’Inspection-zones’ are political proposals that the Sweden democrats, Christian democrats and the Moderate parties have put on their agendas for the purpose of combating the gang-related crime in Sweden’s so called ‘vulnerable areas’ since 2017. The proposals entail that the police receive extended powers to, within a geographically defined area, stop and frisk people without being required to provide a reasonable suspicion of individuals committing any crimes, which is something that today works as a protection-mechanism against arbitrary interventions. The purpose of this essay is to analyze, using a critical discourse analysis as a method, how the discourse of ‘inspection-zones’ is constructed by the political parties behind the proposals and which discourses are applied to legitimize the proposals. Furthermore, the purpose is to analyze how racist power-relations are implied within the proposals. The essay is delimited to the aforementioned parties’ latest motions in the Swedish parliament and a party leader debate where the proposals were discussed. The theoretical framework consists of a perspective on how racist discourses can change and still be considered a uniform discourse, and a perspective on how white racism can be reproduced through new discursive means. Conclusions observe that the construction of ‘inspection-zones’ as a discourse is primarily articulated by the parties around gang-related crime. The discourse around gang-related crime is articulated through shootings and organized crime, which legitimizes the proposals, since these are problems that reasonable people would like to prevent. However, the conclusions also shows that a racist ‘Swedishness’-discourse by the parties is implied within the discourse of gang-related crime, making the collective basic characteristics for ‘Swedishness’ an assessment-basis by which gang-related criminality can be expected from people. To direct the focus of ‘inspection-zones’ towards ‘vulnerable areas’ that are already rich in immigrant density, combined with the construction of this racist discourse, also seems to raise the risks of racial profiling and discriminatory practices against non-white ethnic minorities – a result that the Danish people have experienced after a similar legislation was introduced in Denmark.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:uu-475234 |
| Date | January 2022 |
| Creators | Engström Nanni, Martin |
| Publisher | Uppsala universitet, Teologiska institutionen |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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