Who’s afraid of the ‘beggar’? A psychoanalyticinterpretation of the crises triggered by thebegging of ‘EU migrants’ in Sweden
Erik Hansson & David Jansson
To cite this article: Erik Hansson & David Jansson (2019): Who’s afraid of the ‘beggar’? Apsychoanalytic interpretation of the crises triggered by the begging of ‘EU migrants’ in Sweden,Social & Cultural Geography, DOI: 10.1080/14649365.2019.1585563
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/14649365.2019.1585563
Who’s afraid of the ‘beggar’? A psychoanalytic interpretation ofthe crises triggered by the begging of ‘EU migrants’ in SwedenErik Hansson and David Jansson
Department of Social and Economic Geography, Uppsala University, Uppsala
ABSTRACTThe presence of poormigrants from the EU countries of Romania andBulgaria (mainly Roma subjects) who beg in Swedish cities has since2010 caused a collective crisis in Sweden, affecting Swedish identityand institutions such as the (local and national) welfare state.Employing a psychoanalytic framework, inspired primarily by Lacanand Žižek, we describe the various dimensions of this crisis andexplain the socio-psychological processes that produce the experi-ence of crisis. We argue that the reason the ‘EU migrant’/’beggar’produces these crises is because this figure is a symptom of the Real.Encounters with ‘EU migrants’ in the Swedish landscape becomeethical encounters with the Real within three main realms: intersub-jective (individual), national identity (collective), and political econ-omy (institutional). The individual experiences an ethical crisis whereno action in the meeting with a ‘beggar’ provides a satisfactorysolution to the problem. The presence of ‘EUmigrants’ also threatensto undermine the hegemonic Swedish self-image as a moral super-power. And the ‘EU migrant’s’ presence interferes with the nation’sdesire to believe in its political and economic institutions. Finally, theattempt to satisfactorily locate responsibility for solving the problemof the ‘EU migrant’ reveals contradictions within capitalism, nation-alism, and liberalism as they operate in the Swedish context.
Qui a peur du « mendiant » ? Une interprétationpsychanalytique de la crise provoquée par lamendicité des « migrants de l’UE » en SuèdeLa présence de migrants pauvres de l’UE qui mendient dans les villessuédoises provoque depuis 2010 une crise collective en Suède, quiaffecte l’identité et les institutions suédoises comme l’Etat providence(local et national). En utilisant un cadre psychanalytique, inspiré princi-palement de Lacan et Žižek, nous décrivons les différentes dimensionsde cette crise et expliquons les processus socio-psychologiques quiproduisent l’expérience de la crise. Nous soutenons que la raison pourlaquelle le « mendiant de l’UE » produit ces crises est que cette figureest un symptôme du Réel. Les rencontres avec « les migrants de l’UE »dans le paysage suédois deviennent des rencontres éthiques avec leRéel au sein de trois domaines principaux: l’intersubjectif (individu),l’identité nationale (collectif) et la politique économique
ARTICLE HISTORYReceived 29 August 2018Accepted 16 January 2019
KEYWORDSBegging; Sweden;psychoanalysis; nationalism;racism; welfare state
MOTS CLÉSmendicité; Suède;psychanalyse; nationalisme;racisme; sécurité sociale
PALABRAS CLAVEmendicidad; Suecia;psicoanálisis; nacionalismo;racismo; estado delbienestar
CONTACT Erik Hansson [email protected] Department of Social and Economic Geography, UppsalaUniversity, Box 513, 751 20 Uppsala
SOCIAL & CULTURAL GEOGRAPHYhttps://doi.org/10.1080/14649365.2019.1585563
(institutionnel). L’individu fait l’expérience d’une crise éthique quandaucune action dans la rencontre avec « le mendiant » ne fournit desolution satisfaisante au problème. La présence des « migrants de l’UE» menace aussi d’ébranler l’image de soi hégémonique suédoise entant que super puissance morale. La présence des « migrants de l’UE »dérange le désir de la nation de croire à ses institutions politiques etéconomiques. Enfin, la tentative de localiser correctement laresponsabilité de résoudre le problème du « migrant de l’UE » révèledes contradictions au sein du capitalisme, du nationalisme et dulibéralisme tels qu’ils opèrent dans le contexte suédois.
¿Quién le teme al ‘mendigo’? Una interpretaciónpsicoanalítica de las crisis provocadas por lamendicidad de ‘migrantes de la UE’ en SueciaLa presencia de migrantes pobres de la UE que mendigan en ciuda-des suecas ha causado desde 2010 una crisis colectiva en Suecia,afectando a la identidad sueca e instituciones como el estado delbienestar (local y nacional). Empleando un marco psicoanalítico,inspirado principalmente por Lacan y Žižek, se describen las diversasdimensiones de esta crisis y se explican los procesossociopsicológicos que producen la experiencia de la crisis. Se argu-menta que la razón por la cual el ‘mendigo de la UE’/‘mendigo’produce estas crisis es porque esta imagen es un síntoma de loReal. Los encuentros con los ‘migrantes de la UE’ en el paisajesueco se convierten en encuentros éticos con lo Real dentro de tresámbitos principales: intersubjetivo (individual), identidad nacional(colectiva), y economía política (institucional). El individuo experi-menta una crisis ética donde ninguna acción en el encuentro conun ‘mendigo’ brinda una solución satisfactoria al problema. La pre-sencia de ‘migrantes de la UE’ también amenaza con debilitar laautoimagen hegemónica de Suecia como una superpotencia moral.Y la presencia del ‘migrante de la UE’ interfiere con el deseo de lanación de creer en sus instituciones políticas y económicas.Finalmente, el intento de ubicar satisfactoriamente la responsabili-dad de resolver el problema del ‘migrante de la UE’ revela contra-dicciones dentro del capitalismo, el nacionalismo y el liberalismo, yaque operan en el contexto sueco.
