Mats Wickström

Åbo Akademi, General History

PhD-project:

Mångkulturalismens idéhistoriska rötter: från assimilationism till mångkulturalism i efterkrigstidens Sverige ur ett transnationellt perspektiv

Mats Wickström (MA) is a PhD-student in General History at Åbo Akademi University. The working title of his PhD-thesis is “Mångkulturalismens idéhistoriska rötter: från assimilationism till mångkulturalism i efterkrigstidens Sverige ur ett transnationellt perspektiv” (The conceptual roots of multiculturalism: from assimilationism to multiculturalism in postwar Sweden from a transnational perspective).

He is primarily interested in the rhetorical and intellectual shift that occurred in Swedish academic and public discourse during the period 1960-1975 when established concepts like assimilation and integration took on new meaning and new concepts like the multicultural society, identity, ethnicity etc. emerged to form the conceptual scheme for what would later be called ?multiculturalism?. A theoretical premise of the project is to place the conceptual change in Sweden in a transnational context in order to deepen the understanding of the Swedish case.