changed political landscape (see Lane and Ersson 2008). Since 1990, social democracy has been weakened in all the Nordic countries and the present political landscape is no longer dominated by social democracy, but by Conservative, Liberal, Centre or coalition governments. Social democracy has been relatively strong in Norway, but the country has seen two ConservativeCentre governments (1997–2000 and 2001–2005). The Norwegian Progress Party represents a new highly successful political project on the far Right. In 2009, the Progress Party became the second strongest political organization in Norway, second only to the Labor Party, and the success was largely due to the party’s focus on restrictive immigration policies. For a long time the party did not manage to gain a direct influence on politics, since the other political parties were unwilling to cooperate on the national level (Sicakkan 2010). This changed in 2013, when the Social Democrats lost the elections and the Conservative Party formed a government together with the Progress Party. In Denmark, Liberal-Conservative-Centre governments have been stronger, and the state has, since 1990, had long periods with Liberal-ConservativeCentre governments. The right-wing populist, anti-immigration and Eurosceptical Danish People’s Party constituted the parliamentary support for this last government. When it comes to the Danish party political landscape, research shows that the Danish People´s Party has gradually moved from being a maverick party to becoming a legitimate support party for the Liberal-Conservative-Centre government from 2001 to 2011 (Meret and Siim 2013a). When Denmark changed from a Liberal-Conservative-Centre to a Centre-left government, headed by the Social Democratic Party, after the elections in 2011, it was the only socialdemocratic coalition government in any of the Nordic countries. The long parliamentary history of populist right-wing parties in Denmark and Norway contrasts with the relatively late entering of these parties in Sweden and Finland. The Sweden Democrats entered the Swedish Parliament in 2010 and

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the emergence and breakthrough of the True Finns came as late as the national elections of 2011. Sweden and Finland have recently both had a number of Conservative-Centre governments: in Sweden, since 2006 until the time of writing in 2014. Finland has had a tradition of broad coalition governments with varying composition, including Conservative-Social Democratic ones. Transformations of the political landscapes and peoples’ politics of belonging have influenced the particular Nordic approach to welfare and equality. Scholars such as Brochmann and Hagelund (2010) have analyzed the implications of the specific Scandinavian approach to welfare and democracy for migration policies. In the large comparative study titled Limits to Welfare, the emphasis is on shifts in immigration/integration policies from World War II till 2010. They propose that the founding and evolution of the Danish, Norwegian and Swedish welfare states can be interpreted as an exclusive “welfare nationalism” limited to national citizens based upon democracy, citizenship and modernization. According to Brochmann and Hagelund, Scandinavia can be interpreted as one welfare model with three exceptions, since the countries have different approaches to migration/integration. The “multicultural” Swedish model is presented as the “good” model, with a relatively accommodating response towards diversity, dual citizenship, the right to apply for citizenship after five years and a focus on structural discrimination (2011, 20–21), and the restrictive Danish model as the “bad” model, with the pragmatic Norwegian response positioned “in between” (2001, 356–57). The Danish model has emphasized the duties of immigrants based on mandatory citizenship and language tests as a condition for residency and citizenship, the latter can only be applied for after nine years of residence. The Norwegian approach attempts to find a balance between rights and duties, since it requires participation in language classes but does not demand language tests. Sweden has gradually moved towards civic integration since the mid-1980s, but still rejects the idea of tying residency or citizenship to either participation in integration programs or to specific integration achievements (Borevi 2010, 38). However, the accommodative Swedish policies face similar problems to the two other countries because of failed integration of immigrants. The comparative Scandinavian analysis convincingly demonstrates that the three countries’ universal welfare state policies have all failed to integrate immigrants on the labor market and to redefine equality policies to include new immigrant groups (Brochmann and Hagelund 2010, 367). The main conclusion is that the three countries have become de facto multi-ethnic countries, which are presently forced to redefine the national welfare projects faced with global mobility and growing demands for labor power. Increased immigration and multiculturalism have also had profound implications for the Nordic approach to gender equality. Gender research has discussed the implications of the evolution towards multi-ethnic societies and growing right-wing populism for the Nordic understanding of gender equality (Hellström et al. 2012; Meret and Siim 2013b). Siim and Skjeie (2008) propose that these inequalities reveal a Nordic gender equality paradox between the relative

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inclusion of native majority women and the relative marginalization of women from diverse ethnic minorities on the labor market, in politics and in society. Marginalization of and discrimination against immigrant women are problems in many European countries (Akkerman and Hagelund 2007; Andreassen and Lettinga 2013). However, growing inequalities between native and migrant women raise particular challenges to Nordic egalitarianism and self-understanding as a universal model for gender equality.3 Challenges from Globalization to the Particular Nordic Equalities The changes in the political landscapes and the political reformulations of contemporary problems with inequalities and injustices according to old and new categories have inspired new understandings of multiple and intersecting inequalities from the Nordic contexts. The following section briefly identifies and discusses four sets of challenges to Nordic equalities from globalization that concern discourses and policies as well as practices. Arguably, gender research strategies need to explore the complex links between equality policies, discourses and practice in greater detail from comparative and transnational Nordic perspectives. The first challenge to equality policies concerns the deep-seated and problematic transformations in society. Global processes of immigration challenge the Nordic approach to welfare and gender equality, since the countries have difficulties in living up to their visions of creating equality for all citizens. The Scandinavian countries still fare relatively well in relation to social and gender equality compared to other geographical regions, but immigration and integration policies have increased inequalities between native citizens and what, in the context of the EU, are called “third country nationals” (as opposed to those who are nationals in another EU member state). One implication is an increasing dualism between social policies for the native majorities and integration policies for the migrant minorities, e.g. between the rights of native citizens and the emphasis on the responsibilities/duties of immigrant and refugee groups in relation to integration (Brochmann and Hagelund 2010; Borchorst and Teigen 2010). As a result, socio-economic inequalities among women and among the native majority and migrant minorities have emerged as central political issues. In all the four Nordic countries immigrant groups tend to be marginalized on the labor market, in politics and in society. Right-wing anti-immigration forces have exploited this situation by politicizing the perceived cultural conflicts between the majority and ethnic minorities, focusing especially on the lack of gender equality 3 A recent Norwegian Government Report evaluating thirty years of gender equality policies from the perspective of “gender plus”—understood as the intersections of gender, ethnicity and age—states that equality policies in Norway have had a bias towards the white middle class (cf. NOU 2011; NOU 2012).

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and the patriarchal culture in ethnic minority families (Akkerman and Hagelund 2007; Meret and Siim 2013a; Norocel 2013; Mulinari and Neergaard 2012). The second challenge to equality policies concerns profound transformations of the political landscape which have affected the way that equality policies are framed. These challenges concern both the emergence of nationalist parties, the emergence of neoliberal governmentality and the emergence of transnational political cooperation. Class equality—and increasingly gender equality—has played a key role in the Nordic egalitarian or “social democratic” welfare projects. Gender also plays a crucial, although often implicit, role in the political belongings, ideologies and policies which have emerged in the new political landscapes. Political agendas and public policies have started to address both gender and ethnic equality, but political agendas also conflict and detract from gender equality in the name of ethnic equality, and vice versa (for the case of Sweden see Hugemark and Roman 2014). Scholars have identified a shift in the balance between rights and responsibilities: towards the rights of the community, or the state, and a parallel emphasis on responsibilities of immigrant groups/individuals. Previously, the Nordic welfare state regime, under the influence of social democracy, emphasized the collective responsibilities of the state in order to ensure the rights of the individual (EspingAndersen 1990). The new emphasis on obligations appears to disadvantage women, ethnic minorities and other marginalized groups in society (Stoltz and Svensson 2010; see also Johansson 2008, 210–15; Hugemark and Roman 2012). The third challenge is the theoretical challenge of understanding these transformations of society. Theorizing immigration and multiple inequalities and differences according to race/ethnicity and religion has until recently been a blind spot in Nordic welfare and gender research. Feminist research has theorized notions of intersectionality, multiple inequalities and transversal politics (YuvalDavis 2011). Scholars propose a paradigmatic shift is needed in gender research in order to reframe equality and social justice from the perspective of not only gender and class, but also ethnicity/immigration and other categories that have emerged on the political agenda, such as religion and sexuality (Yuval-Davis 2011; Phoenix 2006). The intersectionality approach has also been important for Nordic feminist research (de los Reyes et al. 2002; Christensen and Siim 2010). We find that one promising strategy for overcoming the exclusive Nordic “welfare nationalism”—for natives only—identified by Brochmann and Hagelund (2011) would be to explore gender equality and social justice from an intersectional and transnational perspective (Fraser 2011). This approach needs to evolve further through cross-national and transnational research (for examples see e.g. Stoltz et al. 2010; Siim and Mokre 2013). The fourth challenge concerns the lack of feminist activism and mobilization. The Nordic countries no longer have a strong united women’s movement to push for gender equality policies “from below.” State feminism still exists, especially in Norway and Sweden, and we also find co-operation about gender equality programs between the Nordic Equality Ministers within the Nordic Council,

