In this paper, we address issues on what it means that learning about a certain subject - nature - in a certain place - also nature - becomes closely attached to learn a national identity. In this case, how to become Swedish. How are connections between subject, place and belonging made up discursively, and how do these connections produce and condition possible subjectivities? Are categories of Swedishness and Otherness, Us and Them, formed through ideas of nature?

Several Swedish public organisations and NGO´s locate integration projects to nature. The aim of these integration projects, that primarily are directed to immigrants, is that this targeted category of people is supposed to learn about Sweden and nature within nature. This proposal is a presentation built on a pilot study of educational integration projects in Sweden. Our objective is to explore narratives about nature and learning in relation to theories of power, space and national identity.

The newcomers in the imagined community of Sweden (Anderson 2006) are supposed to learn about Sweden through exploring as well as experiencing nature. The ethnologists Orvar Löfgren and Billy Ehn show how deeply entangled the notion of Swedish nature is with nationalistic emotions. These emotions are mainly positive and romantic and seen as something that everyone can equally share. In educational projects, one can say that feelings for the nature serve as mediators for overcoming class and other social differences. The activity of being and learning in and about nature is also informed by prominent ideas about usage, abuse and views on nature (Löfgren 1993). To introduce immigrants to this usage can be seen as an invitation to national identity, a cautious fostering and inviting praxis that is connected to modernity and progress (Ehn 1993). In other words, it is important to learn how to be in nature as well as to see the nature in the ”right way”.

Departing from the notion of power as a productive force (Foucault 1982), expectations on what bodies and practices that belong in spaces like the Swedish forest is produced – and also what bodies och practices that become out of place. Nirmal Puwar (2004) defines space as a non-set entity, that move or change depending on how it is used. This means that it is open for transformation as well as it is solid. In Swedish nature, some bodies or practises become hyper visible. Sometimes the hyper-visibility produces the body as an exotic element, other times the bodies are in need to become less visible to be a “natural” part of the space. Educational integration projects in the nature where “immigrants” learn how to be in nature, are one practice to make a category of bodies less visible, to “help” them to fit in. But through the projects will to “integrate”, the category of immigrants is possibly constructed as a problem – an object for change in a double gesture of inclusion and exclusion (Popkewitz 2008). 

Anderson, B. (2006). Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism. Verso Books. Bacchi, C. (2009). Analysing Policy. Whats the Problem Represented to Be? Pearson Education Australia. Ehn, B. (1993). ”Nationell inlevelse” ur Ehn, Billy Jonas Frykman och Orvar Löfgren Försvenskningen av Sverige. Stockholm: Natur och Kultur. Edenborg, E. (2016). Nothing more to see. Contestations of belonging and visibility in Russian media. Doctoral thesis, Lund university, Faculty of Social Sciences. Foucault, M. (1982). The subject and the power: An afterword by Michel Foucault. In H Dreyfuss & P Rabinow (Eds.). Michel Foucault: Beyond structuralism and hermeneutics. Hertfordshire: Harvester Wheatsheaf. Hillbur, P. Ideland, M. Malmberg. C. (2016). Response and responsability: fabrication of the eco-certified citizen in Swedish curricula 1962-2011. Journal of Curriculum Studies vol. 48. No 3. 409-426. Ideland, M. (2016). The action-competent child: Responsibilization through practices and emotions in environmental education. Knowledge Cultures, 4(2): 95-112. Löfgren, O. (1993). ”Nationella arenor” i Billy Ehn, Jonas Frykman och Orvar Löfgren (red) Försvenskningen av Sverige. Stockholm: Natur och Kultur. Puwar, N. (2004). Space Invaders. Race, Gender and Bodies Out of Place. Oxford and New York: Berg. Popkewitz, T. (2008). Cosmopolitanism and the Age of School Reform. Science, Education, and Making Society by Making the Child. New York: Routledge. Safrankova, C. (2016). ”Att skola propra subjekt”. En feministisk studie av entreprenörskap i skolan.” Mastersthesis in Genderstudies, Lund University.