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Since the refugee crisis in 2015 the political landscape in Sweden has changed. There has been a discursive shift from hospitality to hostility. There is now a stronger tendency in Sweden to depict refugees as ‘problems’ in conflict with welfare society. This chapter explores how some Swedish parents who became deeply involved in the reception practices responded to the urgent political and demographic changes. I specifically focus on parents’ hospitable work among refugees in the intimate arena of everyday life. My discussion concentrates on questions of ‘belonging’ and ‘othering’ (Ahmed 2004), and I approach parents’ care work in terms of ‘kinning’ (Howell 2006) and ‘mothering’ (Ruddick 2002) within a context of (un)conditional hospitality (Derrida 2000). Why did these parents commit themselves to supporting refugees? What kinds of social and emotional bonds were shaped? How was their support connected to their mothering? How did they prepare their children for multicultural conviviality in a society in the midst of a political and cultural transformation? The analysis is based on parents’ narratives and demonstrates the impact of everyday life and its close connection to the larger societal and political context of (forced) migration. Even though these parents were involved in ‘kinning’ and mothering processes and certainly demonstrated their political resistance against the discursive shift towards hostility, power inequalities between ‘host’ and ‘guest’ were still present and hard to overcome.

Hur representeras Gotland i turistbroschyrer? Gotland ärett populärt turistmål som förknippas med karg natur och kulturella traditioner. Genom att studera turistbroschyrer går Owe Ronström och Jenny Ask på djupet med föreställningarom öar och öbor, självbilder och budskap som formar platser, besökare och besökta.

This study deals with the meanings and conditions of motherhood for some Muslim women in Sweden, the majority of which live in Stockholm. The analysis is based mainly on 16 in-depth interviews with women who self-identify as Muslims. A majority of them were born in Sweden.

In this study, motherhood and mothering are defined as intentional care work situated within, and shaped by, specific social, cultural and historical contexts. I examine which gendered, religious and spatial meanings are associated with mothering and Muslim identity in a Swedish transnational context. The analysis shows that religion (for most of the women) constitutes an interpretational frame for motherhood and for how children should be mothered into good Muslims and citizens. The women represent Islam as a facilitating religion by making a distinction between religion and culture. The study also shows how the women approach the problem of maintaining the children’s Muslim identities and their self-esteem in a secularized and islamophobic Swedish context, and how they stress the importance of the child developing a strong inner self. Based on the women’s own experiences of having been singled out as different, they respond to a racist logic associated with certain norms and conceptions about what counts as freedom or oppression. The interviews also reveal a transnational aspect of their mothering in which they consider what other places can offer their children. The thesis shows on the one hand how an authentic Muslim identity is related to ideas about Muslim places and origins; on the other hand it demonstrates how the women’s ambivalent affinities with Sweden, and (what they consider to be) Swedish and Muslim values, destabilize such an unambiguous connection. These ambivalent identifications show how the women’s conditional affinities become relevant for how they speak about motherhood and mothering and for how they relate to questions concerning “the good of the child”.