Department Seminar: Vanessa Barker & Ryan Switzer

Speaker: Vanessa Barker and Ryan Switzer (both Stockholm University)

Title: Rights and Freedoms: How the Far Right uses Legal Tools to Reshape Democracy in Sweden

Abstract:

• Far right and extremist views have become mainstreamed across Western democracies (Mudde 2019). Mainstreaming has opened up new possibilities for the right to expand its reach and promote its ideologies and beliefs through a range of institutions, including through law. In the past few years, we have seen the use of legal instruments such as litigation, rights claims to thwart political opponents, assert or deny rights, and weaken democratic procedures (e.g., Orban in Hungary). We know that violent extremists pose serious risks to liberal democracies (Säkerhetspolisen 2024). But we do not know if right-wing legal campaigns pose the same kind of risks even as they are fast becoming the tools of choice by right-wing populists around the world (Blokker 2019; Pinos and Friis Hau 2023; Gloppen 2018). 
• In Sweden, the Quran burnings in 2023 thrust legal conflicts over rights onto center stage of national and international politics, making visible competing rights claims between freedom of expression and freedom of religion, both protected in the Constitution. We use this set of events as a methodological tool to explore under-researched social fault lines around rights in the Nordic context, especially as they are part of an expanding repertoire of the far right. We will go on to contend that right wing movements have been influential not because they harken back to tradition, parrot strong men, or engage in raw power grabs, but instead, by promoting fundamental freedoms of democracy. In Sweden, right wing movements promote themselves as protectors of democracy while counterposing Muslims as threats to that very order and Islam as incompatible with liberal democracy. They capitalize on the duality of democracy in Sweden, that is, its cracked foundation that both espouses equality for all while affirming the worthiness of rights based on ethnic boundaries. In this moment, they have been able to translate their ethnonationalist goals into legal rights claims around fundamental freedoms, which appeal to and are supported by the majority of the population. What is more, this set of legal contentions may be used to legitimate their demands for the expulsion of noncitizens, particularly racial and religious minorities who do not adhere to Swedish values.

Bio about Vanessa Barker:

Vanessa Barker is Professor of Sociology at Stockholm University, Editor in Chief of Punishment & Society, Visiting Professor of Criminology and Sociology of Law at the University of Oslo, Advisor to Border Criminologies at the University of Oxford. Her research focuses on questions of democracy and border control, welfare states and immigration, the criminalization and penalization of migrants, and the role of civil society in social change. She teaches courses on qualitative research methods, globalization, complex inequalities and introduction to sociology.