“Excluded from the Outside World” : Planning and Discarding Island Institutions for ‘Degenerated Feeble-Minded (Asocial Imbeciles)’ in 1920s Sweden

In early 20th century Sweden, people categorised as “feeble-minded” were regarded as a threat to society. Social control and eugenic ideas were manifested in the form of, e.g., sterilisation and long-term internment. Contemporary tendencies of psychiatrisation led to differentiating people with disability according to their age, gender, and social characteristics. Based on a social constructivist perspective, this paper aims to demonstrate how the subcategorisation “degenerated asocial feeble-minded (asocial imbeciles)” emerged in the 1920s, and what approaches existed to deal with this group. To address this issue, contemporary green papers, professional literature, and archive documents were used as historical sources. The results reveal efforts to found state-run island institutions on the Swedish coast and in the inland Lake Vättern. Due to adverse geographical conditions such as, e.g., freezing of the surrounding water, these plans could not be realised, and eventually out-of-use military barracks were converted into homes for this undesirable group of people. However, the planning process for the island institutions emphasises the dominant motivation to protect society by means of exclusion, supported by the argument that isolation would be in the best interest of the affected persons. The findings underline tendencies of ambivalent modernisation in the nascent Swedish welfare state.