The downside of civic nationalism? Blaming immigrants in Sweden during the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

This article challenges a predominant assumption in previous research: That anti-immigrant attitudes are primarily related to ethnic, not cultural – and certainly not civic – nationalism. Using data from two large-scale surveys conducted in 2021 and 2023 in Sweden, we investigate the extent to which COVID-19-related problems were blamed on immigrants, as well as the potential roots of these attitudes in the three conceptions of national boundaries. Despite Swedes’ reputation as the least ethno-nationalist Europeans, our descriptive analyses reveal a significant tendency to attribute the general spread of the virus in society, as well as the deaths in elderly care, to immigrants and their actions, as opposed to structural conditions. Our regression analyses also show that civic – and above all cultural – nationalism are both positively related to this blame attribution. This sheds new light on the burgeoning debate suggesting that even seemingly inclusive conceptions of national boundaries can fuel immigrant scapegoating. Swedes score high on pride in the country’s institutions, and when faced with harsh international critique and threatening death numbers in the pandemic, it is possible that one way of holding on to this national pride was to blame any resulting problems on the behaviour of ‘un-Swedish’ minorities – rather than admitting any fault with the national institutions.