Introduction
Since at least 2010, a public debate has raged in Sweden concerning the presence of poormigrants from other European Union countries (often referred to more formally as EU-migranterna (‘the EUmigrants’) and informally as tiggarna (‘the beggars’)) who beg in publicspace. The number of poor ‘EU migrants’ in Sweden (primarily Roma from Romania andBulgaria) was estimated at around 4700 in late 2015 (Polismyndigheten, 2015). The reactionsof Swedes to the presence of ‘EU migrants’ in Sweden have been visceral and strikinglypolarised. On the one hand, hate crimes targeting poor ‘EUmigrants’ occur regularly acrossthe country (Delin, 2015; Pahnke, 2015). On the other hand, community groups, churches,and individuals have organised support for ‘EU migrants’ to help them meet their basicneeds (Mansur, 2015). Lacking Swedish citizenship and the right of residence, ‘EU migrants’do not have a guarantee of public welfare from the national or local state. We write ‘EU
2 E. HANSSON AND D. JANSSON
migrants’ because the term is used in a non-literal sense – it is typically used to identifymigrants from EU countries who beg in in Sweden, and notwith reference to all EUmigrantsin the country.
In February 2016, the government’s official investigator, Martin Valfridsson, presentedrecommendations to the Swedish state regarding how the presence of ‘EUmigrants’ shouldbe handled (SOU, 2016). Valfridsson condemned anti-panhandling laws yet also argued thatthe government should guarantee neither housing for ‘EU migrants’ nor schooling for theirchildren. Additionally, he urged citizens to refrain from giving money to ‘EU migrants,’ andinstead to donate to charities so as to provide more ‘long-term’ help and not encouragebegging. The justification for these recommendations is the conviction that ‘EU migrants’are not the responsibility of Swedish society, and that a long-term solution for their povertycan only be found in their home countries. The investigator thus seems to argue that thesolution to this problem is to keep ‘EU migrants’ in their ‘right place,’ which is definitely nothere. The message of the report seems somewhat paradoxical. After all, if the goal is to keeppoor ‘EU migrants’ from coming to Sweden, why not outlaw begging? We suggest that thehesitancy to endorse a ban on begging reflects a fundamental crisis in Swedish society thatis brought into relief by the presence of the ‘EU migrants.’1 This is a crisis of national self-image that manifests juridically, politically, morally and emotionally at different levels ofSwedish society.
The purpose of this article is to offer both a description of the various dimensions of thecrisis triggered by the presence of begging ‘EU migrants’ in Sweden as well as a theoreticalexplanation for the socio-psychological processes that produce the experience of crisis. Weemploy a psychoanalytic framework in our analysis, and our focus is on the perspective of‘Swedes’ rather than that of those who are classified as ‘EU migrants.’ We are interested inwhy these migrants cause reactions among ‘Swedes’ that are often irrational, illogical, andself-contradictory.
In an earlier study one of us interviewed 30 Stockholm residents about their reactions tothe begging of ‘EU migrants’ in the city (Hansson, 2014). A coherent narrative emergedwhich understood Sweden as ‘the good society’ in an unjust world where no one shouldhave to beg (cf. Hübinette & Lundström, 2011; Zelano, 2018). Street begging as a widelyvisible social practice has indeed been a relatively uncommon phenomenon in modernSweden until the arrival of the ‘EU migrants.’ The absence of begging was explained by theinterviewees as the result of a social contract between the Swedish welfare state and thecitizen, where the state guaranteed a basic standard of living for all in return for a relativelyhigh tax burden. As a consequence, the interviewees felt their own individual responsibilityfor the poor had been ‘outsourced’ to the state (cf. Barker, 2017). However, with the arrival ofthe ‘EUmigrants,’ this ethical order was threatened, since foreigners are not included in thiscontract. In the absence of an official state responsibility, many informants felt an increasedpersonal and moral responsibility for the ‘EU migrants.’ The presence of begging ‘EUmigrants’ elicited a feeling that the individual was now expected to act, which triggeredunease and anxiety that was handled in different ways. These strategies for dealing with thediscomfort of the encounter with ‘the beggars’were all grounded in references to a Swedishself-image; either the answer was ‘Swedish rectitude,’ emphasizing ideas of a Swedish workethic and social order were everyone follows the rules, or alternatively, solutions could befound in traditions of Swedish equality and solidarity. Different understandings of‘Swedishness’ were thus appropriated for largely incompatible solutions to the problem
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posed by the presence of the ‘EUmigrants.’ It is in this way that we argue that the presenceof the ‘EU migrants’ has triggered a crisis in Swedish self-image for many of the country’scitizens.
A psychoanalytic perspective
We turn to psychoanalysis for help in understanding the psychological dynamics (at theindividual and collective levels) of the Swedish encounter with ‘EU migrants’ and thecrisis it creates. Geographers employing psychoanalysis have provided key insights intothe materialization of psychosocial experiences at different scales (Bondi, 2003, 2014;Callard, 2003; Kingsbury & Pile, 2014; Philo & Parr, 2003; Sibley, 1995). One theorist ofpsychoanalysis, Jacques Lacan, has had a significant influence on recent attempts toarticulate the spatiality of psychoanalytic processes. The most prominent interpreter ofLacanian theory is Slavoj Žižek. Melding Hegelian dialectics and ideology critique withLacanian psychoanalysis, Žižek’s (2000, 2009a, 2009b, 2012) reading of Lacan providesthe inspiration for the following analysis of the crisis in the Swedish self-image. Webegin by reviewing some of the fundamental aspects of Lacanian theory, informed byŽižek’s interventions and our own interpretations of both theorists.
