Description
Book SynopsisErik Hansson examines Swedish society's reactions to the presence of European Union citizens, mainly Romanian and Bulgarian Roma, begging in the 2010s.
Trade Review"This brilliant and intense book is recommended for anyone conducting research on homelessness and urban poverty in general."—Hélène B. Ducros,
EuropeNow“Politically urgent, theoretically exciting, and beautifully written,
The Begging Question combines razor-sharp materialist and psychoanalytic analysis to offer a radical rethinking of begging and of how to escape the limited political and ethical imaginaries that surround it.”—Felicity Callard, professor of human geography at the University of Glasgow
“Artfully exposes the unconscious underpinnings of social democracy in Sweden, showing how it is laced with proclivities to scapegoat the Other. Essential reading for anyone interested in contemporary forms of racism and poverty.”—Ilan Kapoor, professor of critical development studies at York University, Toronto
“Erik Hansson innovatively combines theories of psychoanalysis, class dynamics, and racism to explain anxieties in encountering begging and contradictory political responses to the arrival of Roma from the European Union.”—Michael Jones, professor emeritus of geography at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology
“A rich and thought-provoking examination of the emergence of racialized poverty and begging in one of Europe’s historically most egalitarian social democracies. Drawing creatively on Marxist and psychoanalytic theory, Erik Hansson opens a vital space to reflect—politically and psychically—on what inequality, nationalism, and the politics of redistribution mean in Sweden today.”—Jesse Proudfoot, assistant professor of sociology at Durham University
Table of ContentsList of Illustrations
Foreword by Don Mitchell
Acknowledgments
The Problem: An Introduction
Part 1. Anxiety: The Universal in the Particular
1. Searching for Elucidations
2. The Concrete’s Historical Layers
3. Abjection, or Hell Is Othered People
4. Anxiety and Ethics
5. Ideology, or Enjoying the National Thing
Part 2. Hegemony: The Particular in the Universal
6. The Swedish Ideology, or Missing Exceptional Equality
7. The Tolerant Stance of Inaction, 2010–2015
8. The Borromean Welfare Knot
9. The Conjuncture, 2015–2019
The Problem: An Epitome
Notes
Bibliography
Index