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aimed at getting the Nordic version of gender equality on the political agenda in the European context and in the UN. The problem is, however, that the link between state feminism “from above” and women’s mobilization “from below,” perceived as a characteristic of Nordic state feminism and “women-friendly” policies, no longer exists (Siim and Skjeie 2008; Borchorst and Siim 2008; Freidenvall et al. 2006).4 The final section reflects upon the future viability of the Nordic gender model. Reflections upon Particularities of Contemporary Nordic Equalities Equality discourses, politics and practices have a long history and are rooted in cultural and political institutions and belongings, which influence the ability to address multiple inequalities. From the Nordic contexts the perceptions of equality, including gender equality, are influenced by particular spaces, places and belongings, e.g. negotiations and alliances between workers, peasants and women in civil society, as well as affected by particular histories, political institutions and cultures. The imagined, and often idealized, past poses particular potentials and barriers for the reframing of equality in the Nordic countries in the face of globalization. One central question is whether the Nordic welfare states still represent an alternative to the neoliberal and Conservative welfare and gender regimes as once suggested by Esping-Andersen’s approach to the welfare state, and recently reframed by Walby’s approach to complex inequalities. The Nordic countries are diverse, but during the last 150 years they all emerged from the peripheries as poor peasant countries to become influential welfare models for social and gender equality. This chapter has emphasized that the recent failure to include immigrant minorities as equal citizens represents a major problem for Nordic welfare and equality politics. It has also emphasized that there are potentials to build on, especially the successful Nordic tradition of combating class and gender inequalities by close cooperation between public and private actors. The tradition for collaboration between civil society organizations, social movements/NGOs, social partners and the state is a potential tool for the inclusion of immigrants in democracy and society. And the EU’s focus on anti-discrimination according to gender, sexuality, ethnicity/race, religion, nationality and age could become a means for addressing multiple inequalities from the national and transnational levels (Krizsan et al. 2012). From a normative perspective, the Nordic approach to gender equality has been perceived by many scholars as an ideal model for other countries to follow. The key question then is whether Nordic welfare policies are still viable in the 4 See also the special issue of Nora: Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research on “Feminist Resistance—Resistance to Feminism”, in 2013, volume 21, issue 4.

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global era. Scholars have argued that the new global constellations challenge the national models, because new political issues like the environment, gender equality and human rights transcend national borders, and consequently they have proposed new approaches to equality and justice which transcend local/regional and national biases. One example is Nancy Fraser (2011), who has recently proposed a global approach to justice and solidarity, which is justified by referring to the common communities of faith in a global world. She claims that the feminist project (and the Left) has inadvertently contributed to supporting neo-liberalist ideas and should develop new global notions of justice and democracy. We find that the transnational approach to equality is promising, but it must be sensitive to the particularities of local/regional and national spaces, places and belongings, including the Nordic contexts (Siim and Stoltz 2013; Rolandsen Agustín and Siim 2014). One strategy for reframing Nordic gender equality is thus to transcend the national biases, e.g. by including women’s experiences and activities from diverse contexts; from the Global North to the Global South. It is a huge challenge to conceptualize intersectional and transnational approaches to gender equality and welfare based upon inclusive visions of equality, solidarity and justice, sensitive to the diversity of spaces, places and belongings. The remaining chapters of this book can contribute to further reflections about the contemporary potentials and barriers for reframing equality policies from the Nordic contexts. References Akkerman, Tim and Anniken Hagelund. 2007. “‘Women and Children First!’ Antiimmigration Parties and Gender in Norway and the Netherlands.” In Patterns of Prejudice, (41) 2: 197–214. Andreassen, Rikke and Doutje Lettinga. 2012. “Veiled debates: Gender and Gender Equality in European National Narratives. In Sieglinde Rosenberger and Birgit Sauer (eds). Politics, Religion and Gender. Framing and Regulating the Veil. London/New York: Routledge: 17–36. Bergqvist, Christina, Anette Borchorst, Ann-Dorte Christensen, Viveca RamstedtSilén, Nina C. Raaum and Auður Styrkársdóttir (eds). 1999. Equal Democracies? Gender and Politics in the Nordic Countries. Oslo: Scandinavian UP. Borchorst, Anette and Birte Siim. 2002. “The Women-friendly Welfare State Revisited.” In NORA – Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research, 10 (2): 90–98. Borchorst, Anette and Birte Siim. 2008. “The Women-Friendly Policies and State Feminism.” In Feminist Theory, 9: 185–207. Borchorst, Annette and Mari Teigen. 2010. “Political Intersectionality: Tackling Inequalities in Public Policies in Scandinavia.” In Kvinder, Køn & Forskning, 2–3: 19–28.

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Borchorst, Annette, Lenita Freidenvall, Johanna Kantola, Liza Reisel and Mari Teigen. 2012. “Institutionalizing Intersectionality in the Nordic Countries: Anti-Discrimination and Equality in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden.” In Andrea Krizsan, Hege Skjeie and Judith Squires (eds). Institutionalizing Intersectionality. The Changing Nature of European Equality Regimes. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan: 33–58. Borevi, Karen. 2010. “Dimensions of Citizenship: European Integration Policies from a Scandinavian Perspective.” In Bo Bengtsson, Per Strömblad and Ann-Helén Bay (eds). Diversity, Inclusion and Citizenship in Scandinavia. Cambridge Scholars Publishing: 19–46. Brochmann, Grete and Anniken Hagelund. 2010. Velferdens grenser (The Limits of Welfare). Oslo: Universitetsforlaget. Brochmann, Grete and Anniken Hagelund. 2011. “Migrants in the Scandinavian Welfare State: The Emergence of a Social Policy Problem.” In Nordic Journal of Migration Research 1 (1). Carlsson-Wetterberg, Christina and Kari Melby. 2008. “The Claims of Economic Citizenship: The Concept of Equality in Historical Context.” In Kari Melby, Anna-Birte Ravn and Christina Carlsson-Wetterberg (eds). Gender Equality as a Perspective on Welfare: The Limits of Political Ambition. Policy Press: 43–62. Christensen, Ann-Dorte and Birte Siim. 2010. “Citizenship and Politics of Belonging: Inclusionary and Exclusionary Framings of Gender and Ethnicity.” In Kvinder, Køn & Forskning, 2–3: 8–18. de los Reyes, Paulina. 2000. “Diversity at Work: Paradoxes, Possibilities, and Problems in the Swedish Discourse on Diversity.” In Economic and Industrial Democracy, 21: 253–66. de los Reyes, Paulina, Irene Molina and Diana Mulinari. 2002. Maktens (o) lika förklädnader: Kön, klass och etnicitet i det postkoloniala Sverige. Stockholm: Atlas. Eduards, Maud. 1991. “The Swedish Gender Model: Productivity, Pragmatism and Paternalism.” In West European Politics, 14 (3): 166–81. Esping-Andersen, Gøsta. 1990. The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Fiig, Christina and Birte Siim. 2012. “Democratization of Denmark: The Political Inclusion of Women.” In B. Rodriques Ruiz and R. Rubio Marin (eds). From Voters to European Citizens. BRILL publications: 61–78. Fraser, Nancy. 2013. Fortunes of Feminism: From State-Managed Capitalism to Neoliberal Crisis. London: Verso. Freidenvall, Lenita, Drude Dahlerup and Hege Skjeie. 2006. “The Nordic Countries: An Incremental Model.” In Drude Dahlerup (ed.). Women, Quotas and Politics. London/New York: Routledge: 57–82. Graubard, Stephen R. (ed.). 1986. Norden: The Passion for Equality. Oslo: Norwegian University Press. Gullestad, Marianne. 2006. Plausible Prejudice: Everyday Practices and Social Images of Nation, Culture and Race. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget.

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Hugemark, Agneta and Christine Roman. 2014. “Putting Gender and Ethnic Discrimination on the Political Agenda: The Creation of the Equal Opportunities Ombudsman and the Ombudsman against Ethnic Discrimination in Sweden.” In NORA: Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research, 22 (2): 84–99. Hellström, Anders, Tom Nilsson and Pauline Stoltz. 2012. “Nationalism vs. Nationalism: The Challenge of the Sweden Democrats in the Swedish Public Debate.” In Government and Opposition: An International Journal of Comparative Politics, (47) 2: 186–205. Hernes, Helga Marie. 1987. Welfare State and Woman Power: Essays in State Feminism, Oslo: Norwegian UP. Johansson, Håkan. 2008. Socialpolitiska klassiker. Malmö: Liber. Kabeer, Naila. 2008. “Passion, Pragmatism, and the Politics of Advocacy: The Nordic Experience Through a ‘Gender’ and Development ‘lens’.” In Naila Kabeer, and Agneta Stark with Edda Magnus. Global Perspectives on Gender Equality: Reversing the Gaze. London: Routledge. Kabeer, Naila, Edda Magnus and Agneta Stark. 2008. “Introduction: Reversing the Gaze.” In Naila Kabeer and Agneta Stark with Edda Magnus. Global Perspectives on Gender Equality: Reversing the Gaze. London: Routledge. Krizsan, Andrea, Hege Skjeie and Judith Squires (eds). 2012. Institutionalizing Intersectionality: The Changing Nature of European Equality Regimes. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Lane, Jan-Erik and Svante Ersson. 2008. “The Nordic Countries: Compromise and Corporatism in the Welfare State.” In Josep Colomer. Comparative European Politics. Third edition. New York: Routledge. Langvasbråten, Trude. 2008. “A Scandinavian Model? Gender Equality Policy and Multiculturalism in Sweden, Denmark and Norway.” In Social Politics: International Studies of Gender, State and Society, 15 (1): 32–52. Longva, Anh Nga. 2003. “The Trouble with Difference: Gender, Ethnicity, and Norwegian Social Democracy.” In Comparative Social Research, 22: 153–75. McCall, Leslie. 2005. “The Complexity of Intersectionality.” In Signs: Journal of Women’s Studies, 30 (3): 1772–1802. Melby, Kari, Anna-Birte Ravn and Christina Carlsson-Wetterberg (eds). 2008. Gender Equality as a Perspective on Welfare: The Limits of Political Ambition. Policy Press. Meret, Susi and Birte Siim. 2013a. “Gender, Populism and Politics of Belonging: Discoursers of Rightwing Populist Parties in Denmark, Norway and Austria.” In Birte Siim and Monika Mokre (eds). Negotiating Gender and Diversity in an Emerging European Public Sphere. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan: 78–96. Meret, Susi and Birte Siim. 2013b. “Multiculturalism, Right Wing Populism and the Crisis of Social Democracy.” In Michael Keating and David McCrone (eds). The ‘Crisis’ of European Social Democracy. Edinburgh University Press: 125–39.

