Narkotika hit och narkotika dit - Vad är problemet? En komparativ diskursstudie om hur narkotika konstrueras i två riksdagspartiers motioner.

Sammanfattning: The aim of this thesis was to analyse and compare how two Swedish parliamentary parties, the Left Party and the Sweden Democrats, have discursively problematized and depicted narcotics through the parties' political motions between the years 2010/11 to 2020/21. This was achieved by collecting all political motions regarding narcotics from each political party during this time span and finally selecting the most central motion from each year. The selected data was analysed with the help of Fairclough’s critical discourse analysis to identify central discourses and a theoretical analysis to understand how these identified discourses were constructed. To achieve an understanding of these discourses, three theoretical components were chosen as a theoretical framework. First a theory about knowledge as a social construct was used to understand what knowledge the parties’ conveyed. Secondly a theory of political problematization was used to see how narcotics could be constructed as a problem. Finally, Foucault's power- and knowledge discussions were used to understand how both knowledge and problematization about narcotics could be used as a tool for political power and influence. The results showed that the identified discourses had different patterns in how narcotics were constructed as a phenomenon. The parties’ diverse use of words showed that language had a significant impact in how narcotics were problematized. The Sweden Democrats, however, had a much harsher use of language that determined that narcotics is an overarching societal problem, much in line with what today’s research explains about Sweden's drug policies. The Left party instead consequently depicted narcotics through an individual perspective with a focus on vulnerable groups in society. Age, gender, and ethnicity were particular aspects. As a conclusion, the parties constructed narcotics through several different ways and that the different use of language, knowledge and problematization shows that perspectives on narcotics in Swedish politics are not mutual and that it is still a large problem that needs to be tackled politically.