‘You see, it is the skin’—responses to racism by young immigrant refugees in rural municipalities in Sweden with historical extreme right-wing and nationalist roots

This study explores the experiences of first-generation, non-European immigrant students, who arrived and settled in rural and White-dominated municipalities of Sweden during and after 2015. The municipalities chosen in this study have a long and well-documented history of neo-Nazi mobilization. This study focuses on seven immigrant students of different ethnic origins with respect to a) their experiences with racism in school, and b) their strategies for coping with such tendencies and their attempts to gain acceptance in their new circumstances. Data were collected using interviews. Highlighting the linkages between individual and structural racism, the results show how racism in these settings is both an open and a latent feature of the daily lives of immigrants. The non-White students are alone in their daily confrontation with racist discourse, and they do not think that teachers or adults can prevent incidents. The dominant strategy of handling racism is to neglect it, but there are also situations that become openly conflictual. When reporting, the students argue that racism is not much of a problem for themselves, but that many of their friends suffer. They also normalize racist talk by accounting for it as something that people engage in as foul language.