Immigrant members of the Swedish Democrats : A qualitative study regarding the process in which immigrants become politically active within the Swedish Democrats.

Sammanfattning: This study focuses on the process that individuals who have migrated to Sweden go through when joining the Swedish Democrats (SD), a nationalistic and anti-immigration party. SDs history is filled with Racism and violence, since the parties remodelling in 1988, where the party removed its more extremist and violent grouping, SD have become the third largest political party in Sweden. Through the classic outsider theories of Elias (1999) and Becker (2006) this study is driven to explore a new theoretical view on the process of role and organizational change. By looking at what pushes the individuals away from their former organizational belonging and what pulls them towards SD, this study will try and understand the thought process and decision making of the group, immigrants in SD, around the time before and during their organizational change. As a secondary point to this paper the respondent’s sense of identity and belonging to SD will be studied. How has their change to SD affected their identity as a group and how do other groups affect them when they (SD) are trying to establish their identity. The research behind this paper is based on interviews with individuals that have migrated to Sweden and are public members of the Swedish Democrats.