Sweden, Multicultural Education in

The growing debate on multicultural education (called intercultural education in Sweden) is a part of larger transformative processes that are changing the image of Sweden as a monocultural welfare state. Cultural awareness among national minorities, transnational migration patterns, and the rise of the European Union are among these processes. The 2010 Swedish general election revealed a changed political landscape. The Social Democratic Party, which has held power in all but 9 years since 1932, achieved its lowest result in 100 years. A center right coalition succeeded, for the first time since the 1930s, in keeping political power for a second consecutive mandate period, and a far right party, the Sweden Democrats, won seats in the Swedish parliament. All these processes challenge the idea of Folkhemmet (the people's home), the core notion of “the Swedish model” of welfare state.

Introduced by the social democratic politician Per Albin Hansson in 1934, this notion has played a crucial role in Swedish self-understanding and in the stability of the political system in Sweden. The Social Democratic Party and its politics of social equality has been the pivotal axis of the Swedish model. This policy stresses the redistributive role of the state underpinned by high levels of taxation and public spending. However, the primacy of the class issue was questioned by the women's movement, whose demand for political representation has been a recurrent theme in Swedish politics since the 1960s. The growing cultural awareness among national minorities and the rising number of immigrants have led to a questioning of the notion of a culturally homogenous nation and brought about the demand for cultural recognition. This is the context for the discussion of intercultural education in Sweden presented in this entry.