The number of Swedish citizens who migrated to Brazil between 1881 and 1914 reached between 3,000 and 5,000. Most were labourers or peasants, hoping to find a better life in a new country. Although it did not compare to the sheer size of the migration flows to North America, it still received some attention in the Swedish press. Newspapers often presented Brazil as an exotic destination, but there were those who doubted whether it was appropriate for Swedes to emigrate to Brazil.

This article draws on Swedish migrants’ letters and diaries, written and published either while the writers were living in Brazil or, sometimes, after they had returned to Sweden. The narratives constructed an image of Brazil as a contact zone between cultures, and are best understood as a discourse and social practice in which the individual journeys played out. The texts provide insights into people’s experiences of the kind we focus on in our analysis: daily life and observations about nature, the environment, and living conditions as well as other peoples.

There are not only extensive sources for how Swedish migrants reportedtheir attempts to ensure the success of their migration projects in the European settler colonies in southern Brazil, but they are also sufficiently broad and varied to provide a good overview, while the existence of several series of letters by the same writers makes it possible to follow individual migration projects. The article explores the contradictions between migrants’ stories, the evolution of individual Swedes’ views on life in Brazil, and how their known ideas about colonisation, nationalism, racism, and power related to the contact zone between Brazilian and Swedish society and history.

By analysing the texts from an interdisciplinary perspective, considering both the Swedish and Brazilian contexts, we map Swedes’ migration projects and contribute to the discussion of settler migration and its social and cultural implications. We find the Swedish migrants’ discourse to have been heavily impacted by processes at a level that individuals rarely influence. Yet at the same time, their writings reflected the pragmatic realities of life as a migrant. We would argue that most Swedish migrants who wanted to defend their decision to emigrate (and perhaps never return) chose to present it in the best possible light, whereas those who wanted to return and become part of the Swedish community again adapted their descriptions accordingly, offering a negative picture of life in their new country and often of their own emigration projects.

Mellan 1881 och 1914 beräknas mellan 3 000 och 5 000 svenskar ha migrerat tillBrasilien. Trots att det inte handlade om någon massutvandring i jämförelse medutvandringen till Nordamerika fick denna migration stor uppmärksamhet i densamtida svenska pressen. Brasilien framstod som ett exotiskt resmål men emigrationendit hamnade också i en relativt livlig debatt som handlade om det överhuvudtagetvar lämpligt för svenskar att bosätta sig i Brasilien. Denna studie byggerfrämst på publicerade brev och dagboksanteckningar från svenskar som emigrerattill Brasilien och hur de i dessa texter framställt sina migrationsprojekt i det nyalandet.

During the 1800s until the First World War, the migration to Brazil by Swedish citizens reached several thousands. The majority of these migrants were poor laborers or peasants traveling in the hope of finding a prosperous life in the new country. The Swedish migrants migrated to the new country with minimal economic resources at their disposal and with limited opportunities to decide on their own situation. This article is concerned with the migrants’ representation of their routes in different Swedish newspapers or booklets at the time of their migration. These texts provide insights into the conditions the migrants experienced while traveling to the new country and establishing themselves there, as well as the confinements they experienced when encountering a powerful migration regime linked to the Brazilian government and the migration industry that consisted of agents that organized and administered the travel as well as ex-migrants of Swedish or other Scandinavian origin that offered different kinds of services. The article discusses how the Swedish migrants accounted for their attempts to improve their life-situation while dependent on the migration industry for their survival. However, their strategies also included networking with their friends and neighbors for both community and instrumental reasons. In this perspective, the migrants’ interest in publishing their experiences on the routes fits into their attempts to reclaim social agency and expand their social networks to include the broader Swedish society. One conclusion of the study is that the transatlantic migration of the 1800s seemingly had a resemblance to the current migration from the Global South toward the Global North; the migrants are struggling against exploitation and a powerful migration regime by investing their engagement in a larger social network.

