ÄR DET ORTEN SOM RÖR SIG? – en kvalitativ studie av ungdomsrörelsen i förorten

Abstract

The article deals with the topic of social movements. Based on previous as-sumptions that a new social movement is being shaped in Sweden's “Million Program Areas”, it analyzes this movement using social movement theory as an analytical framework. The subject is treated against a background of social unrest that has taken place in various suburban areas in Sweden's metropoli-tan regions between the years 2008-13 – were riots, car-burnings and stone-throwing at police and fire departments where parts of the common setting – at the same period as a variety of local based organizations and networks, in a context of social development, steadily are growing and being noticed. These organizations are working with a wide range of different issues relating to area-specific problems, such as segregation, discrimination, poor neighbor-hood services and housing issues, and the aim is to analyze this mobilization to see whether one can understand it in terms of a new social movement. Fur-thermore, the study aims at analyzing whether one can understand these sub-urban riots as one of the movement's many empirical parts. This is a qualitative exploratory and comparative study that deals with empirical material consist-ing of “movement-texts” and interviews with movement intellectuals’ as well as two participants of the Husby riots in Stockholm. The main result is that there is cause to interpret the suburban social mobilization and -organizing as a new suburban movement, based in Sweden's “Million program areas”. Fur-thermore, the study concludes that there is a theoretical framework which sup-ports one to analytically look at riots as empirical parts of social movement's; although the research-area is still somewhat underdeveloped. However, at this point, there is still a need for more empirical research and stronger, unequivocal, linkages in order to support, with certainty, such conclusions.