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Through the concepts of temporal racism and racial capitalism, this articleexplores how time is racialized in Swedish unemployment projects, shapinga racialized and gendered division of labor. The article identifies three formsof temporal racism practices: temporal racism through the invisibilization ofwork, through waiting, and through wasting. I argue that these practices oftemporal racism create diverse forms of labor and are therefore importantfactors in the production and reproduction of racial capitalism. Temporalracism deprives those defined as ‘foreign-born unemployed women’ of timefor joy, pleasure, community, and family; instead, it ensures that their time isused to transform them into racialized workers, moving between precariousemployment and surplus populations.

In October 2022, a new employment protection regulation, often seen as a core aspect of the Swedish model of industrial relations, was implemented in Sweden. While the debate around the new regulation was heated, one interesting omission was that, in the unions advocacy for maintaining various forms of labour market security, the racialised labour market was never discussed, despite a strong racially segmented labour market with varying working conditions. In this article we explore how three white, male-dominated trade unions representing employees in different class locations positioned themselves around the change in the new Employment Act. Inspired by contributions on racial capitalism, we unravel how trade unions take part in the contestation over industrial relations in a context in which neoliberal and ethnoracial policies are growing. Using the Swedish model as an empty signifier - highly variable in meaning, hence contestable - we find that the unions advance three different positions on employment protection regulation: flexible, skilled and protective, and in doing so contribute to the self-racialisation of white male workers in working life., Funding Agencies|Forte: Swedish Research Council for Health, Working Life and Welfare Trust [2018-00381]; Riksbankens Jubileumsfond [P16-0718]

This article explores how different layers of waiting shape the everyday lives of women asylum seekers in the UK and unemployed women in Sweden. We examine the continuity of waiting between and within the migration, labour and welfare complexes. The analysis identifies three layers of everyday waiting: everyday waiting as repetition, everyday waiting as forced and denied work and everyday waiting as invisible and disposable time. We argue that the constant neglect of people’s time – and hence lives – enables exploitation, precarisation and insecurity. The article shows that waiting is a central aspect of how racism is organised and legitimised within the welfare system. While issues of waiting have gained increased attention in social work research, the relationship between waiting and racism remains undertheorised and understudied. This article attempts to contribute to this line of research., Väntan i välfärdens köer: Vardagsrasism som väntan i Englands och Sveriges migrations- och arbetsmarknadskomplex Artikeln utforskar hur olika lager av väntan formar vardagen för kvinnliga asylsökande i Storbritannien och arbetslösa kvinnor i Sverige. Vi undersöker kontinuiteten i väntan mellan och inom migrations-, arbets- och välfärdskomplexen. Analysen identifierar tre lager av vardagsväntan: vardagens väntan som upprepning, vardagens väntan som påtvingat arbete och samtidigt förnekande av arbete, och vardagens väntan som osynliggjord och disponibel tid. Vi argumenterar för att den ständiga försummelsen av och vårdslösheten med människors tid – och därmed liv – möjliggör exploatering, prekarisering och osäkerhet. Artikeln visar att väntan är en central aspekt i hur rasism organiseras och legitimeras inom välfärdssystemet. Medan frågor om väntan har fått ökad uppmärksamhet i forskning inom socialt arbete, är förhållandet mellan väntan och rasism fortfarande underteoretiserat och understuderat. Den här artikeln bidrar till denna forskning genom att analysera relationen mellan väntan och vardagsrasism.

This article introduces the concept of the exit spiral to conceptualize processes in whichpoorly functioning hospital clinics or wards enter a phase of decline due to widespreaddissatisfaction among staff, prompting turnover contagion. In describing and analyzingcases amassed during observations and interviews, the article provides tools to identify,analyze and halt exit spirals. Once a hospital ward finds itself in an exit spiral, employeesexperience increased workloads, loss of control and discontent. Managers may react withincreased rigidity. Instability, discontinuity, and insufficient knowledge transfer areprocesses sparked by exit spirals. The article suggests that exit spirals can be halted ifmanagement recognizes the depth of organizational decline and directs resources toresolve it. This requires further analysis, stimulation of employee voice, innovation, andflexibility.

In Sweden, austerity politics and market reforms have resulted in a renegotiation of working conditions negatively impacting female-dominated public sector- and welfare state workers. A growing body of research locates the harshening conditions of nurses in a context of colliding logics between professions and professional authority, the specificities of interpersonal work, and public sector restructuring. Feminist scholars also tend to focus on the special character of care work in explaining nurses’ growing discontent under austerity. This article starts out from the position that the characteristics of care work are central in understanding care workers’ experiences, but the analysis also shows a more general conflict between labor and capital play out in care work. Based on a qualitative analysis interviews with 50 nurses, the article shows that this contradiction is expressed through conflicts over time, management and resources.

Taking as a point of departure the experience of unemployed women in the municipality of Malmö, Sweden, this article identifies the continuity between the policing of time in the migration complex and the unemployment complex. It explores three forms of temporal border policing: placing people on hold (waiting time), placing people in line (labour time), and placing people out of line (disposable time). By focusing on these three forms of policing unemployed people’s time, the article illuminates and analyses the contours of a gendered and racial temporality that creates a flexible, patient and disposable female and racialized workforce. It shows how processes of gendered racialization are those of time disposition and robbery, of time control and time waste, where racialized women’s time is in different ways less valued and less visible. The article illustrates the unequal gendered and racial time regime that is shaped through temporal border practices in the Swedish unemployment complex.

