Elsevier

Journal of Rural Studies

Volume 82, February 2021, Pages 121-129
Journal of Rural Studies

Contested hope for the future - Rural refugee reception as municipal survival?

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrurstud.2021.01.005Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Rural refugee reception as a hope for the future and a narrative of place survival.

  • Rural refugee reception becomes short-term, temporary solutions.

  • Rural refugee reception becomes a contested hope for the future.

  • How relations of power relating to gender and race interact with a spatial power dimension.

Abstract

Rural communities in the inland areas of Northern Sweden have long suffered from a steady population decline as young people, particularly women, have moved to the growing urban areas for education/employment. However, in recent years, alongside strategies for survival relating to tourism/hospitality industry, refugee reception has emerged as a strategy for survival whereby these rural municipalities seek to staunch the downward spiral of decline by accepting refugees in the hope that this will provide not only job opportunities but also support for local services. Using thematic analysis, we focus on media representations of rural refugee reception in small municipalities Northern Sweden and aim to contribute to an understanding of how spatial and social relations are reproduced through these representations; to understand in how ‘the rural’ is constructed in relation to power relations such as race and gender and how these interact with a more explicit spatial power dimension. We are interested in understanding rural refugee reception as a contested hope for the future – a strategy for survival. Our analysis shows that the media highlight the stories of how the municipalities set their hopes on refugee reception to ‘save’ the place not only by bringing in new, younger inhabitants, but also employment opportunities. However, it also shows that refugee reception may become merely a short-term, temporary solution and not something that challenges or changes the more general migratory patterns in Sweden.

Section snippets

Narratives of place-narratives of ‘the rural’

Place is a space people have made meaningful; one to which they have, in some way, attached specific significance (Agnew 1987). Thus places are not simply physical artefacts they are also bound up with emotions, such as feelings of belonging (being Swedish), of welcome and kindness or of exclusion, hate and suspicion (Ahmed 2014; Pred 2000). Being attentive to emotions recognizes “the dynamics of how life is lived and how a life takes place” (Anderson 2016: 454). Massey (2005) understands place

The rural Swedish North - narratives of problem and places of depopulation

“In Sweden, as in many other parts of the world, the less urbanized areas have been represented as supposedly less developed, less modern and more peripheral than the perceived (urban) centres” (Sjöstedt Landén et al., 2017: 624). Northern Sweden (Norrland) is regarded as peripheral in the national context, characterized by out-migration, particularly of young women, from the rural areas and an ageing population (Eriksson 2010). Hence the notion of Norrland is frequently constituted within the

Refugee reception in Sweden

Traditionally, Swedish municipalities have played an important role in the reception and integration of immigrants into Swedish society. Prior to the 1980s, immigrants were not steered to specific municipalities which had autonomy to decide themselves whether or not to accept refugees. However, in the middle of the 1980s the Whole of Sweden Strategy was introduced as a way of controlling settlement. It circumvented local autonomy by permitting national government to place immigrants in all the

Analyzing media reports of rural refugee reception - methodological consideration

Representations of places are socially and discursively constructed (Cresswell, 2004; Massey 2005). Places are produced and reproduced through the telling and retelling of stories about them (Grenni et al., 2020). In relation to the media reports of rural refugee reception in Northern Sweden, it is therefore crucial to raise the issue of how representations of local places are mediated through narratives, i.e. the news stories. Through narrative, people attach meaning and understanding to

Numbers accepted - refugee as numbers and quotas

The Swedish refugee reception policy and the talk about numbers and quotas can be clearly seen in the media reports. There are repeated descriptions under headings such as “So many refugees are accepted by your municipality” and “Asylum seeking in relation to population size”. (Turborn 2016, Västerbottens-Kuriren). These are set within the context of a kind of allocation policy where it is emphasized that the smaller municipalities accept more refugees in proportion to their population size

Rescuing the rural-refugee reception as a hope for the future

We will be dependent on immigration to the small municipalities even in the future, says Mats Erik Westerlund, Dorotea. New rental accommodation has not been built in Dorotea municipality in over 25 years, but now it's time. This is possible thanks to an offer from Swedish Migration Agency who wants more apartments for its asylum seekers. (Johansson, 2016. Västerbottens-Kuriren. News article).

Refugee reception becomes a hope, the hope, for the future and a narrative of place survival. Placing

Hope for the migrant, hope in the migrant

In the media's reports about rural refugee reception, there are very few interviews with refugees. The refugees are not heard and are hardly visible in the material. They are generally reduced to being represented in terms of numbers as it is much more common with short texts concerning how many refugees have been accepted by a municipality rather than ones in which their experiences are told. When the refuges' voices are heard it tends to be in terms of that they want to stay in the place, as

Contested hope for the future - problems, frustrations and lack of influence

“Being hopeful may be necessary for something to stay possible, but it is not sufficient grounds for the determination of the future.” (Ahmed 2014: 185).

Placing one's hope for the future in refugee reception is not simple. It is not just about how many refugees the municipalities decide to welcome, to accept. The media reports also illustrate the frustration over the type of support provided by national level for refugee reception. They reflect the short-term nature of the organization that

Contested reception - gendered and racialized spaces

While much of the media coverage is positive, there are also reports of concerns that it is perhaps not so straightforward that refugee reception is established in a location and everything simply falls into place. In this section we will discuss how the reception is contested and the difficulties that are articulated particularly from a gender and racial perspective. It is not just about numbers, people's everyday lives must also function in a place.

Nevertheless, the situation is fairly acute

Concluding discussion-rural refuge reception and the fantasy of a living countryside

“Hope is intentional and directed towards the future only in relation to an object that is faced in the present. Such hope is a form of investment, which assumes that an object, if achieved, will promise the fulfilment of the hope, and return the investment” (Ahmed 2014: 184).

To understand how spatial and social relations are reproduced through media representations of rural refugee reception we need to ask - what do these recurring stories of hope and lost hope, of rural refugee reception as a

Author statement

This is a co-written text and both authors have worked closely together during the whole project. We would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for very helpful comments and suggestions. We gratefully acknowledge a grant (2016-00989) from Forte the Swedish Research Council for Health, Working Life and Welfare.

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