The three orders of psychic life
We start with the psyche. Lacan understands the psyche as constituted by the Imaginary,the Symbolic and the Real. A human being enters into this relational order through the‘mirror stage’ (Lacan, 2013a), a transformation which entails an alienation from an originary‘pre-subject.’ As the infant recognises itself in the mirror (which should here be understoodmetaphorically), it identifies this external image with its own ego, which is born at this verymoment (because the image of the body as an entity with clear boundaries organises thefragmented pre-subject into a seeming whole). The external image represents the ideal ofwholeness, and the ‘ideal-ego’ in turn represents identification with this wholeness. TheImaginary then signifies the relation between the ideal-ego and the image of (ego-)whole-ness. The identificationwithwholeness is tantalizing for the infant, as it facilitates the illusionof omnipotence, a feeling of mastery the infant desires. However, true mastery is thwartedby the fatal finitude of the human condition, and this universal condition produces a gapbetween the ideal-ego and the seemingly whole body. Lacan (1988) calls this gap the ‘lack’that threatens the Imaginary ego and its identity as wholeness and completeness (but weprefer Moi’s (2004) choice of ‘finitude’ (and its three aspects: spatial, sexual and temporal) asa more accurate and productive way to identify this particular dynamic). As a result, theImaginary is charged with narcissism and aggression, constituting drives that seek to over-come the subject’s finitude through attempting to realise wholeness in the externalenvironment. By entering into the Symbolic, that is ‘the social’ structured by languageand culture, the subject attempts to repress finitude by resorting to fantasy. Fantasyrepresents the subject’s attempt at understanding the social and at the same time is shapedby the social; it is a projection onto the social that places the subject in the social order witha particular status and role. Finally, the Real is that ‘which resists symbolization and eludesthe Imaginary’ (Proudfoot, 2010, p. 510); in other words, the Real is the world as it existsbeyond our own access to it. Thus the Real is often referred to as a psychic and ontological
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excess to which we do not have access through language. For the subject, the Real isinherently ambiguous. As it represents the lack both within me and outside myself, the Realthreatens the coherence of the subject’s understanding of itself and the world, particularlyas it embodies the constant risk that ‘reality’ will intrude upon our fantasies to unsettle andcontradict our carefully-constructed subjectivities.
The Symbolic constitutes ‘the Law’ for the subject. This big Other is experienced asdemanding obedience to the Symbolic order, which maintains the norms and hierarchies ofthe social structure. The big Other emerges from fantasy, and it is through the big Other thatwe may sense enjoyment, or jouissance (Lacan, 1988). This enjoyment is a form of extradis-cursive painful pleasure (Proudfoot, 2010). Extradiscursive in the sense that enjoymentrepresents a taste of wholeness, a dissolution of the self in a kind of ecstasy that feels likea healing of the incompleteness of the ego (i.e., finitude), an experience that is in a sense‘beyond’ representation. But this enjoyment is painful and even threatening, as actuallyreaching completeness would dissolve our very subjectivity. Therefore, the Symbolic providesus ‘bearable jouissance,’ ‘neutralised’ through organised rituals cultivating and sublimating ourdrives and desire. Desire is always intentional: you always desire something (or someone). This‘thing’ is labelled by Lacan (1998) as objet petit a, the object-cause of desire.Objet petit aworksboth as the object of desire as well as the object that puts desire in circulation. Because desireis our way of handling finitude, desire must always be in circulation, and the momentum ofcirculation is preserved due to the fact that the objects of our desire are never actuallyattainable. The objet petit a is projected onto the Real in our attempt to hide finitude at thesame time that finitude constantly draws us toward itself.
The constitutional finitude alienates us from ourselves and the world; thus we can neverreally know the ‘other,’ our neighbour, because we have no way of circumventing fantasy. Atthe same time, we are dependent upon others because our very subjectivity is producedsocially (and thuswe can never even ‘really know’ ourselves).We necessarily experience othersthrough the Symbolic (and the Imaginary), and these experiences are shaped by a narcissisticdesire to incorporate the other into our ideal-ego and simultaneously purge the subject of theshadow. There are two sides to this process: either we project the shadow onto our image ofthe other, which distances ourselves from both the shadow and the other, or we idealise theother as the solution of our own incompleteness, which is ultimately a kind of ethical violencethat disavows the other’s radical alterity (Räterlinck, 2014). This is the duality of desire.
The process of the Symbolic produces a fantasy of community and group identity(wholeness) through the use of common signifiers (language). Now it becomes clear howthe three orders function at the level of the collective as well as at the individual level. At thecollective level, the Imaginary is embodied by group identities. The collective ideal-ego isdependent upon the (re)presentation of the group as a coherent whole. The role of theSymbolic (through its structures of language, laws, norms, etc.) is to complete the Imaginarymyths (of, e.g. group identity), while the Real (that which is inaccessible, or excess, to us)threatens the coherence of the work of the Symbolic/Imaginary.
The sublime object of ideology
Presently, the predominant group identity (collective myth) of the Imaginary is the nation.Žižek (1993, p. 201) conceptualises national enjoyment as circulating around a nationalThing (the objet petit a), which refers to ‘the way subjects of a given ethnic community
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organise their enjoyment through national myths’ (cf. Kingsbury, 2011). Racism can beunderstood as the fear that ‘they’ will ‘steal’ (or ruin) our national Thing (our ‘way of living’;cf. Jørgensen & Thomsen, 2016). It is the presence of outsiders in ‘our’ collective space thatthreatens our national Thing; they are, so to speak, ‘too close to home.’ The group’s ownfinitude and internal antagonisms fuel the projection of the latter onto outsiders, whichmakes our incompleteness of enjoyment their fault. The ‘immigrant,’ the ‘stranger,’ thenation’s ‘other,’ become symptoms of the Real.
