National security vs. moral responsibility: an analysis of integration programs in Malmö, Sweden

This article proposes that people working with integration projects in Sweden are driven by a wish to help immigrants integrate into the host society. At the same time, however, the practices of multiculturalism tend to reproduce narratives that depict immigrants as threats to the host society and as inherently different from it. This tension can be analyzed through the intersections of a dilemma of security versus moral responsibility. Secondly, this article argues that integration programs in Sweden tend to reproduce and maintain articulations of nation, culture, gender, and race, and thus contribute to the construction of a harmonious and singular sense of the Swedish self.