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Mulinari, Diana and Anders Neergaard. 2012. “Violence, Racism and the Political Arena: A Scandinavian Dilemma. In Nora – Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research, 20 (1): 12–18. NORA – Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research. 2013, 4. Special Issue: “Feminist Resistance—Resistance to Feminism.” Norocel, Cristian. 2013. “‘Give Us Back Sweden!’ A Feminist Reading of the (Re)Interpretations of the Folkhem Conceptual Metaphor in Swedish Radical Right Populist Discourse.” In Nora: Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research, (21) 1: 4–20. Phoenix, Ann. 2006. “Interogating Intersectionality: Productive Ways of Theorizing Multiple Positions.” In Kvinder, Køn & Forskning, 2–3: 21–31. Rolandsen Agustín, Lise and Birte Siim. 2014. “Gender Diversities: Practicing Intersectionality in the European Union.” In Ethnicities, (14) 4: 539–55. Sicakkan, Hakan. 2010. Diversity and the European Public Sphere: The case of Norway. Online Country Report No. 1, 2010. Available at http://eurospheres. org/files/2010/06/Norway.pdf. Siim, Birte. 2000. Gender and Citizenship: Politics and Agency in France, Britain and Denmark. Singapore: Cambridge University Press. Siim, Birte and Monika Mokre (eds). 2013. Negotiating Equality and Diversity in an Emergent European Public Sphere. Basingstoke: Palgrave/Macmillan. Siim, Birte and Hege Skjeie. 2008. “Tracks, Intersections and Dead Ends. Multicultural Challenges to State Feminism in Denmark and Norway.” In Ethnicities, 8 (3): 322–44. Siim, Birte and Pauline Stoltz. 2013. “Nationalism, Gender and Welfare: The Politics of Gender Equality in Scandinavia.” FREIA Working Paper Series 84/2013. Available online at http://vbn.aau.dk/files/76431845/freia_wp_84. pdf. Skjeie, Hege and Mari Teigen. 2003. Menn I mellom. Mannsdominans og likestillinspolitikk. Oslo: Gyldendal Akademisk. Stoltz, Pauline. 2000. About Being (T)Here and Making a Difference: Black Women and the Paradox of Visibility. Lund Political Studies 115. Ph. D. Dissertation. Lund: Lund University, Department of Political Science. Stoltz, Pauline and Marina Svensson. 2010. “Rights and Responsibilities in a Gendered World: Equality in/between China and the Nordic Countries.” In P. Stoltz et. al. (eds). Gender Equality, Citizenship and Human Rights: Controversies and Challenges in China and the Nordic Countries. London/ New York: Routledge. Stoltz, Pauline, Marina Svensson, Zhongxin Sun and Qi Wang (eds). 2010. Gender Equality, Citizenship and Human Rights. Controversies and challenges in China and the Nordic Countries. London/New York: Routledge. Walby, Sylvia. 2009. Globalization and Inequalities: Complexity and Contested Modernities. London: Sage. Yuval-Davis, Nira. 2011. The Politics of Belonging: Intersectional Contestations. London: Sage.

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Links EIGE Gender Equality Index. European Institute for Gender Equality. http://eige. europa.eu/content/gender-equality-index. Equality Commission. “Structure for Equality.” Official Norwegian Report NOU 2011: 18. Summary available at https://www.regjeringen.no/globalassets/ upload/bld/nou18_ts.pdf. Equality Commission. “Politikk for likestilling [Policy for Equality].” Official Norwegian Report NOU 2012:15. http://www.regjeringen.no/nb/dep/bld/dok/ nouer/2012/nou-2012–15.html?id=699800. Global Gender Gap Index, 2013 Report. World Economic Forum. http://reports. weforum.org/global-gender-gap-report-2013/#=. Nordiskt Forum Malmö 2014: New Action on Women’s Rights. June 12–15, 2014. Organized by the Nordic Women’s Movement. http://nf2014.org/en/welcome/ bakgrund/, accessed October 30, 2013.

Part II Constructing Place, Space and Home

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Chapter 3

The Internal Other: Reproducing and Reworking Center and Periphery Madeleine Eriksson, Helene Pristed Nielsen and Gry Paulgaard

This chapter contains a critical discussion of constructions of center and periphery in a Nordic context, and the discursive and material implications thereof. Specifically, it takes its starting point in representations of northernmost Denmark, Norway and Sweden, and discusses the ways in which discursive constructions of these geographic localities as backwards and peripheral contribute to a coproduction of a presumably egalitarian and forward-looking Nordic center; i.e. the national capital regions. We use the term “representations” in a very general sense as any means of communication by which people tell stories about places. The chapter draws on examples ranging from newspaper articles, to film, place marketing campaigns, interview material and other modes of representing “peripheral” regions in Denmark, Sweden and Norway. We argue that neoliberal global restructurings produce new spaces and articulations of “the other” as relegated to the economic, geographic and social peripheries of otherwise presumably well-functioning welfare states. Thus, there is no easy correspondence between distance and difference. Instead, Massey (2005) suggests that processes of “othering” imply the manipulation of spatiality, and that the kinds of power involved, and the ways they are enforced through the configuration of the spatial, are different in every situation. Hence, we aim to analyze such power configurations in various local settings. The news representations of North Denmark reproduce discourses of the area as not contributing to society, with inhabitants not fit for the modern way of life, and as a place for an obsolete rural white masculinity. Examples from Norrland in Sweden illuminate the ways in which neoliberal logics in place marketing and film production capitalize on stereotyping and racial ideologies of the Sámi people. Examples from Norway address the center/periphery discourse with reference to exoticizing representations of a wild and authentic North. In all three settings, global trends and developments pose challenges in the everyday lives of local residents in terms of creating new lines of social and economic inclusion and exclusion. In these processes, local particularities are often inflated in processes asserting the moral or social superiority of the national “centers”—or, quite simply, for capital gain.

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The Geographical Contexts The Nordic countries are often believed to belong to the same welfare and gender regimes with a strong tradition for universal social rights and gender equality, and are consequently often positively evaluated (see Chapter 2). Yet, these representations construct “others” both outside and within the nations. The representations of certain people and places as “drawing on resources”, as “unworthy” and as “unproductive” are part of the increasingly dominant neoliberal arguments for increasing flexibility on the labor market and the need to restructure the peripheral economies in Europe. In this way, the rest of the nation is represented as modern, liberal and progressive, and the problems within the nation can be represented as expressions of regional exceptions or the responsibility of individuals. It has become the responsibility of provinces and their populations to create growth and welfare, and compensation for disadvantaged demographic or geographic structures, as well as for economic restructuring in the global economy, is no longer considered a collective responsibility (ITPS 2005; Harvey 2005). Norway Northern Norway covers more than a third of the total area of Norway; still, less than one out of ten Norwegians lives there. The region consists of three counties, of which Finnmark, the northernmost and easternmost county in Norway, is the largest—larger than all of Denmark by area. Despite its size, it is the least populated area in Norway with approximately 72,000 inhabitants. Three ethnic groups have a long history in Finnmark as well as in many parts of Northern Norway: the Sámi, Kvens and Norwegians. The main industries are fisheries, mining, reindeer farming, aquaculture and tourism. Recently the search for oil and gas in the Norwegian and Russian parts of the Barents Sea has created optimism in some areas of the region. Still, economic restructuring and decline of working possibilities in traditional industries causes high unemployment rates, population decline and reductions of service supply in many parts of the region (Olsen 2010; Paulgaard 2012). Denmark Covering an area of 7,933 square kilometers, and with a population density of 73 people per square kilometer, North Denmark is by far the smallest and most densely populated of the three regions discussed in this chapter. Regional policies in Denmark are characterized by a high degree of redistribution of funds through the “municipal equalization policy,” which redistributes funds between municipalities on the basis of parameters like “having islands not connected to the mainland” or “having many elderly people” (Danish Ministry of Economy and the Interior 2013). Paradoxically, such comprehensive redistribution policies have been coupled with a high degree of centralization of public institutions and