Moving up one level within Žižek’s appropriation of Lacan, we can see how the politicalrealm of ideology and hegemony operates according to the triadic logic of the orders. Žižek(2009a) understands ideology as an unconscious fantasy that structures reality; it is throughideology that we organise and consume our enjoyment and veil the lack within a particularworldview. Žižek’s understanding of ideology and hegemony was inspired by his reading ofLaclau and Mouffe (2001). The latter argued that the political is a realm filled with eternalconflict between antagonistic discourses. A particular discursive order might establisha contingent hegemony, but it always threatens to disintegrate due to the topology ofthe political itself. Hegemony can never be an intact, coherent entity. This is also the casewith discourse (i.e. ideology), as every discourse always already suffers from an impossibilityof enclosing itself as a consequence of that which lies outside of representation thatdiscourse cannot enfold (i.e., the Real). Thus every socio-symbolic identity is deemed tobe an impossible goal. Laclau and Mouffe then draw the conclusion that ‘“society does notexist”, that the Social is always an inconsistent field structured around a constitutiveimpossibility, traversed by a central “antagonism”’ (Žižek, 2009a, p. 142). Žižek –who speaksof ideologies instead of discourses – argues that Laclau and Mouffe do not considerideology’s aspect of enjoyment to explain how the political is manifested. As ideology itselfincubates desire, Žižek (2009a, p. 140) reformulates the idea as ‘“Society doesn’t exist,” andthe Jew is its symptom.’ ‘The Jew’ represents the figure that ideology uses, through socialfantasy, to foreclose its own impossibility. Žižek takes Nazi Germany’s anti-Semitism as anexample. The Nazi ideology proclaims that society is a coherent totality, a healthy socialbody where each subject has a natural function and where conflict is absent. For Žižek, theclass conflict of Depression-era Germany belies this ideology. The Nazi mythology could notacknowledge these conflicts, and therefore class antagonisms had to be transferred intoa type conflict that was compatible with Nazism and which could simultaneously mobilisecollective enjoyment. With support of fantasy, ‘the Jew’was constructed as the cause of thelack of enjoyment of the national Thing. The completion of the ideology, then, ‘requires’ theextermination of ‘the Jew.’ The ideology proclaims that if it were not for ‘the Jew’s’ presence,society would be complete and we would all come together in enjoyment of our commu-nity. The point here is not that all ideologies are ultimately aiming at genocide, but that allideologies need socially-constructed objects of desire which disguise an ideology’s ownimpossibility.
Now we can move to the main argument of the article, which spatialises the theoreticalframework articulated above. The reason the ‘EU migrant’ and associated figure of ‘thebeggar’ causes such amultidimensional crisis in Swedish society is because the ‘EUmigrant’s’presence in Sweden is a symptom of the Real. The ‘EU migrant’s’ presence in the Swedishlandscape amounts to a spatial and normative transgression (cf. Cresswell, 1996), andencounters with ‘EU migrants’ in the Swedish setting become ethical encounters with theReal within three realms: intersubjective (individual), national identity (collective), and
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political economy (institutional). The meeting of Swedish citizen and ‘EU migrant’ in urbanspace exposes the very impossibility of the social. Another way of saying this is that thedesire for wholeness is derailed by the reality of finitude. The local co-presence of the ‘EUmigrant’ also activates crises at the collective realm of national identity, where hegemonicSwedish identity is generally understood as representing a kind of moral exceptionalism(Jansson, 2018; see also Barker, 2017). With regard to political economy, the ‘EU migrant’s’presence interferes with the nation’s desire to believe in its political and economic institu-tions (the welfare state; cf. Zelano, 2018). Ultimately, the presence of the ‘EU migrant’exposes underlying antagonisms already extant in Sweden. In the sections that follow, thisargument will be elaborated with empirical data from the Swedish context.
Reciprocity and the encounter with the real
We begin by considering these dynamics as they play out at the scale of the individual,with a consideration of the begging encounter in the everyday landscape. This encoun-ter can be experienced as ambiguous by the person being asked to give, as the requestrepresents, in a market economy context, an abnormal social interaction due to the non-reciprocal nature of the exchange between strangers (McIntosh & Erskine, 1999). Severalstudies (Dromi, 2012; Hansson, 2014; Proudfoot, 2011) note that this ambiguity is at leastpartially associated with an uncertainty on the part of the giver regarding what therecipient will do with the money. This uncertainty produces an anxiety that is oftenexpressed as a suspicion of the authenticity of the beggar’s need. Anxiety over how thepoor spend their money has a in fact a long history in the West (Erskine & McIntosh,1999; Geremek, 1987). Proudfoot (2011) connects this anxiety with the inherent ambi-guity of the gift relationship itself. In the context of begging, there is a clear non-reciprocity in the giver/receiver relationship, which violates the general tradition ofa cycle of reciprocal gift exchange (Mauss, 1990). Reciprocity establishes a kind ofequivalence that is formally impossible in the begging context. This principle of reci-procity can operate at both the institutional and the individual levels. In addition, whatcounts as a ‘reciprocal exchange’ is an ideological question and culturally contingent.
Following Proudfoot’s (2011) reading of Lacan, we understand this anxiety in thebegging encounter as grounded in the confrontation with ‘the lack of the other.’ Weargue here that the lack in question is actually the finitude or incompleteness of thesocial itself, the lack of connection between myself and my neighbour. Because I amdependent upon my neighbour’s (and/or the big Other’s) recognition/confirmation ofmy ideal-ego, the confrontation with the finitude within ‘the other’ and ‘the social’becomes the subject’s own finitude and, thus, impossibility. What causes anxiety inthe encounter with ‘the beggar’ in the Swedish context is the radical violation of thefantasy that human beings meet each other on reciprocal terms. Following the anthro-pologist Marcel Mauss’ classic study The Gift (1990), we can argue that all societies arefounded on gift relationships, where reciprocity in the gift exchange is always founda-tional. Even if the gift is articulated explicitly as ‘a gift’ (without a demand of reciprocity),the expectation of reciprocity can never be fully disavowed (Derrida, 1992).
