Becoming a Well-Integrated Migrant in Sweden: Young Afghans Narratives of Respectable Versus Bad Migrants
摘要
In this chapter, I explore how a group of young Afghanis who arrived in Sweden as unaccompanied minors in the aftermath of 2015 talks about integration. In their narrations “integration” is presented as synonymous with the ability to pass as “Swedish” by not presenting oneself as a possible burden to society or as a “dangerous Afghan”. Becoming integrated is presented as the individual obligation or will of a “good” and “grateful” migrant. Becoming integrated is hence a valued positioning and outcome. There is an ambivalence or ambiguity within the narratives regarding how the young people constructs of “Swedishness” somehow also come to exclude much of what they frame as important parts of an Afghan identity, hence making it difficult to both become “Swedish” and being perceived as well-integrated in combination with keeping up Afghani identities. Integration becomes synonymous with a full assimilation and transformation of the inner self.