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services. The region is characterized by a decreasing population size, and higher unemployment and lower levels of educational attainment than the rest of the country (Danish Economic Council of the Labor Movement 2010). Sweden Norrland comprises about 60 percent of the whole of Sweden and covers an area approximately 1,030 kilometers long. If we divide Sweden into two equal halves, 90 percent of the country’s population is in the southern half. This uneven population distribution is, historically, a consequence of a scarcity of cultivated land and a large inaccessible mountain range in the North. The territory of Norrland has nearly 1.2 million inhabitants, most of the population living in the coastal areas, which leaves large inland areas largely uninhabited, and it is one of the regions that is less favored in global processes of restructuring, and typically suffers from unemployment and population decrease (Statistics Sweden 2012; Eriksson 2010). Theoretical Framework: Geographical Imaginations of Space and Place We take our theoretical starting point from Said’s discussion of geographical imaginations, and his argument that the Orient has helped define Europe as its contrasting image, and that the Orient must, therefore, be represented as fundamentally different (Said 1978). This process is referred to as “othering,” and involves a process of reflection whereby other people, cultures and environments are everything our cultures are not. “Their” otherness contains “our” sameness (see also Chapter 1). This implies that meanings of places are constructed as bounded, enclosed spaces defined through difference, and that the construction of place attempts to establish a relationship between place and identity. Relying on this notion of “othering,” our analyses below present a post-colonial reading of productions of “internal others” in a Nordic context—internal others who are positioned in space and represented as exceptions in the three contexts in question. Despite widely diverging geographic and demographic realities in the three regions discussed in this chapter, they arguably share a territorial stigma (Wacquant 2007), which may take various expressions through either exoticizing or romantizing these localities, or presenting them as the last strongholds of xenophobes and bigots. However, distinct from Said’s classic post-colonialism criticism, we focus on the processes that create structural inequalities within Western states. Diken and Laustsen (2005) stress that the European practice of colonialism on other continents was brought back to the West to first target the domestic “exceptions,” such as the sick, poor and criminal, but also other groups in a country’s own population. Accordingly, the West could perform something similar to colonization on its own peoples. Similarly, Hilbert (1997) and Agnew (2003) assert that the nation is about

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identifying its inside from its outside, but also excluding and including particular places, regions and people within the nation. Jansson (2003; 2005; 2010) brings together the theories of internal colonialism by Hechter (1975), and Said’s theories of Orientalism, highlighting “internal orientalism” as a deeply embedded practice and tradition of representing a subordinate region as afflicted with various vices and lacks, so as to produce an exalted national identity. Jansson points out that the relationship involved in internal orientalism must necessarily be different from those of Orientalism since the “othered” region belongs to the nation state, which implies access to national institutions. The “othered” region would thus have more of a voice in the national discourse. This suggests that the relationship between regions in internal orientalism may be more complex. Consequently, we propose a thorough analysis of the discourses of internal orientalism to show how the relations and identities of regions, nations and people are always reworked and resisted. Thus, we seek to situate the “internal othering” in a wider social and economic context, highlighting the ways in which local particularities are enhanced, reworked or subverted to either resist or go with the flow of global confluences. In order to understand these relational processes of inclusion and exclusion of people and places, we must consider the representations and self-image of nations. Sweden, Norway and Denmark are typically branded as modern, gender equal and progressive Nordic welfare states. We argue that undesirable traits, such as sexism, racism and dependency on welfare, are edited out of the national identities and projected onto certain regions and people. Shields calls for a more general attention to representations of places, arguing that: “In this process of misrecognition, the geographic distinction becomes a new origin for further distinctions, and more importantly economic divisions and social segregations” (Shields 1991, 261). Shields illustrates, through a number of empirical analyses, the way that placeimages are produced historically, and are actively contested, and that places have a polysemic quality and can acquire contrasting connotations. Hence, “sites become associated with particular values, historical events, and feelings” (Shields 1991, 29), and his empirical cases point to the existence of community yarns with core imagery existing independently and persistently despite individual experiences. Even in cases where the characteristics of a place have changed dramatically, there is no automatic change in the contents of a place-myth. This leads him to argue that “a social level of ‘imaginary geographies’ surpasses the polyphony of individual differences” (Shields 1991, 263). Our analyses of representations of “peripheries” in Sweden, Norway and Denmark are ways of revealing how power relations may be constructed through and in discourse (Fairclough 1992; 1995). Taking the discourse on “modernity” and the theories of “internal orientalism” as starting points, we explore representations of subordinate regions in Sweden, Norway and Denmark as part of the construction of regional and national identities and as part of discourses on “progress” and neoliberal globalization. We argues that such representations have material consequences in terms of, for example, (dis)investments, regional

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distribution policies and reproduction of stereotypes among people living inside as well as beyond these regions. Thus, our chapter draws attention to the ideological and material effects of representations, as well as the resistance to them within the different regions. The analyses below are structured according to two main trends we see recurring across various representations of the three geographic contexts. The first of these themes revolves around how representations of “peripheries” imply the co-representation of a “center.” This relates back to Said’s original point about how “othering” may be seen as a strategy for the self-affirmation of the imagined center. The second part of the analysis highlights the resistance and deconstructions of center/periphery dichotomies which may occur when the peripheries engage in relational geographies of their own making. Representing the Periphery cum Center The ways in which peripheries are represented, whether through news media or in film as discussed below by giving examples from Denmark, Sweden and Norway, may not only impose powerful images of the peripheries in themselves, but may equally contribute to imaginations about the supposed center and its standardsetting prerogatives. Representations of peripheries constantly reemerge, partly because peripheries are being reproduced as part of identity projects, through attempts to commodify the wild and the “authentic,” following the logic of policy-, profit- and/or news-making, often leading to material manifestations of neoliberal ideologies. Despite the awareness of representations of their own region as primitive, small, peripheral, natural and/or traditional, politicians, businesses and people in everyday conversation, consciously or unconsciously, may even reproduce existing or new stereotypes, often for material gain. Northern Norway: “Magic Wilderness” or “Backward and Deprived”? Some years ago, a documentary film starring a number of mostly rather elderly men living in a small fishing village in Northern Norway, turned out to be one of the greatest successes, nationally and internationally, in the history of Norwegian film (Sørensen 2004). The film, “Heftig & Begeistret,” very loosely translated as “Cool & Crazy” for its international release, is a feature-length documentary made by the Norwegian film director Knut Erik Jenssen (2001). When the film was launched, both national and international film critics expressed great surprise that a documentary about a male choir in the most far-flung northern region, in Norwegian language with subtitles, was lauded at numerous cinemas and film festivals in and outside Europe. Why would anyone want to see a film about the lives of members of a male choir from the proverbial back of beyond? One of them posed the question, “[W]ouldn’t watching icicles form be more interesting?” and answered herself, “[A]ctually, no,” describing the film as so charming, full of warmth, humor, sensitivity, beauty, social commentary and stirring music that

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it was able to melt any negative preconceptions (Bird 2002). Another wrote: “Nobody, Norwegians or Russian, looks the slightest bit alienated, backward, or deprived for living in such a remote corner of the globe” (Erickson 2002). The surprise expressed by the film critics refers to particular characteristics of people living in Northern Norway. Myths and stereotypes coding people in the northern periphery as less civilized, more outdated and backward, wilder, more authentic and even more magical and natural are well known (Shields 1991). At a symbolic level, the hegemonic representations of the North function as an encounter with difference (Massey 2005). The particular hegemonic narrative underlying such interpretations divides the world both in time and space, space turns into time, geography into history (Massey 2005), as illustrated by the assumption that these men would appear “backward or deprived.” Friedman terms this temporalization of space a mistranslation of space into time, including both primitivism and evolutionism: “[T]he difference between them lies in the respectively negative versus positive evaluation of this temporal relation, an imaginary continuum” (Friedman 1996, 5). The content of the dichotomies underlies many of the power relations that transform geographical, social and cultural differences into a story of “catching up.” Within such a frame of reference, people in the periphery are thus not coeval others, not actually different people with their own trajectories, history and future; they are just behind, at an earlier stage in their development (Massey 2005). In many areas in the northern periphery there have been struggles over narrative projects providing a plausible way of telling the story of the North. Recently, central actors and institutions in Northern Norway describe a new dynamism in this region based on technological development, international cooperation and tourism. Trying to get rid of the old negative identity, the North is constructed as a magic wilderness combined with high modernity, a civilization of people living in close relation to nature. This is conceptualized as a (re)enchantment of northern identity and landscapes referring to a virtual reversal in the symbolism of the natural (Guneriussen 2008). Eder’s analysis of “The Narrative Construction of the Boundaries of Europe” shows that the North is represented as “the natural past, a kind of primordial reference of a people struggling with nature” (Eder 2006, 265). He describes a shift in the conception of nature, from the former representations of the barbaric North in contrast to the cultivated South, to the natural North in contrast to the artificial South. The reversal of the meaning of nature and wilderness is understood as a critique of rationalized and industrialized modernity, transforming the traditional “other” to a modern category representing “a voice of Wisdom, a way of life in tune with nature, a culture in harmony, a gemeinschaft, that we have all but lost” (Friedman 1999, 391). As an antidote to “unnatural” civilization, wilderness is constructed as something exceptional and out of the ordinary in contrast to life in modern societies, an almost magic space for freedom and authenticity (Alver et al. 1999, 80; Guneriussen 2008, 242). Within such a frame of reference, the interpretation of the North might be given more positive connotations. Still, the North represents

