1. Introduction; Erika Alm, Linda Berg, Mikela Lundahl Hero, Anna Johansson, Pia Laskar, Lena Martinsson, Diana Mulinari and Cathrin Wasshede.- 2. Public Intimacy and “White Feminism”: On the Vain Trust in Scandinavian Equality; Mikela Lundahl Hero.- 3. We Were Here, and We Still Are: Negotiations of Political Space Through Unsanctioned Art; Linda Berg and Anna Sofia Lundgren.- 4. 1 May – Muslim Women Talk Back: A Political Transformation of Secular Modernity on International Workers’ Day; Lena Martinsson.- 5.  Fat, Black and Unapologetic: Body Positive Activism Beyond White, Neoliberal Rights Discourses; Anna Johansson.- 6. Rainbow Flag and Belongings/Disbelongings: Öckerö Pride and Reclaim Pride in Gothenburg, Sweden 2019; Cathrin Wasshede.- 7. Pink Porn Economy: Genealogies of Transnational LGBTQ organising; Pia Laskar.- 8. A State Affair?: Notions of the State in Discourses on Trans Rights in Sweden;Erika Alm.- 9. “Pain is hard to put on paper”: Exploring the Silences of Migrant Scholars; Despina Tzimoula and Diana Mulinari.- 10. Contesting Secularism: Religious and Secular Binary Through Memory Work; Linda Berg, Anna Johansson, Pia Laskar, Lena Martinsson, Diana Mulinari and Cathrin Wasshede.

This open access book seeks to understand how politics is being made in a pluralistic sense, and explores how these political struggles are challenging and transforming gender, sexuality, and colonial norms. As researchers located in Sweden, a nation often cited as one of the most gender-equal and LGBTQ-tolerant nations, the contributions investigate political processes, decolonial struggles, and events beyond, nearby, and in between organizations, states, and national territories. The collection represents a variety of disciplines, and different theoretical conceptualizations of politics, feminist theory, and postcolonial and queer studies. Students and researchers with an interest of queer studies, gender studies, critical whiteness studies, and civil society studies will find this book an invaluable resource. 

“There is a hegemonic narrative of Sweden as an exemplary and exceptional feminist nation-state, one that exists in a secular, migrant-friendly, and market-friendly, liberal democracy. Yet this narrative’s racial and religious exclusions and conflicts – of which there are many – have led feminists and LGBTQ activists to question the terms of normative belonging, and to probe the tensions and frictions of contemporary Sweden. This necessary and powerful collection of essays reveals both the exclusions of this exceptionalist national narrative, one that the editors and authors trenchantly term ‘neocolonial,’ and the demands of feminist, queer and trans artists, researchers, migrants, and activists striving to produce lives that think a different Sweden: of communities that are plural, transnational, multi-racial, transformative, radical and ever-changing.” — Inderpal Grewal, Professor Emerita, Yale University, USA

Draws on forms of political engagement that deviate from the conventional and the institutionalized Focuses on the emergent, “in between” places and states of “disbelonging” that meaningfully challenge the established hegemonic order Imagines new forms of political life that especially take their bearings from those who have been marginalized and silenced

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