Jasmine Kelekay

“Weaponizing Exceptionalism” investigates how the racialized politics of crime control in Sweden and the policing practices it justifies impact AfroSwedish communities. Grounded in three years of community-engaged Black feminist ethnographic fieldwork, it asks how Black communities in Sweden are targeted by, experience, and mobilize in resistance to racialized policing. It suggests that the punitive turn in Swedish politics and the rise of the neoliberal security regime has been facilitated by intersecting logics of anti-blackness, anti-muslim racism, and anti-migrant racism. Key to the success of these efforts is what the book describes as weaponizing exceptionalism, the ways in which Nordic Exceptionalism is mobilized against racialized working-class communities to justify punitive shifts in law, social policy, and policing practices while maintaining the international image of Sweden as a bastion of social democracy. Challenging both US and Nordic exceptionalisms, the book elucidates the global circulation of racialized carceral logics and practices, but also the transnational exchange of grammars and tactics of resistance.