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an encounter with difference in relation to the world outside—even though the differences might seem to be valued more positively. The exotic branding of a place—whether stereotypes are given positive or negative value—can be seen as a way of “putting culture on display” and must not be mixed up with the way people identify themselves and their localities (Olsen 2003). There is Something Rotten in the State of Denmark Although more than 400 years have passed since the publication of Hamlet, according to persistent media representations, there is, indeed, something rotten in the state of Denmark in the twenty-first century. Taking off from around 2007 (Svendsen 2013; Christensen and Pristed Nielsen 2013), a national debate about “peripheral Denmark” has raged among media, politicians, artists, musicians and the general population. This debate has partly been advanced through the use of the nationally well-known metaphorical expression “the rotten banana,” which refers to areas within the country which are disadvantaged in terms of economic and demographic developments. Although coined already in the early 1990s (Karkov 2010), the term assumed significance particularly from 2007, where the expression formed the backbone in a TV series running on the national TV channel DR2. Superimposed on a map of Denmark, the rotten banana in the logo for the series covers those areas identified as exposed to negative demographic and economic trends (see also Danish Economic Council of the Labor Movement 2010; Svendsen 2013, 18). Although not necessarily frequently evoked (Christensen and Pristed Nielsen 2013, 6), this metaphor has proven powerful in representing understandings of the relations between center and periphery in Danish discourse. One particularly evocative example occurs in an editorial printed in the Copenhagen-based national newspaper Politiken on April 27, 2010 with the title “Peripheral Denmark is the Wild West.” In this editorial, the claim is raised that: Young men born and raised west of the Jutland Ridge1 are often as poorly integrated as the Turkish guest workers who arrived here in the 1960s from the Anatolian Plateau … Denmark’s new Wild West, also known as “the rotten banana,” is turning into a retreat for passive youngsters, old and chronically unemployed men. (Authors’ transl.)

The discursive implication is that everybody to the east of the Jutland Ridge (including inside Copenhagen) would be young, active, hard-working and law abiding people, contributing to society. Apart from this particular example, Politiken printed a series of more or less stigmatizing editorials during 2007–2012,

1 A geographic fault line resulting from the last ice age, whose placement more or less coincides with a series of socio-economic distinctions within the country.

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which repeatedly used concepts such as “the rotten banana,” “dead zones” and/or “slum” to refer to certain regions within Denmark.2 The power of the metaphor is also evident in articles ostensibly attempting to counter it. For example, on August 17, 2010 the regional paper Nordjyske Stiftstidende printed an article with the title “No Rotten Bananas Here,” where the journalist reports from a small village, Morild, which, “viewed from the outside[,] may look like the softest spot on the rotten banana” (authors’ transl.). Paradoxically both rejecting and confirming the point that “peripheral places” are often presented as backwards and characterized by intolerance and bigotry, the following is an excerpt from this feature story about Morild and its inhabitants: “Martin lives in Morild with his male boyfriend, and it may seem daring to settle in a village in the middle of North Denmark in such a situation—‘But nobody has ever pointed their finger at us. Not once,’ says Martin.” Indirectly, the journalist (re)produces a discourse about prevalence of intolerance and homophobia in rural regions. Danish newspaper articles also contain much more direct representations of the assumed backwardness of certain regions. From statements like “it is a simple fact that most well-educated people live in cities, and with them comes the greatest potential for innovative job creation” (referencing an urban planner, in the national newspaper JyllandsPosten, January 29, 2012, authors’ transl.), to sarcasm in an article in Politiken (July 21, 2010), where the journalist exposes the peddler mentality among residents in North Denmark, giving examples from the local ad paper: “child-friendly bitch looking for new home, as she is incompatible with old bitch” (authors’ transl.). Simultaneously, the journalist takes the opportunity to point out to readers in Copenhagen that he only peruses these local papers while awaiting the arrival of his regular “morning paper,” which in this part of the country arrives by post at 1pm. Inevitably, residents in North Denmark are at least half a day behind on the “real news.” Hunting for the “Truth”—Reproducing Spatial Stereotypes in Sweden The Hunters is a Swedish thriller from 1996 by director Kjell Sundvall. It was a great success, praised by critics and seen by close to 800,000 viewers (Lumiere database 2008). Set in the countryside in the village of Älvsbyn in Norrbotten county in the region of Norrland, it became the second most popular feature film in Sweden that year. The Hunters has become somewhat of a modern Swedish film classic, and has become part of the geographical imagination of Norrland. Journalists claimed that The Hunters was based on a true story, and a news item claimed that it was in Kalix (another small village in Norrbotten) that the director had found inspiration for the plot of the film: “A story about the muddle in 2 “The Rotten Banana Splits Denmark,” November 17, 2009; “White Boys are the New Underclass,” January 26, 2010; “Slum Kids,” March 3, 2010; “Poverty zone,” March 14, 2010; “The Rotten Banana is a Crystal Ball,” March 30, 2010; and “Europe Stinks from Rotten Bananas,” October 28, 2011.

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Kalix—the Truth about the Successful Film … The Hunters—an uncanny Swedish film about poaching, threats and a Norrland parish in fear” (citation from the national newspaper Aftonbladet, April 7, 1996, authors’ transl.). The director of the film, Sundvall, neither openly denied nor agreed with the journalist’s speculations. Most film critics agree that The Hunters relies on already constructed clichés, stereotypes and categories in order to create a knowable story. This reproduction of stereotypes received some criticism from Norrlandians who viewed themselves as urban and modern, and from those who regarded the film as a representation with the potential to shape regional identities, such as the following journalist from Norrbotten writing for a Stockholm-based tabloid: “What an appalling sketch he has painted of Norrbotten … Here is the parade of clichés: … In moonshine, … In homophobia, … In tax evasion, … In corrupt legal practice, … In contempt for women … Here is the Norrbottnic man made into a national lout” (Aftonbladet February 6, 1996, authors’ transl.). At the same time, the film was praised by those who regarded it as authentic and credible: “A horridly realistic police film” (Helsingborgs Dagblad July 13, 1996; review in a local newspaper in the far South of Sweden, authors’ transl.); “Watch the movie The Hunters; they are not like regular Swedes up there” (Aftonbladet March 14, 2004; chronicle reflecting on a specific use of health insurance in Norrbotten, authors’ transl.). Sundvall responded to criticism by stressing the fact that he himself was born in Norrbotten. He referred to his personal experience of Norrbotten and asserted the authenticity of the film and his right as a self-identified Norrlandian to portray the people of Norrbotten: But that’s the way it is! I have authentic models for most things in the film. And I have been at parties and when you pass by the next day there are a couple of reindeer hanging in the cowshed … It’s partly like that in Norrbotten … If some Stockholmer had made this movie on speculation it could have resulted in a parody, but I know the tone. (Aftonbladet February 7, 1996; interview with Kjell Sundvall, authors’ transl.)

The idea that one cannot stereotype oneself or members of one’s own group is a common misconception, yet identities of class, race and sexism may also be reproduced by those who potentially suffer most from the representations (Willis 1977; Williamson 1978). Relational Geographies The theory of Orientalism has been criticized for ignoring the heterogeneity of colonial power, and for failing to see the role of resistance and the ability of the “other” to represent itself, as well as for overlooking the simultaneous essentialization of the self and the Occident (Hussein 2002). In this section we point to the importance of resistance for the reproduction and reworkings of power

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relations, and how such strategies may be part of local identity projects in which people in peripheral places engage in relational geographies of their own making. Re-centering the Periphery—Norway Where the center is depends on your frame of reference. Young people in Honningsvåg, a place with 3,000 inhabitants in northernmost Norway, live in the periphery in relation to national and international centers. Within the local context, the situation is experienced otherwise. Here the difference and contrasts to other young people coming from even smaller places surrounding Honningsvåg play an important part in the construction of local identity. Many of these young people from smaller places in the vicinity have to go to high school in Honningsvåg, because this kind of education is not available where they live (see also Chapter 13). Similarly, just as both young and older people from Honningsvåg buy clothes in bigger cities when they get the chance, young people from smaller places buy new clothes in Honningsvåg. They say it is fun to bring home new clothes that no one else has. Thus, the young people of Honningsvåg receive confirmation that they live in a place that has a rather more modern selection of clothes than is available in smaller places. Being in fashion and up-to-date with modern trends in urban centers serves as an important aspect in the construction of local identity. Meanings produced in particular local contexts code the distinctions between the center and the periphery almost equivalent to the contrast between modern and outdated. Even though the young boys and girls insist on being modern, by drawing contrasts with other young people in the local periphery, the assigned roles according to the hegemonic discourse are still functioning: “If I come to Oslo, I do not feel like being in fashion. I feel that I come from here. Anyway, you’re a Finnmarker” (authors’ transl.), a young girl from Honningsvåg said. Resistance from North Denmark However, moving focus to North Denmark, it seems that the conceptualization of the relevant center may leave out the national capital altogether. For example, the mayor in the North Danish municipality of Hjørring wrote in a letter to the regional newspaper that “I do not perceive Hjørring municipality as part of peripheral Denmark without future or hope. On the contrary, I live at the center of Europe, at the gates between the Nordic countries and countries further south” (regional newspaper Nordjyske Stiftstidende, May 21, 2010, authors’ transl.). This conceptualization partly draws on the notion of “the Scandinavian triangle”—implying that rather than being a marginal area in Denmark, North Denmark forms the base line of a triangle consisting of North Denmark, southern Norway and western Sweden, an area which is referred to as being of particular importance to Danish maritime interests as it is bound together by the seaways (MARCOD 2009, 13).

