Paper short abstract:

The refugee reception in Sweden 2015 has reshaped refugee policies and practices. It has had consequences of workloads for especially the small municipalities dealing with the reception. This paper deals with an ethnographic understanding of rural places and their capacities to handle this change.

Paper long abstract:

The so called refugee situation that occurred in Sweden during 2015 has reshaped the landscapes of refugee policies and practices in different ways. The situation has, for instance, had concrete consequences for the municipalities dealing with the reception of refugees. Especially small and rural municipalities have attested to complex and stressful workloads in relation to the reception. This paper deals with an ethnographic understanding of rural places and their capacities to handle this change. How has the reception work shaped the place based experiences in a tension field between local practices and political discourses? Material from two small municipalities, in Södermanland county and Uppland county, is collected, where focus group interviews with different types of municipal actors have been conducted. In this paper, theories on belonging, social capital and place are used to understand these processes but also to problematise their content. Results show one dominating strategy when coping with social change in relation to the local place; a focus on shaping the newcomers in order to cope with the changes in the community. The local communities showed a readiness for engagement and hospitality in relation to the reception but the processes also raise issues on expectations and responsibilities assigned to the newcomers. There is an underlying understanding that the newcomers have to learn the specific logic of the new place in order to adapt. In other words, the ambition is rather on transforming the newcomers than on reshaping the local community together.