Imperial Difference in Nordic Welfare States: Overlooked Colonial Legacies and Sámi Struggles

Juho Korhonen, University of Turku

In terms of colonial legacies and the need for decolonial approaches to analyze them, the Nordic states offer an interesting, yet under-studied comparison point. Traditionally, both in the Nordics themselves and globally, colonial continuities are considered less important in these countries. However, we know 1) that coloniality is a global phenomenon and the Nordics have been long embedded in various imperial relations, 2) recent historical research has begun to unearth various colonial entanglements of the Nordics dating back to making of the colonial modernity and running through the making of the Nordic welfare states, and 3) perhaps most crucially, the Nordics are home to the only indigenous population of Europe, the Sámi. Their cultural region, Sápmi, stretches over the Norwegian, Swedish, and Finnish nation-states. Yet, in wider debates over colonial legacies and decolonizing sociology, perspectives and research regarding the only indigenous people in Europe have been largely missing. I will be analyzing the Nordic welfare states specifically through the concept of imperial difference. Imperial difference “provides a productive entry-point for analyses of colonial trajectories and structures in Scandinavia because it both firmly places the region within the context of European imperial expansion and acknowledges its specific manifestations” (Tlostanova et al. 2019, 294). I address the imperial difference in the Nordics in two steps. First, I will review recent literature on colonial legacies in the Nordics. Second, I will put this literature to test through an empirical case study of the Finnish state and its imperial difference through three main avenues. I will analyze Finland’s various imperial entanglements throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, explore the relations of the making of the welfare state with global coloniality, and third, I will focus on the Finnish state’s historical relation and treatment of the Sámi up until recent times.

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 Presented in Session 164. Production of Knowledge Regimes: Experts, Political Authority, and Legitimation II