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This notion was also reflected in the attitudes of several respondents interviewed in relation to a study of the emerging offshore sector in North Denmark3. One local resident said “I would regard Hirtshals [6,000 inhabitants at the northern shore of Denmark] as well placed in relation to Norway. We may live in little Hirtshals, but people in Copenhagen and from South Denmark have no idea how many people come here from Norway each year” (interview June 3, 2013, authors’ transl.). At a more general level, a local businessman said: I’m fed up with people talking about “peripheral Denmark,” because this is the bull’s eye for the entire Nordic region if you look at the logistics of it. Once Fjordline [ferry company opening a new route to Norway in summer 2013] have their new ferries ready, we will have 60 weekly departures from Hirtshals [ … ] Hirtshals is not “peripheral” from that perspective, and companies here bloody well work worldwide. (Interview May 17, 2013, authors’ transl.)

Focusing on possibilities abroad may displace regional and national centers from the center-view of company owners, mayors or other residents with vested interests in “peripheral” areas. Hence, we find a number of articles from Danish newspapers referring to the EU as a potential lever for developments in “peripheral Denmark,” directing hopes for political and economic support at the supranational level rather than at national political intervention. The notion that the center may not equal Copenhagen is also emphasized in other types of articles, such as in an interview with author Knud Sørensen, who suggests replacing the discourse of “peripheral Denmark” with the notion of “polycentrism” (Nordjyske Stiftstidende, March 19, 2011). In a similar vein, a young woman from “peripheral” Denmark writes in a letter to the editor, printed in the national newspaper Politiken (November 8, 2011), that it is actually the farmers who produce the milk for the café latte and the eggs for the protein diets consumed by people in Copenhagen, so it is high time that Copenhageners recognize the material and ideological interdependence between “center” and “periphery.” Massey argues that “so long as inequality is read in terms of stages of advance and backwardness not only are alternative stories disallowed but also the fact of the production of poverty and polarization within and through ‘globalization’ itself can be erased from view” (Massey 2005, 84). As the young woman’s letter to the editor highlights, the existence of a latte culture in Copenhagen in crucially dependent on dairy farmers in other parts of the country.

3 Interview data from a study of changes in working life conditions in relation to the emerging offshore sector in North Denmark (Pristed Nielsen, unpublished conference paper, 2013). Interviews conducted in May–June 2013.

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Marketing Place Identities in Northern Sweden In both Denmark, Sweden and Norway there is a dominant assumption that the peripheral implies the rural and the center implies the urban. In national discourses, the representations of both the rural and the urban lack nuance (Eriksson 2010; Paulgaard 2012; Christensen and Pristed Nielsen 2013). Hence, many local authorities are making serious efforts to redefine the identities of their regions, and in these processes the urban areas are frequently promoted at the expense of rural areas. This is evident for example in the process whereby the city Umeå in northern Sweden won the bid to become the European Capital of Culture of 2014. Hence, Umeå is aiming for a population increase and is being reconstructed, similar to many other cities, with attractive buildings on the waterfront, and is making new investments in culture and entertainment. This investment in culture is inspired by theories on how to attract creative people, people with high levels of human capital, entrepreneurial and creative people (Florida 2002; Glaeser 2005). The aim is population increase and, thus, economic growth. But, paradoxically, in order for Umeå to win the bid to become the European Capital of Culture, the city needed to be represented as northern, “alternative,” unusual and exotic. At the same time as the city is struggling to create an image of a modern and creative city to distance itself from representations of Norrland, the application to become the European Capital of Culture relies on exotic place representations as part of the marketing strategy. Umeå is drawing on the uniqueness of the North and its historically peripheral position, and is trying to separate its physical from its imaginative geography: “We are at the edge geographically, yet at the cutting edge in how we use our diversity of imagination” (Umeå 2014). Furthermore, Umeå is taking advantage of its relative immediacy to Lappland, using the Sámi people as “seasoning” (hooks 1992), a seduction of difference and a selling argument, implying openness and diversity. In order to win the competition to become the European Capital of Culture, Umeå has to play the indigenous card and simultaneously represent itself as a modern city and as a place that still embraces the old Sámi calendar: “The proposed 2014 programme consists of eight themes, inspired by the eight seasons in the Sami (sic) calendar” (Umeå Capital of Culture 2013, 35). Despite the steering committee’s assurance that the Sámi will participate on their own terms, Åkerlund and Müller (2012) mention the worries of some stakeholders regarding the enhancement of the Sámi culture. The non-city stakeholders (other municipalities in the Umeå region4) also worry that they will invest much and gain little from the event. It is hard not to see the strong urban focus, but the idea is that the whole region will benefit from the focus on the city of Umeå, so that the small surrounding municipalities’ chances will improve in the competition to attract visitors and capital. This is a well-known 4 The surrounding small municipalities of Vännäs, Vindeln, Bjurholm, Robertsfors and Nordmaling will contribute to financing the event.

The Internal Other

49

argument: through supporting the success of already big and wealthy actors, something will trickle down to the less successful ones as well (Harvey 2006). As discussed in the introduction to this book, global processes take differential expression in different places. Some places experience economic development and growth, while others have to deal with deterioration or stagnation. This double aspect of globalization includes whole countries or continents, regions in a country or certain groups in society. As the respective debates about the three northernmost regions in Denmark, Sweden and Norway illuminate, the responses to challenges stemming from global restructurings developed in these regions seem in many ways to follow the logic of neoliberal economic globalization. Although engaging in relational geographies by (re)positioning their geographic location as centrally placed according to a set of criteria defined as relevant in the given circumstances, the playing field seems inevitably dominated by neoliberal ideologies. This goes for being perceived as “modern” or “in fashion” in Honningsvåg, Northern Norway; being part of national and/or international trade routes in peripheral Denmark; or bidding to become the European Capital of Culture in Umeå, northern Sweden. Concluding Discussion: The Depth and Strength of Global Restructurings Even though Northern Denmark, Sweden and Norway obtain their different meanings in different contextual situations, one thing that is common to most of these situations is that they are made meaningful through certain binaries such as authenticity/traditionalism, culture/nature, modern/outdated, rural/urban, North/South. Despite huge differences in size, geography, population density and political and media attention (to name just a few categories of difference-making), the examples above demonstrate how such binary constructions of difference are exceedingly powerful in creating notions of “center” and “periphery,” and other discursive ways of marking difference within a country’s own population. And in all these cases of internal othering, the end result is palpable through material effects making their impact at the level of people’s everyday lives in these places and beyond—through making money on blockbuster films, developing waterfront buildings, selling newspapers or places, asking local municipalities to co-fund cultural events, etc. Such is the depth of neoliberal economic globalization that even the locally developed resistance strategies seem to work along the lines of neoliberal ideology, insofar as the attempt is made to turn local particularities into globally marketable assets, or the local residents see a need to assert themselves as “modern” or having an outlook that expands beyond their immediate vicinity. This, however, does not mean that globalization should be seen as having homogenizing effects on these regions. Rather, it seems that their inherent particularities may assume increasing significance, in terms of both how these areas are perceived by outsiders, and how the local residents may strategically attempt to perform relational geographies by

