Trickle-Down Inequality: The Reconstruction of Crime and Immigration in the Swedish Context

Sammanfattning: News reports in relation to criminality are often considered a trustworthy and factual source of information. However, media consumers often disregard the discourses within the content they consume as well as the power structures it reproduces. News criminality discourses, in particular, are expressions of power that contextualize and shape identity configurations as well as social relations. It is these discourses that reproduce patterns of inequality in a trickle-down manner. Following a period of mass immigration, the Swedish crime and criminality discourse has blended with the immigration discourse in news articles with ethnonationalist undertones. With the purpose to identify the descriptions of different entities and agents depicted in the crime and criminality discourse and the relationships the press establishes between these groups, this thesis applies elements from Critical Discourse Analysis to analyze 72 newspaper articles (36 from Aftonbladet and 36 from Expressen). This analysis highlights the presence of a spectrum of righteousness by which the press places European identities on the right end of the spectrum opposite to nonwestern immigrant identities. Such discourses elevate European identities and legitimize intolerant attitudes which limit newcomers’ access to resources and opportunities for upward social mobility. Additionally, this analysis relates previous findings to the Swedish context and presents possible implications that the blending of these discourses has had on the integration process and social cohesion overall.