Professional Affiliation

Lars Hierta Professor of Political Science, Department of Political Science, Stockholm University, Sweden

Expert Bio

My experiences as an immigrant and permanent resident in Sweden have influenced the choice and design of my project. Born and educated in Seattle, I wanted to continue my studies in Europe after receiving degrees in political science and French literature from the University of Washington. I traveled to Stockholm to study for a master’s degree, and after my master’s degree, I went on to study for a doctorate degree, which I received in 1980. I was appointed full professor in the late 1990s and Lars Hierta Professor of Political Science in 2001. I went to Sweden thinking I would stay for one or two years, but I have spent nearly a lifetime in Sweden. The years of my stay comprised a period of enormous change in immigration and immigrant policies. When I first arrived in Sweden during the early 1960s, there were few restrictions on immigration. Once I had arrived, I applied for a resident permit and registered as a resident. In the late 1960s requirements became more rigorous; immigrants were required to have a permit before entering the country. Labor immigration ceased in 1972, but this did not stop immigration. Instead the composition of immigration changed; immigrants were now refugees or family members of immigrants already in Sweden. Although it is still commonplace to hear Sweden described as a small country with a very homogeneous population, such descriptions overlook the immigration of the past four decades. Today one out of ten inhabitants is foreign born, which is the same ratio as in the United States.In terms of my academic background, I approach this project as a comparativist whose research has dealt with welfare states and social policies, rather than as an international migration scholar. My earlier work has focused on gender and welfare states. I started teaching courses in women and politics in the early 1980s, but it was a course on women and comparative public policy in the late 1980s that sparked my interest in gender and welfare states. After presenting a conference paper on the topic, I became convinced that the paper had the makings of a book. In fact, it turned out to be two books, Gendering Welfare States (1994) and Gender, Equality and Welfare States (1996), and a couple of articles. Recently book chapters and articles from this early work have been reprinted in edited volumes, and I have conducted new research in this area.My current project grows out of a concern that comparative welfare state research has neglected the situation of immigrants. Just as it ignored the gender dimension, this research has largely glossed over the ethnic and racial dimension in shaping social rights. The neglect stems from a research paradigm that has been preoccupied with political economy and class, leaving little space for gender and ethnicity. To incorporate immigrants and ethnicity into the analysis of welfare states, a new framework must be devised to complement existing theories. I believe this prism will generate new understandings of social policies as well as useful policy lessons. Accordingly it is with great enthusiasm that I look forward to working on this project at the Woodrow Wilson Center during the coming year.

 

Education

B.A. (1961) Political Science, University of Washington, Seattle; B.A. (1962) French Literature, University of Washington; M.S. (1966) Political Science, Stockholm University; fil. lic. (1973) Political Science, Stockholm University; Ph.D. (1980) Political Science, Stockholm University

 

Experience

• Professor of Political Science, Stockholm University, 1998-2001
• Research Fellow, Research School of Social Science, Australian National University, 1996, 2000
• Associate Professor of Political Science, Stockholm University, 1992-98
• Research Fellow, Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study in Social Sciences, 1995
• Director of the International Graduate School, Stockholm University, 1991-92
• Visiting Scholar, London School of Economics and Political Science, 1992
• Visiting Professor, Scandinavian Department, University of Washington, Seattle, 1988

 

 

 

Expertise

Gender and welfare states; comparative social policy; women and politics; Scandinavian politics

 

 

 

Wilson Center Project

“Welfare States, Immigration, and Citizenship: The Politics of Inclusion and Exclusion”

Project Summary

Societies are increasingly multiethnic as a result of immigration, but the welfare state literature has scarcely addressed immigrants’ access and participation in welfare programs. This cross-national project seeks to fill this void. It examines the formal and substantive social rights of immigrants of both sexes in six countries: the United States, Great Britain, Germany, France, Sweden, and Denmark. Of major interest is the impact of competing logics of inclusion and exclusion in the politics shaping immigrants’ social rights. Theoretically, the study seeks to bring ethnicity and race into the comparative analysis of welfare states and to combine the insights of comparative welfare state research and international migration studies. Empirically, the study compares and assesses systematically the policy responses of the six countries in order to flesh out policy lessons regarding the challenges posed by immigration today.

Major Publications

• Gender, Equality and Welfare States (Cambridge University Press, 1996)
• Gender and Welfare State Regimes, editor (Oxford University Press, 1999)
• “Gender and the Making of Welfare States: Norway and Sweden,” Social Politics, Spring 2001