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challenging existing power relations and asserting their position as coeval others. In Massey’s phrasing, “globalisation is not a single all-embracing movement [ … ]. It is a making of space(s), an active reconfiguration and meeting-up through practices and relations of a multitude of trajectories, and it is here that lies the politics” (Massey 2005, 83). As the analyses have brought out, global restructurings manifest themselves discursively as well as materially, producing ruptures and also new power constellations at the rims of Nordic societies, well beyond the cushioning politics of the Nordic welfare regimes. References Agnew, John. 2003. Geopolitics: Re-visioning World Politics. New York: Routledge. Alver, Bente Gullveig, Ingvild Sælid Gilhus, Lisbeth Mikaelsson and Torunn Selberg. 1999. Myte, magi og mirakel. Oslo: Pax. Bird, Maryann. 2002. “Singing in the Snow.” TIME, in partnership with CNN, available online at http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,216364,00.html (accessed August 15, 2014). Christensen, Sascha and Helene Pristed Nielsen. 2013. “Udkantsdanmark: Avisernes (med)produktion af Nordjyllands territorielle stigma.” In Praktiske Grunde, 13 (3): 5–25. Danish Economic Council of the Labor Movement (Arbejderbevægelsens Erhvervsråd). 2010. “Udkantsdanmark. Nyt kommunalt velfærdsindeks viser billedet af et opdelt Danmark.” Availble online at http://ae.dk/analyse/nytkommunalt-velfaerdsindeks-viser-billedet-opdelt-danmark (accessed January 15, 2014). Danish Ministry of Economy and the Interior (Økonomi – og Indenrigsministeriet). 2013. “Kommunal udligning og generelle tilskud 2013.” Available online at http://oim.dk/media/60107/Kommunal%20udligning%202013%20NET.pdf (accessed January 14, 2104) Diken, Bülent and Carsten Bagge Laustsen. 2005. The Culture of Exception: Sociology Facing the Camp. London: Routledge. Eder, Klaus. 2006. “Europe’s Borders: The Narrative Construction of the Boundaries of Europe.” In European Journal of Social Theory, 9 (2): 255–71. Erickson, Glenn. 2002. Review of Cool & Crazy on website DVD Savant, available at http://www.dvdtalk.com/dvdsavant/s505cool.html (accessed August 15, 2014). Eriksson, Madeleine. 2010. “(Re)producing a Periphery. Popular Representations of the Swedish North.” Umeå University: PhD dissertation. Fairclough, Norman. 1992. Discourse and Social Change. Cambridge: Polity Press. Fairclough, Norman. 1995. Critical Discourse Analysis. London: Longman. Florida, Richard. 2002. The Rise of the Creative Class: And How it’s Transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday Life. New York: Basic Books.

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Friedman, Jonathan. 1999. “Indigenous Struggle and the Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie.” In Journal of World-System Research. American Sociological Association, 2: 391–411. Glaeser, Edward L. 2005. Smart Growth: Education, Skilled Workers and the Future of Cold-Weather Cities. Harvard University, Cambridge: Rappaport Institute/Taubman Center Policy Briefs. PB-2005–1. Guneriussen, Willy. 2008. “Modernity Re-enchanted: Making a ‘Magic’ Region.” In Jørgen Ole Bærenholdt and Brynhild Granås (eds). Mobility and Place: Enacting Northern European Peripheries. Aldershot: Ashgate. Harvey, David. 2005. A Brief History of Neoliberalism. New York: Oxford University Press. Harvey, David. 2006. Spaces of Global Capitalism: A Theory of Uneven Geographical Development. London: Verso. Hechter, Michael. 1975. Internal Colonialism: The Celtic Fringe in British National Development. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul: 1536–966. Hilbert, Sarah. 1997. “For Whom the Nation? Internationalization, Zapatismo, and the Struggle over Mexican Modernity.” In Antipode, 29 (2): 115–48. hooks, bell. 1996. Reel to Real: Race, Sex and Class at the Movies. London: Routledge. Hussein, Abdirahman A. 2002. Edward Said, Criticism and Society. London: Verso. ITPS (Swedish Institute for Growth Policy Studies). 2005. “Regionalpolitiken som tillväxtpolitik – retorik och substans i den regionala utvecklingspolitiken.” Östersund: Institutet för tillväxtpolitiska studier. Jansson, David R. 2003. “Internal Orientalism in America: W.J. Cash’s The Mind of the South and the Spatial Construction of American National Identity.” In Political Geography, 22 (3): 293–316. Jansson, David R. 2005. “‘A Geography of Racism’: Internal Orientalism and the Construction of American National Identity in the Film Mississippi Burning.” In National Identities, 7 (3): 265–85. Jansson, David R. 2010. “Racialization and ‘Southern’ Identities of Resistance: A Psychogeography of Internal Orientalism in the U.S.” In Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 100 (1): 202–221. Karkov, Rasmus. 2010. “Den rådne banan skrællet.” Available at http://videnskab. dk/kultur-samfund/den-radne-banan-skraellet (accessed January 15, 2014). Lumiere. 2008. Database on admissions to European film releases. Available at http://lumiere.obs.coe.int/web/search/ (accessed January 17, 2008). MARCOD (Maritimt Center for Optimering og Drift). 2009. “Maritim Klyngedannelse i Norddanmark: Projektafrapportering.” Unpublished report in author’s possession. Massey, Doreen. 2005. For Space. London: Sage Publications. Olsen, Kjell. 2003. “The Touristic Construction of the ‘Emblematic’ Sámi.” In Acta Borealia: Nordic Journal of Circumpolar Societies, 20 (1): 3–20. Olsen, Kjell. 2010. Identities, Ethnicities and Borderzones: Examples from Finnmark, Northern Norway. Stsmsund/Olso: Orkana Akademisk.

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Paulgaard, Gry. 2012. “Geographies of Opportunity: Approaching adulthood at the Margins of the Northern European Periphery.” In Unn-Doris Karlsen and Gry Paulgaard (eds). Rural Futures? Finding One’s Place Within Changing Labour Markets. Stamsund/Oslo: Orkana Akademisk. Pristed Nielsen, Helene. 2013. “Offshore but On Track? Working Life in and around North Denmark’s Offshore sector.” Paper presented at the conference: The ‘New Peripherality’: Scaled, Contested, and Relational. Aalborg University, October 28–30, 2013. Said, Edward. 1978. Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books. Shields, Rob. 1991. Places on the Margin: Alternative Geographies of Modernity. London and New York: Routledge. Statistics Sweden. 2012. Population Statistics on Sweden, 2012. Available at http://www.scb.se (accessed September 8, 2012). Svendsen, Gunnar Lind Haase. 2013. Livsvilkår og udviklingsmuligheder på landet. Odense: Syddansk Universitetsforlag. Sørensen, Bjørn. 2004. “Den standhaftige finnmarkingen. Knut Erik Jenssen og suksessen ‘Heftig og begeistret’.” In Ottar, 251: 23–35. Umeå Municipality official web page. 2013. Available at http://www.umea.se (accessed July 7, 2013). Wacquant, Loïc. 2007. “Territorial Stigmatization in the Age of Advanced Marginality.” In Thesis Eleven, 91 (1): 66–77. Williamson, Judith. 1978. Decoding Advertisements: Ideology and Meaning in Advertising. New York: Marion Boyars. Willis, Paul E. 1977. Learning to Labor. Farnborough: Saxon House. Åkerlund, Ulrika and Dieter Müller. 2012. “Implementing Tourism Events: The Discourses of Umeå’s Bid for European Capital of Culture 2014.” In Scandinavian Journal of Hospitality and Tourism, 12 (2): 164–80.

Chapter 4

Moving to the Periphery: A Longitudinal Study of Movers and Non-Movers Ruth Emerek and Anja Kirkeby

The new global division of labor, which in Denmark has resulted in outsourcing of industrial work, combined with the growing policy-driven centralization of public institutions, has imposed new challenges on the Danish peripheries and made outmigration from the peripheries more common than in-migration. Job opportunities have diminished in traditional trades and professions and internal migration from the peripheral regions has been characterized by an increasing outflow of younger people (see also Chapters 12 and 13). This has in the media been accompanied by a characterization of the inflow to the peripheries as people in need of social welfare, i.e. unemployed or senior citizens, seeking lower living expenses (see also Chapter 3 for a discussion of stereotypes of these regions). As a result, much interest in recent years has been on who moves to the peripheries and why. Prior research, however, mostly bases the analyses on persons who have moved, and does not fully account for differences between movers and non-movers. This is a problem as movers coming into the region may theoretically have the same characteristics as non-movers, as for instance with regard to employment. This chapter aims therefore to gain further knowledge of what characterizes those people who move into the peripheral area of North Denmark, and whether they are in fact different from people who do not move there—for example in terms of being in greater need of social welfare. According to traditional migration research, individuals move when they perceive it as more beneficial to move than to stay, and when there are no obstacles that make the move impossible (Lee 1966). Also, couples may be inclined to move for the benefit of the man’s career, as it is considered the most important, according to previous research (Halfacree 1995). It has become more and more recognized, however, that gender plays an important role in the process of international migration (Castles and Miller 2009), although this has traveled to the field of research on internal migration to a much lesser extent. Furthermore, there is also a factor of growing importance to be considered. In a country like Denmark, with dual-earner families and a highly gender segregated labor market, relevant jobs may not be available for both the female and the male member of the couple at the same time, and at a time when they are ready to and would have found it beneficial in other ways to move to a new region. Mobility is more complex for families where both adults are part of the labor market, which is common for adults in

