Research output
Complete citation
Poljarević, Emin. “Civic Suspicion and Moral Sorting: Islamophobia, Folkbildning, and the Defunding of Muslim Civil Society in Sweden.” Islamophobia Studies Journal 9, no. 2 (2026): 175–199. https://doi.org/10.13169/islastudj.9.2.0004.
Status
Published (2026)
Publication type
Peer-reviewed journal article
Overview
This article analyses the transformation of Swedish popular education, folkbildning, from a vehicle of democratic participation into a mechanism through which Muslim civic actors are increasingly evaluated, disciplined, and excluded. Using the defunding of Sveriges Unga Muslimer and the Ibn Rushd Study Association as central cases, it traces how ambiguous appeals to democratic values, transparency, and ideological conformity produce a racialised governance of suspicion. The analysis connects welfare-state retrenchment and neoliberal governance to a deeper reordering of Sweden’s civic contract. It argues that the inclusive ideal of folkhemmet is being displaced by a narrower ethnonational civic imaginary, termed svenskhemmet. The article’s contribution lies in conceptualising this change as moral sorting: conditional recognition presented as administrative neutrality.
Research question or central concern
How has Swedish folkbildning become a site where Muslim civil society is conditionally included and morally sorted?
Main argument, approach, and contribution
Through interpretive policy analysis and two organisational cases, the article argues that formally neutral funding and democratic-values regimes discipline Muslim visibility and reproduce racialised exclusion.
Keywords
Sweden; Islamophobia; governance of suspicion; folkbildning; Muslim civil society; conditional belonging
Links
Related publications
- Adjudicating Muslimness
- Introduction: Sweden’s Governance of Suspicion
- Islamophobia in Sweden – National Report 2021
Emin Poljarević 