Emotional expectations in case of crisis or war: Migrant responses to Sweden's preparedness communication

This article examines how people with migrant backgrounds who do not speak Swedish as their first language, and who are relatively new to Swedish institutional and everyday contexts, encountered the Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency's 2024 edition of In case of crisis or war . Drawing on group and individual interviews, we trace how emotional meaning took shape as the brochure entered domestic routines, conversations and memories of earlier crises. The analysis attends to how preparedness becomes meaningful through the conditions in which the brochure was encountered: through language access, household resources, care responsibilities and participants' varying relationships to Sweden, whether imagined as temporary or long-term. Particular attention is given to how the brochure's movement between a collective “we” and an individualised “you” is taken up in practice, shaping how belonging and responsibility can be understood and inhabited. The brochure's calm tone and emphasis on self-reliance resonated unevenly, as participants related it to their own experiences and expectations. By situating preparedness communication within emotional, spatial and relational contexts, the article shows how crisis messages are read, felt and negotiated in everyday life. Preparedness takes form through uneven conditions of belonging, where responsibility is interpreted, negotiated and at times difficult to inhabit. In this process, language, care relations and social position shape how preparedness is understood and taken up, and how emotional demands are distributed across everyday life.