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Denmark (Andersen and Nørgaard 2012). Ties, belongings and attachments to the present residence may be further constraints to migration (Granovetter 1973; Faist 1997; Stjernström 1998). This chapter therefore also aims to add to the knowledge of gendered patterns in internal migration. Modern sociological approaches such as life-course theory emphasize other factors as important to internal migration, and draw to attention that the social phenomenon of internal migration is always embedded in historical time and place, and that individuals construct their life course given the opportunities and constrains they face and dependent of their life stage. According to this approach, one must also consider how individuals relate to each other—in linked lives (Wingens et al. 2013,11–12). Finally, therefore, this chapter aims to add to the knowledge of the importance of linked life in internal migration, recognizing that single persons and couples may have different constraints and possibilities for moving. The Various Motives for Migration The Danish researchers Andersen and Nørgaard (2012) have made a helpful overview of migration research and motives for moving, which they apply in their own research of internal migration. They mention two very important reasons for moving: labor market conditions is an important factor, and households may “first choose a place to work and then a place to live,” or it may be the other way around: households may choose their residence before they seek a job in the same area. Andersen and Nørgaard also mention that non-economic factors such as social relations and place attachment may be as important as economic factors, and that some people may choose to commute to obtain a good combination of residence, work and income. They summarize the multiple reasons and motivations influencing migration as being: education; career and employment; exit from the labor market; demands for changed or improved housing and neighborhood or for a change of lifestyle; demands for cheaper housing; and desire to go back to the place where one grew up, or to other places one is attached to. The overview also underlines that mobility may be connected to big changes in life such as marriage and divorce; that it decreases with age and becomes low for people over 50 years of age; that mobility and reasons for being mobile are different for different family types, e.g. as mentioned singles are more mobile than couples with children; and that mobility is more complex for families where both adults are part of the labor market (Andersen and Nørgaard, 2012). The analyses in this chapter take as their starting point these multiple motives for moving, related to the different theoretical approaches, and the purpose of the chapter is to discuss the importance of the various motives for moving or not moving—especially motives affiliated with social relations and place attachment (reflected in factors such as “place of birth,” “parents’ residency” and “ownership of own residence”) and motives connected with labor market affiliation. The analyses

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are based on Denmark as a case study, and especially the internal migration to the Region of North Denmark.13 The aim is to test and discuss whether non-economic factors are as important as economic factors for women and men, controlled for other factors mentioned above.14 The Analyses Prior Danish research has mainly analyzed and characterized movers after their relocation and thus lacks knowledge of potential differences between movers and non-movers (Ærø et al. 2005; Nørgaard et al. 2010; Andersen 2010; Andersen and Nørgaard 2012). Furthermore, former studies have mostly analyzed movements from one single year to another (Deding and Filges 2004a; 2004b; Andersen 2010). The analyses in this chapter apply a longitudinal design and use multivariate regression models. As the life-course theory also emphasizes other factors as important to internal migration, e.g. life stage and children, and draws to attention that the social phenomena of internal migration is always embedded in historical time and place, this will also be accounted for. The internal migration of single persons and couples are studied separately. The analyses cover 25 years, and are based on a subset of data from longitudinal registers from Statistics Denmark, including information on: place of birth; own residency; parents’ residency; ownership of residence; children living with the person; labor market affiliation; education, and age. These data are merged, which is possible due to the Danish person identity system, where all residents have a unique personal number, which makes it possible to match individual information from various administrative registers, match information on couples and on some children and parents, and further to create population-based panel data with annual information. Data thus allows analyses of movements of single persons and couples and hence opens up for accounts of linked lives. The resulting large longitudinal dataset from the period 1986 to 2010 enables us to follow single persons and couples on a yearly basis and analyze the characteristics of persons who move and who do not move to North Denmark from other parts of Denmark in this period. North Denmark is the region most remote from the capital of Denmark, and it has had a negative net migration of younger people—especially women—in their twenties. The region consists of rural areas as well as bigger towns (one with more than 1 million inhabitants) with green and safe surroundings and lower housing costs, which are some of the most important motives for moving to the

13 Denmark is, from 2007, divided into five regions: The Capital Region of Denmark, The Sealand Region, Region of Southern Denmark, Central Denmark and North Denmark. The Region of North Denmark is the region most remote from the Capital Region of Denmark. 14 These factors are presented in the Annex, Box 2.

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periphery, whereas labor market openings seems less important (Andersen and Nørgaard 2012). The analyses focus on the 60-cohort, which represent persons born in 1960 to 1969, and follow individuals and couples15 in this cohort on an annual basis in the period 1986 to 2010, to register if the person or couples have moved to North Denmark from one turn of the year to the next, in order to uncover reasons for moving—or not moving—to this peripheral region. The analyses concentrate on this cohort because the registers include information on parents of persons born after 1960,16 which gives a special opportunity for analyzing social relations between generations by searching for the influence of the parents’ residency on moving. Furthermore, existing research indicates that people primarily move while they are young, and this cohort can be followed from the ages of 18 to 26 until they are 43 to 51 years of age. The analyses include persons in the 60-cohort living in Denmark in 198617 and focus on single persons and couples already living in Denmark outside the Region of North Denmark in 1986.18 The analyses follow these persons and couples from 1986 until they move to North Denmark, and again, if they leave the region until they again return and so forth.19 Persons and couples that do not move to North Denmark are followed throughout the whole period as long as they live in Denmark. The analyses include 43,755 movements to North Denmark, of which two thirds are by single persons and one third by couples. Although the vast majority of single persons and couples may not want to move—or do not have the possibility of moving—to North Denmark, all single persons and couples are considered potential inhabitants of this region in this methodological set-up. This idea of considering the population of Denmark outside North Denmark as potential internal movers to the region means that a large percentage of data will technically be censored to the right, which can be handled by applying longitudinal event models. This also applies to single persons who become part of a couple and couples that spilt up. If a single person becomes 15 Couples are included in this cohort if the male part of the couple is included, as the female part in general is younger. 16 In the form of personal numbers for the parents in the child’s file. 17 Due to this selection, the study includes relatively few immigrants and almost no descendants of immigrants, which explains why the country of origin is not included in the analyses. 18 The definition of a couple used here is a cohabiting family with two adults of different sex with or without children living with them, whereas a single person is an adult living on her/his own with or without children. The single person may be married to a person living somewhere else—or be in a partnership, where the partners live apart. In a register-based analysis this is not visible. For technical reasons same sex couples are in the analyses counted as singles, although this is against our idea of linked lives. 19 Technically, this means that the so-called “sandwich” estimator is used in the analyses. It gives the average estimate for the parameters with a higher estimated variance because some persons and couples move to North Denmark more than once.

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part of a couple or a couple splits up, and they still live outside North Denmark, they will continue to be followed in the analyses on the other level of entity as part of a couple or two single persons respectively, recognizing that their chances of moving have thus been altered.20 The analyses are based on Cox regression models, which are appropriate models in the analyses of event histories, because they allow inclusion of timedependent covariates such as for example “residency” or “having children living at home.”21 The estimates given by the Cox regression model give the relative chance of moving to North Denmark of, for example, a person born within the region compared to a person not born in North Denmark. An estimate of one means there is no difference between the two groups, whereas an estimate greater than one means that a person born in North Denmark has a greater chance of moving to the region compared to a person not born in North Denmark, whereas an estimate lower than one means that a person born in the region is less likely to move to North Denmark compared to a person not born in the region. Results The analyses reveal both similarities and differences between single women and men in their patterns of moving and not moving to North Denmark.22 Table 4.1 gives an overview of the similarities and differences in moving patterns for single persons, between women and men and between their relations after the movement (whether they are single or cohabiting). Table 4.2 summarizes the similarities and differences in moving patterns for couples for the same factors.

20 Technically, this means that persons who become part of a couple and couples that spilt up are censored and followed in the new entity, and that a movement together with a shift of entity is dealt with as a competing risk to a movement within the same entity. 21 A short description of the models is given in the Annex, Box 1. 22 The analysis here is performed as a one-step analysis instead of a two-step process of analyzing movement first in general, and second as to where. This can of course be discussed; it can, however, be argued that the movement and the destination are interconnected.



 

 

0,7

0,6   1,1 0,9

2,9

2,7

  1,1 0,8

  1,4   5,3

  1,3   4,8

  1,1 0,9

0,6

3,6

RR  

To a single life

RR  

RR   1,0  

In total

RR   0,9   1,3   4,9

In total

In total

Women

  1,2 1,0

0,8

2,1

  1,3   4,0

To cohabitate RR  

Note: The factors used as control factors are presented in the Annex, Box 2

  1,0 0,7

0,6

2,7

  1,3   4,8

RR  

in total

  1,0 0,7

0,5

2,7

  1,3   4,5

RR  

To a single life

Men

0,7   1,1 0,8

2,6

  1,2   5,1

RR  

To cohabitate

NS **

**

NS

NS

  NS

 

Diff women and men in total

The estimates of risk ratios from a Cox regression for single persons in the 60-cohort in the period 1986–2010 for the covariates: place of birth, parents’ residency, children living at home, ownership of residence, and labor market affiliation controlled for education, age, region of residency and period.

Gender Woman Place of birth Born in ND Parent’s residence One or both parents in ND One parent in ND and one in present municipality municipalityhome municipality One or both parents in present municipality Ownership of residency House owner Owner of a flat

Table 4.1

24593

 

 

10929

4,7

4,4 24593

  1,5   109,4 4,1

  1,1   87,9 3,7

6011

5,3

  1,3   111,9 5,7

4918

4,1

  1,6   77,0 2,6

13664

4,3

  1,0   76,0 3,4

8991

4,9

  0,8   74,4 4,4

4673

3,2

  1,4   58,9 2,0 *

** *

**

Baseline: Man, Not born in North Denmark (ND), No parents in ND or in the same municipality; Living in a rented residency; No children living at home; In employment outside ND. The Analyses are controlled for: age; education, place of residence (in regions) and period.

Note: Italic means not significant at a 0.01 level; normal writing means significant at a 0.001 level: and Bold means significant at a 0.0001 level. For the difference between women and men: NS means not significant, *=