Reciprocity can be considered an expression of fantasy’s necessary veiling of finitudewithin the Symbolic, in its ideological foreclosure of the Real (in this case, existential aliena-tion). In other words, we desire ‘reciprocity’ in order to fill the gap between the subject and its
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other, between myself and my neighbour. We constantly exchange gestures, words andservices with each other in order to reinforce ourselves and the others in our identities (whowe are), and ‘culture’ (fantasy through the Symbolic) supplies the norms and regulations forwhat counts as a ‘correct’ reciprocal exchange. This is what morality is ultimately about: theestablishment of a social system of rules regarding which actions are ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ toguarantee a social order and a possibility to coexist with strangers and acquaintances withoutcausing each other suffering and anxiety (see Kingsbury, 2017). Given our ontological under-standing of morality as always contextually-produced and historically mutable, moralityinvolves a social fantasy that always holds paradoxes and impossibilities: precisely as languagecannot describe all sensations, a specificmorality cannot offer a guide in all possible situations,which is why we speak of moral dilemmas. The Real is revealed in our norms and reality whenwe confront such dilemmas. Our psychoanalytic understanding tells us that to find oneself ina moral dilemma, where norms of reciprocity no longer apply, produces an anxiety that theindividual wants to escape. At the same time, the Lacanian perspective points out that it isprecisely in such moments, when the Imaginary and Symbolic orders betray us and we standbefore the Real, that we may make truly ethical decisions, since we cannot trust anythingother than our own responsibility to act uncertainly in an uncertain situation (Badiou, 2002;Lacan, 2013b; Zupančič, 2000). An ethical moment is thus an emotionally painful situation tofind oneself in, regardless of the decision one makes.
Radford (2001) shows how the meeting with a beggar is an example of a situation whereno moral principle can be used in all cases without one being forced to deviate from theprinciple. The only principle ‘guaranteed to work’ is to refuse to give at all, which representsa negation of moral action (Radford, 2001). From the experiences of the interview study(Hansson, 2014) and how the problem has been formulated in the Swedish press (e.g.Cnattingius, 2016; Nilsson, 2015b; Nycander, 2014; Rosenberg, 2015; Rothstein, 2013), wecan say that the (imagined) social contract between Swedish citizens and the welfare statehas in a paradoxical way disarmed this particular moral dilemma by outsourcing the moralresponsibility from the individual to the authorities. This transfer allows a citizen to elude thedilemma of the Real by choosing the only strategy ‘guaranteed’ to work, and at the sametime convince oneself of one’s morality by way of belonging to a welfare society that takescare of the problem on one’s behalf. But as noted above, it is more difficult to refer to thissocial contract in the meeting with a ‘foreign beggar.’
As a relatively new phenomenon, the Swedish encounter with the ‘EU migrant’ must insome way be integrated by fantasy into the notion of a (materially false) reciprocity.Otherwise, the encounter with the ‘EU migrant’ reveals the Real behind the fantasy ofreciprocity: ‘real’ reciprocity in social relations is impossible, and nothing in our social realityis ‘given.’ The spatiality and visuality of this traumatic encounter serves as a hauntingreminder of finitude, especially given that even if an individual decides to make a ‘trulyethical’ decision at a particular moment, the meeting that provokes the decision will berepeated again and again so that it becomes a regular part of the Symbolic. Likewise, thisprocess simply reinforces the absence of a conventional moral reciprocity.
Thus, even if one drops a few coins into the ‘beggar’s’ mug, ‘they’ will stubbornlyremain in one’s daily field of view. In this way ‘they’ fail to live up to the expectations ofreciprocity by ‘disappearing’ after the completion of the ‘ethical’ act. In larger Swedishcities, the number of ‘beggars’ is such that it becomes almost impossible to give moneyto each one you pass, and you cannot either be sure which ones are more ‘deserving’
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than others. As a well-meaning person, it quickly becomes obvious that whatever youdo, you will ‘fail.’
This severe structural inequality thus dooms ‘the Swede’ to ‘sin’ against the hegemonicvalues of humanitarian compassion, as there is no ‘correct’ individual response to theproblem. This dilemmaproduces anxiety, which ‘Swedes’ deal with through three strategies.The first constructs the ‘the beggar’ as an object-cause of desire for one’s self-image asa ‘good moral subject.’ In other words, one projects the Ideal-ego onto ‘the beggar,’enhancing one’s self-image as a good person by helping in some way. All over Sweden,private citizens are opening their homes for ‘EU migrants,’ organizing fundraising events,and acting in other ways (Andersson, 2015; Mansur, 2015). We also see more modestgestures, such as selecting out one’s own ‘personal beggar’ for regular assistance.Different sources recount the ways that such people justify and explain their engagement:it ‘feels good’ to help someone, it gives you a purpose in life, it makes you sleep better, etc(e.g. Adolfsson, 2015; Björkman, 2016; Ek, 2015; Hansson, 2014; Olausson & Iosif, 2015).Could it be that these are (to some extent) different ways of making ‘the (big) Other,’through the medium of the neighbour, confirm one’s goodness?
A second anxiety-reducing strategy is similar to the first, where projection producesthe ‘beggar’ as an object-cause of desire, but here the aim is to generate ‘undeserved’negative emotions within yourself, to assist in the project of eliminating these ‘inter-lopers’ who hinder your freedom of movement and violate your ‘right’ to traverse urbanspace without being bothered (cf. Blomley, 2010; Sennett, 1996). Hansson (2014) findsa seemingly irrational insistence among some interviewees that all ‘EU migrants’ areimmoral ‘gypsies’ or members of criminal mafias. We should emphasise that some ofthose who beg in Sweden have been subjected to human trafficking, and a few seem tobe participating in criminal activities (Bjurbo, 2017; Polismyndigheten, 2015). That said,there are already laws against human trafficking on the books in Sweden, which can beused without banning begging; but the fact that a few people are exploited is oftentranslated by certain private and political actors as proof that all ‘beggars’ are criminals.
The ‘beggars’ are further understood as making unjust claims on the pedestrian’sattention and emotional engagement, as well as constituting obstacles in public space(Dagens Nyheter 2015; Gelin, 2016; Hansson, 2014; Karlsson, 2014). In its more extremecases, demanding their ‘right to pass freely’ (Blomley, 2010) might be thought of as acts ofrevenge against ‘beggars’ for taking something which does not belong to them (i.e.,attention, emotion, public space) (Giertz, 2015; Mossige-Norheim, 2015; Nilsson, 2015a;Östlund, 2015). Justice has to be reimposed; reciprocal relations have to be preserved. Theultimate solution here is to expel ‘the beggars’ so that the previous order can be restored –by violence, or by law (which, in the end, is the same thing).
