Becoming an Activist Citizen: Individual Experiences and Learning Processes within the Swedish Suburban Movement

Abstract

Focusing on activism within a new “suburban movement” (förortsrörelse) in Sweden, this article explores the processes of becoming an activist from the perspective of post-migrant youth. The authors ask how individual identities are formed under conditions of social subordination and cultural stigmatization. Using interviews with urban activists the authors elaborate how this experience is contingent on individual and collective learning processes, and related to place struggle; the notion of self-identification for a “justice movement” among Swedish activists in ethnically mixed suburban areas. The article is based on Megafonen, a youth led organization grounded in Husby, a Stockholm suburb. Employing the notions of active and activist citizen, the interconnection of racialization and resistance, as well as how conditions of a racialized being affects the options of becoming an activist citizen, are explored.