Övergivna husvagnar och nyfunnet förnuft - Romer under folkhemmets homogeniseringspolitik från 1950 till 1975

Sammanfattning: Abstract This paper studies the encounter of the Roma culture with Swedish culture during the period 1950 to 1975. I understand this encounter as a period in which the Swedish authorities tried to integrate the Roma culture by means of the homogenization of cultural values. During the studied period of time, the confronted values were those of a Roma culture with traditional defensive attitude maintained for centuries and those of a new Modern Welfare state culture of a hyper-rationalist society marked by social engineering. To perform my study I used Fernando Flores theory like a method. To illuminate the process, I tried to get a compre- hensive picture of what benefits government officials offered to the Roma to get them to assimilate into the Swedish cultural values. In other words, the purpose of this paper is that of understand from the point of view of the history of ideas, the process of integration of the Roma culture in the was ”Folkhemmet”. The victory of the conservatives in the election of 1976 ended the homogenization process because it was attached to the ideology of the Social Democrats. The material source that I refer to consists of public documents, interpellations, motions, records and documents of opinion leaders. The paper aims to find out which strategies were used in the Swedish homogenization period, what was the attitude the opinion leaders had to the gipsy issue and homogenization policy and how did Roma people accommodate to the challenge of modernization that the Swedish establishment demanded. The result of my study shows that the Swedish establishment believed that to integrate and modernize the Roma culture would be to achieve a homogenization of their own culture. To achieve this goal various social and cultural and social benefits were offered to the Roma people, including the participation of Roma children in the Swedish school system and the benefit of dwelling programs. Immerse in an intensive intern debate the Roma people finally accepted these offers but only to a degree that could preserve the Roma cultural perspective.