These first two strategies reflect the duality of desire as it relates to the objet petit a asdiscussed above. The third anxiety-reducing strategy is ethical disavowal, with referenceto the outsourcing moral responsibility to the welfare state. In this case, the ethical Realof the presence of ‘the beggars’ does not interpellate the ‘Swede’ as a subject withmoral responsibilities. A complicating factor is the fact that ‘EU migrants’ are not legallyentitled to the regular, non-contributory benefits of the Swedish welfare state – nor fromthe other EU member states, for that matter (Giubboni, 2015). However, local authorities(such as cities) are indeed still legally responsible for the well-being of all residents of theauthority’s territory . However, in spite of this legal responsibility (which, admittedly, is
SOCIAL & CULTURAL GEOGRAPHY 9
largely ignored), the common response to the plight of ‘EU migrants’ is still: they areRomania’s responsibility; moral responsibility is thus outsourced to the state of whichthese migrants are citizens (e.g. Busch Thor & Eclund, 2015; Hansson, Juntti, Åberg,Ericsson, & Olsson, 2015; Holmberg, 2014; Lindström, 2014). The original vision of an EUcitizenship thus falls victim to welfare nationalism (O’Brien, 2016).
Some politicians have tried to argue that giving money to people who beg does nothelp them, that it can be counterproductive by cementing poverty and preventing themfrom accessing better solutions (Regnér & Valfridsson, 2015). It is interesting to considerwhat the claim that giving money ‘does not help’ might really mean, especially since inmuch media reporting, what is made clear by the poor immigrants is that money is infact very helpful to them. But one thing that giving money definitely does not do ismake ‘the beggar’ go away. And we suggest that removing these transgressive indivi-duals from Sweden’s urban landscapes is the (un)stated goal, the underlying desire.
The Swedish national identity’s encounter with the real
We now move from the scale of the individual to the national scale. Sweden is occasionallyreferred to as a ‘moral superpower’ (Dahl, 2006; Jansson, 2018) due to its 20th centuryevolution into a modern welfare state characterised by solidarity, geopolitical neutrality,interest in human rights, and a public embrace of feminism and anti-racism. These char-acteristics are main components of the Swedish national self-image, as is clearly suggestedby the reactions to the presence of the ‘EU migrants.’ In contemporary Sweden, there arethree ideas that are of particular resonance for large segments of the population: folkhem-met (‘the people’s home,’ a reference to the welfare state), arbetslinjen (‘the work line,’ or thepolitical goal of promoting wage labour and reducing welfare payments), and a liberal-humanist belief in the equality of all people.
The Swedish self-image as a moral superpower produces a sense of righteousnessgrounded in a national ideal-ego. This self-image obscures the shadow of structural racism,which has a long history in Sweden (perhaps most prominently in the treatment of theindigenous Sami population (Pred, 2000)). Of particular relevance to the present discussionis the history of anti-Roma racism in Sweden. The opportunities to obtain employment,education and housing by the Swedish Roma have been restricted by the state and civilsociety for centuries. Romawere not granted asylum duringWorldWar II, hundreds of Romawere sterilised by the state, as late as 2010 more than 80% of Swedish Roma wereunemployed, and it was acknowledged in 2013 that the police had been keeping registersof Roma in Skåne county (Arbetsmarknadsdepartementet, 2014; Kott, 2014; Tydén, 2002).Roma have been an important ‘constitutive other’ of Swedish national identity for centuries,embodying the Real of Swedish society that needs to be repressed and excluded. However,in public discourse Swedish anti-Roma racism is often framed as an historical issue, a formersin which by now has been sufficiently atoned for. Ironically, Swedish politicians havedefended evictions of ‘EU-migrants’ from their provisional tent camps with the argumentthat they do not want to return to a past when Swedish Romawere forced to live in informalsettings (Persdotter & Eriksson, 2016).
In the final section, we will consider how ‘the beggar’ reveals three fundamentalassumptions of the discourse about begging as being untenable. ‘The beggar’ pulls backthe curtain to show the Real (i.e., the inner contradictions or antagonism) of each of
10 E. HANSSON AND D. JANSSON
these assumptions. This consideration shows how the crisis produced by ‘the beggar’rests at the intersection between the economic order (capitalism), the political order(nationalism), and the ideological/moral order (liberalism). It is this intertwining of threefundamental aspects of material reality in Sweden that make the encounter with ‘thebeggar’ so deeply troubling – and ‘impossible’ to solve.
The Swedish institutional encounter with the real
Our analysis in this article has gradually moved from the locus of the individual to the scaleof national institutions. Here our focus is on the institutions of the political economy(capitalism), the nation-state (nationalism), and ideology (liberalism). As an integratedwhole, the ‘smooth’ functioning of these institutions relies upon certain assumptionswhich supply individuals with rationales for the material reality they face in their everydaylives. These assumptions serve as ‘truths’ upon which social relations and individual/collec-tive self-perception are based; they are indispensable for the work of social fantasy tostructure reality as a coherent ‘whole.’ A crisis, however, is produced by the introductionof ‘the beggar’ as a visible component in the Swedish landscape, which forces these ‘truths’to confront their respective ‘Reals’. We consider three assumptions here, each related totheir respective institutions: 1)wage labour as capitalism’s ethical justification, 2) the structur-ing of social moral responsibility according to the logic of the nation-state, and 3) the liberal-humanist idea of equality of all people as articulated in the law.
