Coloniality and Decolonisation in the Nordic Region

This book advances critical discussions about what coloniality, decoloniality, and decolonisation mean and imply in the Nordic region.

It brings together analysis of complex realities from the perspectives of the Nordic peoples, a region that is often overlooked in current research, and explores the processes of decolonisation that are taking place in this region. The book offers a variety of perspectives that engage with issues such as Islamic feminism and the progressive left; racialisation and agency among Muslim youths; indigenising distance language education for Sami; extractivism and resistance among the Sami; the Nordic international development endeavour through education; Swedish TV reporting on Venezuela; creolizing subjectivities across Roma and non-Roma worlds and hierarchies; and the whitewashing and sanitisation of decoloniality in the Nordic region.

As such, this book extends much of the productive dialogue that has recently occurred internationally in decolonial thinking but also in the areas of critical race theory, whiteness studies, and postcolonial studies to concrete and critical problems in the Nordic region. This should make the book of considerable interest to scholars of history of ideas, anthropology, sociology, cultural studies, postcolonial studies, international development studies, legal sociology, and (intercultural) philosophy with an interest in coloniality and decolonial social change.

Adrián Groglopo has a PhD in sociology and is a senior lecturer at the department of social work at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. His research focuses mainly on racism, the coloniality of knowledge, social movements, and north-south political, economic, and environmental relations. Groglopo has worked on several governmental projects regarding structural racism in Sweden, among others as Secretary of Enquiry at the Government’s Enquiry on Structural Discrimination between 2004 and 2006. He acted as president of the Anti-racist Academy--an association that gathers around 60 researchers within the area of race and racism. In this context, Groglopo also led the production of a series of 17 filmed interviews with anti-racist researchers and activists in Sweden, available at www.antirasistiskaakademin.se. He also led the NOS-HS funded project Decolonial critique, knowledge production and social change in the Nordic countries (DENOR)--a series of research workshops that gathered around 200 researchers in the Nordic region. His latest publications include two co-authored articles (in Swedish) about coloniality and social work (2021), and a co-authored article with the comic artist Amalia Alvarez about racism and migrant representativity in comics (2022).

Julia Suárez-Krabbe is Associate Professor in Cultural Encounters at the Department of Communication and Arts, Roskilde University, Denmark, and Distinguished Research Associate at the Ali Mazrui Centre for Higher Education, University of Johannesburg, South Africa. Her work centers on racism, human rights, development, knowledge production, education, and decolonisation in Europe and the Americas. Her latest work includes the co-authorship of the report Stop Killing Us Slowly. A Research Report on the Motivation Enhancement Measures and the Criminalization of Rejected Asylum Seekers in Denmark from 2018, which includes examinations of state-sanctioned racism in Danish deportation camps and was written in close collaboration with the refugee movement in Denmark. Her work additionally revolves around the ontological, epistemological, and existential dimensions of decolonisation in Denmark. Julia is the author of Race, Rights and Rebels. Alternatives to Human Rights and Development from the Global South (2016).