Fördrivning av socialbidragstagare i Sverige: Problemrepresentationer hos kommuner och organisationer i civilsamhället

Sammanfattning: This study examines displacement of people in need of social assistance in Sweden, a phenomenon that received media attention during the fall of 2020 under the name “social dumping”, that describes how municipalities around the country actively forces people to move to other municipalities. Through interviews with employees within municipalities who have received displaced people in need of social assistance and civil society organizations, discourses are examined by focusing on how they present displacement as a problem. Discourses from municipalities and civil society are also discussed in relation to each other and how they through their problem representations construct social assistance receivers as a group. In the interviews, five central problem representations are identified that together present the interview participant’s perspective on Swedish welfare. It is addressed that there are structural problems and discourses on both national and local level in the Swedish welfare regime that enables and motivates municipalities around the country to systematically displace people from their homes. An extensive restructuring and deregulation of the housing market during many years has produced fundamental inequalities in Sweden, creating opportunities for displacement. Changes within the Swedish welfare has also been driven by marketization discourses as the interview participants talk about an increased tendency for the social services to deny social assistance or support. Neoliberal influences in Sweden has also constructed social assistance receivers as economic and social problems that do not live up to the ideal of the good citizen, which to a certain extent is reproduced by interview participants from municipalities. Displacement of newly arrived migrants further clarifies how neoliberal and racist discourses together operate and exclude people in Sweden.