‘If You Wanna Go Fast You Go Alone, If You Wanna Go Far You Go Together’: Emerging Political Subjectivities in the Intimate Lives of Young Men with Migratory Experience

This article investigates the formation of political subjectivity among young men with migratory experience in contemporary Sweden and how it unfolds in relation to the politicized context of migration and intimacy. By combining data derived from both ethnographic and participatory methods, the article explores young men’s intimate imagery, everyday relationality and experiences of being cast as outside ‘proper’ Swedishness. The article sheds light on contemporary sexual nationalism and how it shapes the experiences of these young men and also gives rise to ‘friction’, which is both uncomfortable and productive. By cultivating moral selves, crafting moral communities and taking a stance of ostentatious carelessness, these young men engage with and criticize racializing discourses that cast them as either villains or victims. In this process, they emerge as political subjects whose positions are always indeterminate and reflexively evolving.