Capitalism
Let us start with the role of wage labor within capitalism. The main problem associatedwith ‘the beggars’ is that they do not ‘work.’ Capitalism of course depends on wagelabor, and the problem confronting ‘EU migrants’ is that their activities in Sweden do notconform to the prevailing notions of what counts as ‘work.’ As wage labour is consideredthe only legitimate source of income, the logical solution then is to engage everyone ingainful employment. This idea has a long and powerful history in Sweden, crystallised inthe so-called ‘the Swedish model’ and a pillar of the folkhem (and lives on today in the‘workfare’ project of arbetslinjen, the political program promoting (forced?) wage labourfor everyone, especially for those receiving public assistance). But given that capitalismnecessarily produces a ‘reserve army’ of unemployed, the goal of providing gainfulemployment to everyone (within liberal capitalism) is impossible. Furthermore, many‘EU migrants’ say that they initially come to Sweden in order to work, but upon arrivalthey find that the labor market cannot accommodate them, so begging becomes theonly option to produce an income (Djuve, Friberg, Tyldum, & Zhang, 2015;Stadsmissionen, 2016). Many of these migrants lack schooling, knowledge of Swedishor English, and many are illiterate. To run programs targeted at ‘EU migrants’ wouldprobably be characterised by opponents as alienating unemployed Swedish citizens andpermanent residents (many of whom have been granted asylum and also need to findemployment).
There are also broader issues here. Paulsen (2017) has pointed out the irrationalcharacter of the global arbetslinjen doctrine: given the fact that natural resources arealready being consumed at an unsustainable rate, the rationale for the expectation that
SOCIAL & CULTURAL GEOGRAPHY 11
everyone will engage in wage labour cannot be society’s material survival, but ratherthat wage labor becomes the goal in itself. In other words, jobs need to be ‘created’ notbecause society is failing to produce enough wealth to provide for the population, butbecause society needs individuals to deserve the income they receive. Furthermore, ‘thebeggars’ are not just unemployed, some of them may also be ‘unemployable’ within thecurrently existing labour market. This subset then constitutes the pauperism of therelative surplus population (Marx, 1906), leading us to an ethical Real of capitalism: thefact that not all humans have a ‘societal utility’ according to the current capitalistsocietal order, and thus they have no place within the system (unless they could functionas strike-breakers or used as a tool to lower wages and undermine organised labour).This is an insight that the Swedish welfare state ideology cannot accept.
Nationalism
This brings us to the second assumption, the idea that moral responsibility for others isunderstood through the logic of state-centric nationalism. There are actually two partsto this assumption: the first relates to the taken-for-grantedness of the state’s respon-sibility for the well-being of individuals residing within the state; the second is located inthe challenge to citizenship-based rights (and the concomitant responsibilities) that ‘thebeggar’ represents. The doctrine of nationalism (Flint & Taylor, 2011, p. 159) divides theworld into states that are responsible for the well-being of their citizens. This responsi-bility is regulated through the mechanism of citizenship. Thus, the state has ultimateresponsibility for the individual, provided that the individual has either citizenship or anequivalent legal standing in relation to the state (such as in the case with refugees orlabor immigrants). In the case of ‘EU migrants’ in Sweden, the idea expressed inValfridsson’s report is that the Swedish state has no responsibility to provide for them,since they are citizens of other EU member states and are only visiting Sweden tem-porarily. Valfridsson argued further that if ‘EU migrants’ were granted privileges ofcitizenship in the absence of actual citizenship, even more of ‘them’ would come toSweden and potentially overwhelm the entire welfare system (Brevinge, 2015). The only‘logical’ solution then is for Romania and Bulgaria to begin to meet their responsibilitiesto their own citizens, so that the latter do not need to leave their home countries. Theseresponsibilities cannot thus be transferred to other states without the whole logic ofstatehood collapsing. The refusal of Sweden to treat ‘EU migrants’ as citizens preservesthe clarity of the state’s moral responsibility – that is, it is national, not universal.
The transference of moral responsibility for individuals in need from the citizen to thestate excuses those who ignore the needs of ‘EU migrants,’ since they can reasonably layresponsibility at the state’s door. The Swedish state, in turn, can reasonably lay respon-sibility at Romania and Bulgaria’s doors. The problem with all this reasonableness is ofcourse that the reason that ‘EU migrants’ come to Sweden in the first place is that thestates of Romania and Bulgaria have shown neither the will nor the capability to dealwith the very deep problems behind the migration of their poorest citizens. We considerthe disavowal of responsibility for the ‘other among us’ as a manoeuvre to save theSymbolic order of the Swedish capitalist state and the Imaginary of the nation itself. Inthis sense, ‘the beggar’ is more ‘Real’ than ‘the refugee,’ because the latter has a moreclear legal and ideological relation to the state than the former (Hansson & Mitchell,
12 E. HANSSON AND D. JANSSON
2018 forthcoming). ‘The beggar’ points to the failure of the nationalist/capitalist systemto attain closure in a way that ‘the refugee’ does not.
Liberalism
This brings us to the third institution, the ideology and philosophy of liberalism. The assump-tion here is the equality of individuals before the law. This assumption is ubiquitous in thediscussion of the ‘EU migrants’; for example, allowing ‘EU migrants’ to camp on public orprivate land without permission would give them legal ‘advantages’ not available to Swedishcitizens (SOU, 2016). However, the same idea has been used to argue that the Law (in thesense of the welfare state) should also be available to help ‘EU migrants,’ which is a differentinterpretation of ‘everyone is equal under the law’ (this reasoning rejects the use of citizenshipas a determining factor when deciding whom the state will help) (Civil Rights Defenders,2017). In other words, either the ‘EUmigrants’ have not fulfilled their obligations to society, orthe Swedish state has not fulfilled its obligations to the ‘EU migrants.’ The fact that it ispossible make opposing arguments from the same assumption suggests that we areapproaching the Real. In his report, Valfridsson argues that the Law does not provide ‘EUmigrants’ rights to housing, education, and social benefits. To provide such benefits would beto discriminate positively in favor of one group (‘EU migrants’) over others (citizens). But theassumption of equality under the law (and the reciprocal responsibility of the state to itscitizens and the citizens to the state) is based in a further (unrealistic) assumption of theequality of all citizens/residents. As France (1910, p. 87) wrote, ‘In its majestic equality, the lawforbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets and steal loaves of bread.’The presence of ‘EU migrants’ in Sweden reveals the Real of liberalism, the fact that everyoneis not equal under the Law, even if they are technically equal under the law. The Law does noteven prevent long-time residents and citizens of Sweden from experiencing poverty andhomelessness; when it comes to ‘EUmigrants,’ the law is only relevant as a tool to repress thelarger failure of the Law. ‘EUmigrants’ have not had the possibility of entering Swedish society(the Law) on equal terms, and thus they face the long arm (and iron fist) of the law.