The purpose of this article is to identify and analyze the conditions and strategies for creating a critical and decolonial social work in the urban periphery. IIn this article we explore Save the Children’s program ”On equal terms”, that during the past decade created a space for local mobilization in several areas in Sweden, with the purpose of resolving communal problems. The article identifies three elements as central for their critical social work: the empowerment of a new generation of social organizers grounded in the urban periphery; the forming of alliances for the purpose of developing new languages and strategies to address problems and solutions in alternative ways; and the construction of counter-publics through the appropriation of space for the establishment of citizen-driven meeting places. Through these strategies and conditions, a decolonial social work was formed. Inspired by theories of resistance and mobilization, we interpret the work of ”On equal terms” as an expression of the politics of public-making and border work that transcends the separation between activism and social work, giving space for new alternatives and horizons.

Austerity policies across European countries have encountered diverse forms of public protest and resistance. In Sweden, we have seen the emergence of a number of networks and organizations which take care workers’ professional identity as their point of departure. These networks and organizations stress the impossibility of being professional care workers in slimmed-down, neoliberal organizations. Parallel to this, and sometimes embedded into one another, female-dominated professions (e.g. social workers, nurses, doctors, and teachers) have been engaged in opposing restrictive refugee policies. This article analyses how care workers in an emergency room in Malmö mobilized against a visit by Jimmie Åkesson, leader of the right-wing, xenophobic Sweden Democrats. The article explores how workers used a gendered discourse of care and professionalism to argue that their actions were consistent with both organizational culture and their professional ethics. The article shows how, by defending their professional role of providing quality care to all in need, workers challenge both austerity and racist policies, which both impose restrictions on who has the right to care. Theoretically, the article explores how the politicization of care creates spaces of resistance, to critique both austerity policies and exclusionary understandings of national belonging. The study stresses the importance of identifying emerging forms of collective resistance among care workers at the intersection of the struggles against austerity and right-wing xenophobic parties.

This article aims to explore the content embedded in the figuration of ‘foreign-born unemployed women’ and how discourses of gender equality are used to create an emerging racialised service class within the Swedish public sector. Influenced by the concept of femonationalism, the article explores how the introduction of the Extra Services unemployment reforms facilitates the creation of a service class whose purpose is to make it possible for the regular workforce to continue to function despite cutbacks and the neoliberal management of professional care work in the public sector. The study identifies a shift in the discourse, where, while migrant women continue to be represented as victims in public discourses concerning unemployment, they are also represented as being lazy and unwilling to work, qualities that legitimate the need for more repressive interventions towards the group, often described as feminist interventions that will rescue migrant women and their children.

This article aims to explore the content embedded in the figuration of ‘foreign-born unemployed women’ and how discourses of gender equality are used to create an emerging racialised service class within the Swedish public sector. Influenced by the concept of femonationalism, the article explores how the introduction of the Extra Services unemployment reforms facilitates the creation of a service class whose purpose is to make it possible for the regular workforce to continue to function despite cutbacks and the neoliberal management of professional care work in the public sector. The study identifies a shift in the discourse, where, while migrant women continue to be represented as victims in public discourses concerning unemployment, they are also represented as being lazy and unwilling to work, qualities that legitimate the need for more repressive interventions towards the group, often described as feminist interventions that will rescue migrant women and their children.

Regeringen föreslår nio åtgärder för att hitta och utvisa papperslösa. Det kommer att slå hårt och främst gå ut över redan svaga och jagade människor. Vi uppmanar därför regeringen att ta tillbaka åtgärderna, skriver 43 forskare.

A central challenge to gender studies during the last 15 years has been the expanding field of intersectionality. The use of intersectional perspectives within working life research has explored how class, sexuality, and race difference affected women’s position in the labor market. The aim of this article is to argue for the need of including an intersectional perspective in the field of working life research. By taking our point of departure in the work of feminist scholars Joan Acker, Miriam Glucksmann, and Chandra Talpade Mohanty, we argue that an intersectional perspective can expand as well as challenge working life research. But we also argue that working life research in many ways can contribute to the field of intersectional studies, especially by placing issues of exploitation, distribution, and production at the core of intersectional analyses.

I denna studie utforskas relationen mellan lönearbete och ojämlikhet inom servicearbete ur ett feministiskt perspektiv. Teoretiskt förenar avhandlingen ett arbetsprocess- och ett intersektionellt perspektiv med syfte att fånga variationen och mångfalden i de maktrelationer som formar servicearbete. Studien baseras på en kvalitativ ansats och bygger på 24 djupintervjuer med hotell- och restauranganställda verksamma i en svensk storstad. Avhandlingen visar hur arbetsprocessen är grundläggande för skapandet och återskapandet av ojämlikheter, och att arbetsprocessen formas av arbetsgivares, kunders och anställdas föreställningar, fantasier och maktrelationer. Avhandling visar också hur ojämlika sociala relationer av klass, kön, sexualitet och ”ras”/etnicitet görs i själva arbetsprocessen samt hur fundamentalt lönearbete är för skapande av gemenskap, motstånd och identiteter., This study explores the relationship between paid work and the reproduction of (gendered) inequalities, with special focus on the hotel and restaurant branch. Theoretically the study takes it points of departure in a feminist re-appraisal of a labour process perspective and in a feminist intersectional understanding of gender relations. Methodologically the research is based on a qualitative study that consists of 24 in-depth interviews with employed in the hotel and restaurant branch located within a large city in Sweden. The study shows how different forms of inequality are shaped within and through the labour process, a labour process that is also shaped by employers, customers, and employees ideas and fantasies and the power relations between them. The study also shows how fundamental the labour process is in the doing of (unequal) social relations of gender, sexuality, class and “race”/ethnicity and how central paid work is in the construction of identities, forms of resistance and belonging.