Hand-wringing characterised debate around begging

It was the inability of both the political right and left to see and take responsibility for the systemic failures of the welfare society that led to the so-called “begging debate” in the early 2010s. This inability meant that they gave a free pass to the Sweden Democrats (SD), who were alone able to formulate both the problem, the individuals, and their solution, deportation. This paved the way for the Sweden Democrats' great success in the 2014 and 2018 parliamentary elections. These are some of the conclusions of human geographer and researcher Erik Hansson in a newly published monograph.

“Begging was not part of the Swedish self-image, but it exposed large holes in the Swedish welfare society. Self-reflection was needed on the part of both political blocs – daring to acknowledge political decisions that over 30 years had undermined the housing situation in the country, among other things – in order to solve it. In that sense, the Sweden Democrats were right that there was a lack of action by the parties in power,” explains Hansson, Researcher in Human Geography at Uppsala University.

In the monograph The Begging Question: Sweden’s Social Responses to the Roma Destitute (2023), he has studied the development of the Swedish begging issue during the 2010s and how it was intertwined with the refugee crisis and the political normalisation of the Sweden Democrats.

The research is based on a compilation of 1,327 Swedish media articles on begging or vulnerable EU citizens in Sweden published in 2014–2016, and similar articles from 2010–2022. The material also includes in-depth interviews with around 50 civilians and large amounts of text from blogs, public documents, social media comments, research reports and political agendas. This combined contemporary data has been analysed in relation to previous Swedish and international research, primarily in history, but also in fields such as social psychology, economics and political science.

Some of the research focuses on why begging appears to be a social problem. Hansson shows how the “begging gesture” has been met with ambivalence and anxiety throughout history and in all kinds of societies, and traces this anxiety to both a political and psychological dimension. The political dimension is about how the gesture of asking someone else for a handout always paradoxically recognises and simultaneously questions the other person’s right to what they own. The psychological dimension is about how people’s unconscious empathic ability to imagine other people’s feelings can easily make interactions emotionally overwhelming.

It was in the early 2010s that poor EU migrants started arriving in Sweden in greater numbers and the national debate was triggered. Since they were neither residents, employees nor asylum seekers, they fell between the cracks of the Swedish social model. As begging increased across the country, it provoked strong emotions and a heated debate emerged. Hansson describes how the begging debate exposed the fact that welfare systems were not working as expected and put EU migrants in a Catch-22 situation: For people to have a functioning life, they need education, work and housing. It is difficult to get housing without a job and difficult to get a job without education. It is also difficult to look for work without housing.

“But few policymakers were willing to promise EU migrants housing during the three months they are entitled to stay in Sweden under EU free movement; to allow them to access education or apply for jobs. Because then, the question arises as to whether we should also provide housing to all Swedes who are homeless, and who will want to pay for that?

This is just one example of how the presence of the beggars revealed several paradoxes and exclusionary mechanisms in the Swedish social model, which, according to Hansson, can only be changed by cross-party policies.

“An important point is that it was in the interest of all groups that people should not have to beg. Not only because the beggars were vulnerable, but also because the rest of the population had difficulty dealing with the begging gesture. Since the policies did not present a serious plan for poverty reduction for this group, the issue was reduced to whether or not to ban begging. Rather than issues of poverty and social problems in the Swedish system, it was the general population’s anxiety about encountering ‘beggars’ that became the political focus.

“It played into the hands of SD that the Social Democrats and Moderate Party didn’t dare open the lid on systemic errors but let it become an individual problem for vulnerable groups. SD was the only party that noticed the problems people were experiencing. Everyone was dissatisfied and SD was the only one presenting a political solution.”

The reason for the vacuum, as Erik Hansson explains in his research, was that neither the right nor the left had their own political majority in the Riksdag. This made it difficult for both of them to have a clear policy. SD’s 2014 election result made this even more impossible, as 13 percent of the electorate became the kingmakers for a right-wing or left-wing bloc.

“Ironically, it was precisely because they didn’t try or were not able to change the systems that SD gained the interpretative edge and so much electoral support. The lack of ability to handle this begging debate gave a taste of what the 2015 refugee crisis was going to involve,” adds Hansson.

Publication: Erik Hansson; The Begging Question: Sweden’s Social Responses to the Roma Destitute, University of Nebraska Press, 1 May 2023

The book is an international extension of Erik Hansson’s research into Swedish society’s responses to the presence of poor, begging EU citizens without residence rights who came to Sweden in the 2010s (2019 doctoral thesis).

For more information:
Erik Hansson, Postdoc at the Department of Human Geography, Uppsala University,
email: erik.hansson@kultgeog.uu.se

Methodology:
The researcher uses what is known as hegemony analysis – that is, an institutional political science theory about how social groups strive to establish their political worldviews as a given in society.

Some of the research, which focuses on why begging appears to be a societal problem, mainly uses society-oriented psychoanalytical theory, i.e. it is the unconscious part of society that is analysed, not individuals. Hansson shows how the “begging gesture” has been met with ambivalence and anxiety throughout history and in all kinds of societies, and traces this anxiety to both a political and psychological dimension. The political dimension pertains to how the gesture of asking someone else for a handout always paradoxically recognises and simultaneously questions the other person’s right to what they own. The psychological dimension pertains to how people’s unconscious empathic ability to imagine other people’s feelings can easily make interactions emotionally overwhelming.

Material:
The research material consists of different types of material and methods. The main material comprises a compilation of 1,327 articles in Swedish media on begging or vulnerable EU citizens in Sweden published between 2014 and 2016. These were linked to articles on the same or related topics published between 2010 and 2022. In-depth interviews with some 50 civilians are also included. The material was also combined with social media comments (mainly Facebook and flashback forums), blogs, public documents, government and research reports and political manifestos. All of this contemporary material was in turn analysed in relation to previous Swedish and international research, primarily in the field of history, but also in fields such as sociology, economics, geography, political science, social psychology and anthropology.