Once one rejects the explanations of the poverty of ‘EU migrants’ based on cultural orbiological racism, one comes to the conclusion that their genuine, involuntary poverty andvulnerability has to be seen as a consequence of an unjustmaterial inequality, caused by thetemporal and spatial accidents of birth in an unequal global society. This naked factnecessarily undermines the assumption of liberalism we have been discussing here; itconstitutes the Real of liberalism and at the same time ties together the Law with nation-alism and capitalism.
To summarise this part of the argument, these Real contradictions we identify herewithin capitalism, nationalism and liberalism represent a process of passing responsi-bility onward, away from the subject itself. That is, if the ‘beggar’ is not my (theindividual’s) responsibility, it is because responsibility lies with the state. But if it’s notthe state’s responsibility (when the ‘beggar’ is not a citizen), it’s then the responsibility ofthe ‘beggar’s’ home country. When the home country does not take responsibility, thechain breaks, and the problem remains. In that sense this way of thinking amounts toa failure in Real terms, but it succeeds in the terms of the Imaginary and Symbolic. Inother words, the ideology works to suppress the problematic finitude revealed by the‘EU migrants,’ but this success is tenuous, as the Real is always knocking on the door.
SOCIAL & CULTURAL GEOGRAPHY 13
The circle is never completed. In the absence of jobs (capitalism), the problem is referredto the welfare state, but in the absence of citizenship (nationalism), the problem is thenreferred to the home country, but in the absence of a solution there, there is nowhere togo other than the demand that ‘they’ work like everyone else (liberalism), becauseanything else would simply be absurd.
Conclusion
To recapitulate, the reason the ‘EU migrant’/‘beggar’ produces the crisis we have identifiedin Swedish society is because this figure is a symptom of the Real. Encounters with ‘EUmigrants’ in the Swedish landscape become ethical encounters with the Real within threemain realms: intersubjective (individual), national identity (collective), and political economy(institutional). The individual experiences an ethical crisis where no action in the meetingwith a ‘beggar’ provides a satisfactory solution to the problem. The presence of ‘EUmigrants’ also threatens to undermine the hegemonic Swedish self-image as a moral super-power. And the ‘EU migrant’s’ presence interferes with the nation’s desire to believe in itspolitical and economic institutions (the welfare state). The attempt to satisfactorily locateresponsibility for solving the problem of the ‘EUmigrant’ (which is different from solving theproblem of, e.g. ‘poverty’) reveals contradictions within the realms of capitalism, national-ism, and liberalism as they operate in the Swedish context. This broken chain of responsi-bility will likely only be solved within the existing system by removing the problem – that is,to remove ‘EU migrants’ from the Swedish landscape.
We have sought to show how a psychoanalytic political ontology can help us understandhow political institutions, discourses, and (individual and collective) psychic lives can beseen as two sides of the same coin: their construction and the internal relations of theirconstitutive elements similarly shaped by the Imaginary and Symbolic orders, and theseelements strive to repress or cover over their Real aspects with help from the social fantasythat is provided by the Big Other’s mediation. The relevance of this analysis to politicalpractice is grounded in the way in which a confrontation with the Real (i.e. the ‘impossible’that reveals the arbitrariness of identities and hegemonies) generates anxiety and producesa need to overcome the subject’s disintegrated condition. This vanquishing happens mostoften as a kind of ‘flight’ from the potentially traumatizing (or subversive) by applyingdefence mechanisms (such as aggression, narcissistic sublimation, denial or repression) tosave the contingent order, whether it involves the individual’s self-image or the state’slegitimacy. But, just as a successful therapeutic analysis demands a painful and lengthyresolution of the analysand’s taken-for-granteds about one’s self and others, in the con-frontation with the Real there is also room for insight and critical thinking about the gapbetween the present and the possible. This is what gives life to the idea ‘another world ispossible’ (Brenner, 2009).
It is telling that the debate about begging in Sweden has had enormous difficultymoving beyond the established framework of opposing poles between ‘we should banbegging’ and ‘we have to show solidarity and compassion’ (as if solidarity and compassionpay for houses, clothes, and medical care) (e.g. Sveriges Radio, 2017). ‘Moving beyond’ inthis context would actually involve questioning, in particular, capitalism, nationalism, andliberalism. To ‘traverse the fantasy’ (Lacan, 1998, p. 273; ŽižŽižek, 2015) is surely a risky andpainful process, but it is ultimately the only path to a lasting solution.
14 E. HANSSON AND D. JANSSON
Until then, the ‘beggar’ sits at the intersection of capitalism, nationalism, and liberal-ism, shaking her paper cup half-filled with coins, rudely revealing the contradictions ofmodern Swedish society specifically, and the larger political-economic system moregenerally. This humble cup has the power to shake the foundations of the dominantSwedish self-image because of the ways in which it, through its spatiality, intersects withthe Symbolic, the Imaginary, and the Real. It is a symptom of the finitude that alwaysgets in the way of the desire for (individual and collective) wholeness, that reminds usthat the fantasy of completeness will always betray us in the end.
Note
1. On 17December 2018, Sweden’s SupremeAdministrative Court (Högsta Förvaltningsdomstolen)overturned a lower court’s ruling rejecting Vellinge municipality’s ban on ‘passiv pengainsaml-ing’ (passive collection of money) in certain places in the municipality, arguing that the bandoes not violate the law because it only forbids this activity in these well-defined places (http://www.hogstaforvaltningsdomstolen.se/Domstolar/regeringsratten/Avgöranden/2018/2149-18.pdf). The highest court thus effectively cleared the way for themunicipality’s ban on begging totake effect, whichmeans that it is now permissible for municipalities in Sweden to ban begging(in certain places) for the first time since 1982.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
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