I've been working with it over the past year, and finally the time has come to publish it, my exam paper on young muslims' perspective on Swedish politics. The paper is written in Swedish, but will probably be included in a reworked version in a book later this year - in English. I will off course keep you posted. Meanwhile, here is my English abstract.
To what extent do young Muslims relate to the left-right-scale in Swedish politics?: A case study from SUM’s youth conference of 2009.
English Abstract
In Sweden there seem to be a growing concern about young people’s waning involvement in party politics. Another group that is sometimes described as uninvolved in politics is immigrants, living in worn down suburbs with low employment and education levels. In expressing sentiments like those above, it seems that “guilt” is shifted onto young people or immigrants. This essay explores another possibility, namely the hypothesis that the historical divide between a political left versus right may make little sense to parts of the population. If this holds true, it means that young people, immigrants and other people alike may in fact be willing to engage in politics if there was a party who catered for their full range of opinions.
Based on a survey conducted during SUM’s (Sweden’s Young Muslims) annual conference 2009, this paper touches on relevant research on Islam and politics in order to analyze the survey results. The paper also undertakes a critical analysis of one of the theories that argue for keeping left and right as a primary divide in party politics.
The intention was for the data to touch on groups both “young” and to some extent “im-migrant”, but even though the respondents can accurately be described as young, the image painted above regarding immigrants does not hold true for the respondents. Instead they live in big and small cities, and in city centres as well as in both wealthier and poorer suburbs. Moreover, the education level is high, and interest in party politics is anything but marginal.
The survey shows that the respondents agree with sentiments and proposals made both by parties positioned to the left and to the right. Interestingly enough however, the support for the parties positioned to the left (S, V and MP) is strong, and the support for the parties on the right (M, KD, FP and C) is minimal. The tendency of expressing opinions both “left” and “right”, but almost exclusively supporting left-oriented parties largely holds true for the majority of the respondents, and is an important finding from the undertaken survey. There is no party who caters for the whole range of opinions expressed by the respondents. This however, does not seem to hinder the respondents from expressing confidence for the parties positioned to the left. The findings supports the conclusion that left versus right is not necessarily a good primary divide in party politics for the respondents. Conducting the same or similar surveys on other parts of the population would enable a comparison to find out how wide spread or limited this phenomenon may be.
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