Viewing noble narratives in security terms: Sweden as poster child of European immigration and integration policy

Through statistics and indicators...Sweden is thus labelled at the ‘best’ at being ‘good’ and able to retain a moral superpower image. These rankings and indicators have, albeit in a different context, been shown to have a community mobilizing effect...[they] have received a great deal of press attention within Sweden since 2005, enabling headlines such as ‘Axen (Swedish MP) proud of Europe’s most humanitarian laws’ (DN 2010) and ‘Sweden is top country at integrating immigrants’ (DN 2012).
The final argument I make in this paper is that such processes of identification, classification and ranking by the technocracies and bureaucracies that monitor, compare and rank statesbecomes a means of how a population then identifies itself and is able to distance itself from practices of violence and exclusion in their name. I will draw on two prominent examples to illustrate this point, firstly a speech given by Eric Ullenhag, Sweden’s Minister for Integration, to an audience consisting of his European counterparts at the launch of the third annual MIPEX (Migration Integration Policy Index)7in 2011 in which Sweden was ranked highest for the third year running. This speech, which went some way in producing notions of a ‘Swedish exceptionalism’ was given in English, and naturally aimed at an audience composed of ‘international’ or at least the ‘European’ technocrats. In this case, it is clear that Ullenhag is trying to distance Sweden from the restrictive practices taking place in the rest of Europe and the ranking as top in this specific indicator enables this. This speech is thus worth quoting at some length...
Through being ranked as best therefore, albeit the best of a bad bunch, Sweden is able to formulate a coherent identity as ‘generous’ and establish a continuity with its pre-EU moral superpower image under Olof Palme. The political elite are legitimately able to pontificate lecture other European leaders on how to be ‘moral’ and thus ignore practices of violence and marginalisation in their own state. In another context, Didier Bigo, following Paul Veyne has shown how politicians in enacting their roles as spokespersons for, in this empirical case, the most moral or generous state- are not peddling rhetoric or propaganda or crudely insrumentalising power to deceive their intended audience but instead believe in the myths they are propagating as these myths are the way in which they frame their explanations of the social and political world and the way in which they see their own struggles and values (Bigo 2002). As a form of governmentality which permeates throughout society, the identification of Sweden as ‘best’ is more interestingly mirrored however in comparative public opinion surveys carried out by the European Commission entitled ‘Eurobarometer’. These show the extent to which the ‘moral’ identification is individualised and re-appropriated in day-to-day life...
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