A Safer Sweden? A Narrative Analysis of Traveling Crime Stories and the Construction of the Foreign Criminal Other

As vehicles for comprehending the world, narratives play a critical role in shaping popular assumptions about crime and punishment, especially within a changing sociopolitical landscape charged by a moral panic over immigration. This paper analyzes narratives in a collection of 393 documents, titled ‘A Safer Sweden’, published by the Government Offices of Sweden between 2013 and 2021. The collective identities found in this paper highlight ‘who’ crime control measures are targeted at. The three types of intervention narratives, expansion, tough on crime, and border control, open a window into ‘how’ crime control is meant to be carried out. Finally, logic narratives help to understand the ‘why,’ explaining the rationale behind the strategies proposed and implemented in official government publications. Narratives about gang crime restructure the meaning of security and welfare, central to Sweden’s self-image, to make room for exclusionary, expansionist ideas which run contrary to formerly held beliefs about Swedish crime control. These logics also connect themes currently permeating Swedish politics with crime control strategies from other nations, allowing for a better understanding of how stories travel and adapt to new cultural contexts.