Despite the successful collection of thirteen life stories of working-class women of Greek background in their late sixties, who had migrated to Sweden in the 1970s, the two researchers who engaged in the study—Despina, herself a child of migrant Greek parents, and Diana, a political refugee from Argentina—were unable to publish the results. The aim of this chapter is to listen to women’s narratives by bringing into conversation the concept of social suffering through the use of a psychosocial approach. The aim is also to explore our inability (as migrants and daughters of migrants ourselves) to acknowledge what over-exploitation, gender and racial regimes can, and indeed do, to people regarding their sense of self and well-being. The chapter contains four sections. First, the text provides a short introduction to Swedish racial formation, followed by relevant efforts to conceptualise human pain, inspired by the work of Black British feminist scholars Gail Lewis and Yasmin Gunaratnam. Their theoretical intervention suggests the value of a synthesis of politicised psychoanalytic approaches to the dynamics of ‘race’ and emotional labor; providing a frame for a reflection of our own emotions, with special focus on shame and guilt. The central focus of the chapter is in the section ‘What (We Think) Hurts the Most’, which explores the stories collected organised through three topics—(failed) motherhood, broken bodies and (racist) respectability. 

The aim of this chapter is to describe some fundamental developments within Swedish educational policy focusing especially on the idea of educational individualization as a way of placing the child at the center of the educational activity and thereby as a vital agent in the construction of a more equal and just society. We argue that these historical trends, coupled with the neo-liberal influences within contemporary educational policies, have created a strong discourse of childhood within Swedish society, centered on the concept of ‘the competent child’. However, contemporary neo-liberal transformations of the idea of educational individualization have far-reaching consequences in terms of what competencies children are to develop as well as for the overall relationship between the state and the individual in Sweden.

Allyson Larkin raises important questions concerning the promotion and consequences of ideals of global citizenship in the context of Canadian higher education. More specifically, she aims to problematize taken-for-granted assumptions about the discourses of global citizenship that correspond to the type of graduate Canadian universities are seeking to produce. In this comment, we aim to, very briefly, address similar questions in relation to the context of Sweden. Using the example of volunteer work, we will give a short historical background to Sweden’s international commitments in relation to developing countries as well as a brief sketch on how such commitments are organized within contemporary Swedish society. Finally, we will also comment on possible consequences for contemporary constructions of discourses of global citizenship and internationalization in relation to the field of Swedish higher education.

In Sweden most educational levels rely more and more on electronic platforms that are used in pre-schools and schools where each pupil receives a profile into which teachers, school administrators, the school’s health team, parents and of the pupil him/herself, has access to. The platform provides information of the pupils’ progress in different disciplines, grades and projects are presented through text, photographs and video clips. The attempt of this paper is to discuss the platforms as a mean to the internalization of techniques of monitoring the self. This is particularly interesting when it comes to health discourses related to the social body, the national body and the individual body. The school as institution has traditionally relied on and created groups and assessed the individual in relation to these groups. Eventually the system changes to focus primarily on the pupil as individual from the beginning. This gives a perceived freedom to a tailored education for each pupil, though it is a freedom with limits. The empirical material of the study consists of variations of electronical platforms used by Swedish schools. The material will be genealogically analysed. The method used could be characterized as netnography or online ethnography. The expected outcome of this study is to relate the archaeological and genealogical discussions of subject creation (processes of subjectifications) to the practises presented themselves through software. In contemporary school systems, a portion of the articulation of these practises are presented through electronical platforms.

In a time where nations of Europe are trying to stop migration or at least make it more difficult, the practise of migration is once again in the eye of everyone’s attention. People are fleeing for their lives, for their children, for their futures. The focus of the media, the politicians and even the activists have been obviously been that – people’s lives. The focus of this particular study is what these people carry with them. What items, if any, do one save when fleeing for ones life. A wedding photograph? A recipe book? A pair of earrings inherited from a grandmother? So – this study is about things. Things, or objects have been in the focus of theoretical reflection the last decades in relation to agency and/or humanism. Things of memory, or memorabilia are, on an individual level arranged into a narrative that gives identity. For people that flee things are an ethical calculation. Things might be a liability, they may be to heavy to bring, or they might be confiscated, they might be lost during the way. Or there might be things one wants to forget, so there is also an ethics of forgetfulness. And additionally, this calculated choice has a teleological dimension, which also gives futurity. Extended scholarship has illuminated the central role women play in the creation and mediation ethnic belonging narratives. Through an intersectional perspective, the focus will be on the object mediated memory and how these objects are to serve, or not, in how to continue a journey – in this particular essence towards an end of a flight. The paper is going to navigate from feminist ontology to object ontology.