Den solidariska välfärdsstatens gränser

Sammanfattning: In the autumn of 2015, border and identity controls were introduced at the Swedish border in order to control, and to some extent, also reduce the refugee flows to Sweden. This could be seen as a contrast to the Swedish identity characterized by solidarity and generosity in the national, as well as the international context. This paper aims to investigate the political discourse regarding the introduction of border and identity controls to observe how the values of the social democratic welfare regime appears. The theoretical starting point is Gøsta Esping- Andersen’s theory of the social democratic welfare regime. This is followed by the theory of Scandinavian exceptionalism which could be viewed as one of the components of the Swedish identity. The second theoretical consequence of the social democratic welfare state is the link to regulated immigration. By means of a discourse analysis, public material with political statements on the matter has been analyzed in order to observe how the theoretical expressions appear in the material. The study has shown that the Scandinavian exceptionalism is evident mainly before the identity checks were introduced. After the introduction of identity checks, the connection between the welfare state and regulated immigration appears more clearly.