The article demonstrates how large social associations are operating at the locus of a community-making related to the networks of Swedish migrants in Southern Spain. The associations are selectively targeting relatively wealthy older (ethnic) Swedish individuals, offering them a home-like social arena with access to a club equipped with well-known facilities and activities from the Swedish tradition. In addition, these associations offers valuable information and services that ensure their members a comfortable lifestyle in Spain but also facilitates a life with close connection to the Swedish society. In this social space, the Swedish migrants meet, socialise and to some extent, consume, rather than making efforts to participate and becoming integrated in Spanish society. It is also obvious how this environment becomes a hub for maintaining links and societal life with the Swedish society. The article argues that the practices used by the social associations in their mobilisation, are becoming part of a ‘diasporisation’ of Swedes in Southern Spain. It is also argued that these practices are both reflecting assumed needs and requests from the individuals in the migrant networks as well as orientating them into a lifestyle that promotes comfort and transnational links with their country of origin.

This article discusses how migrants from the Middle East are accounting for their successful career pathways as businessperson and academics in the Swedish society. It demonstrates how the stories of these individuals reveal strategies for mobilising the forms of capital that assumes to promote career advancement. It argues that the migrants accentuate a 'middle-class standpoint' with a priority on education; the capital mobilised in their country of origin is 'reinvested' in studies and the making of new contacts in the Swedish society. The article concludes that these stories are significantly shaped by the individuals' professional position and class background but indirectly also by their foreign background. The article also reveals that the conditions set for successful career achievement require individual strategies that pragmatically downplay differences in societies as well as ethnicity and disregard the influence of discrimination.

This article examines the career narratives of entrepreneurs with migrant background in the Swedish business sector. Statistics show that the proportion of individuals with a migrant background who reach so-called top-positions in Swedish society is in general low. Migrants with Iranian background is an exception as many of them have reached high positions as professionals in business corporations and themselves established high-profile businesses in Sweden. Based on in-depth interviews with entrepreneurs and managers with Iranian origin, we will in this article look at how their background is made relevant when reflecting upon professional success and failure. The article is concerned with their exceptional professional achievements and, in particular, the individuals' positioning in relation to their 'society of migration', their society of origin, and the social networks are embedded in as migrants with an Iranian origin. The article shows how narratives of success tend to emphasize the struggles of a 'lonely fighter' while at the same time dismiss discrimination as an explanatory factor. The entrepreneurs' success stories nevertheless focus on how one's career path as innovators and 'agents of social change' is intimately linked with a migrant past and experience.

Artikeln baseras på intervjuer med 32 framgångsrika personer inom affärsvärlden och högskolan som alla invandrat till Sverige från Mellanöstern. Deras berättelser handlar om framgång trots att ursprunget gett dem sämre utgångslägen. De berättar om en uppväxt i samhällen med stor respekt för utbildning och om vikten av att ha ett bra kontaktnät. Detta kapital hade emellertid liten betydelse efter migrationen och en framgångsrik strategi var i stället att pragmatiskt mobilisera nytt kapital i form av ny utbildning, nya nätverk, hårt arbete och kunskap om spelets regler inom respektive profession. Eftersom framgångsrika karriärer på detta sätt ensidigt betingas av villkoren i det nya samhället, blir framgång för migranter beroende av att individerna anlägger en pragmatisk inställning till skillnader mellan samhällen. Detta innebär bland annat att migranter ofta får bortse från olika slags orättvisor och diskriminering.

Hur blir de svenska migranterna i södra Spanien en livsstilsdiaspora? Huvudaktören i denna bok är de stora nordiska sociala föreningarna i södra Spanien och de verksamheter de utvecklar för att främja svenskarnas sammanhållning. Studien visar att föreningarna går i spetsen för en diasporisk mobilisering av en svensk gemenskap. Detta görs genom att erbjuda de svenska migranterna sociala arenor, innehållsrika aktiviteter och service av olika slag. Föreningarna kan på så sätt underlätta migranternas förverkligande av sina livsstilsprojekt samtidigt som de också snitslar en väg in i Spaniensverige. Boken handlar om hur diasporagemenskap görs genom en mobilisering kring livsstilsprojektet där ålder, klass och transnationalitet är viktiga ingredienser.

The focus of this special issue is the migration of North-Europeans to the Spanish coastal areas which are known to be tourist destinations. This is a kind of mobility that most commonly has been conceptualised as Lifestyle Migration (cf. Benson & O’Reilly 2009a, 2009b). The concept of lifestyle migration has been developed and widely employed as a way of thinking about mainly relatively affluent and relatively privileged forms of migration around the world. The authors of this special issue are moving away from the view of Lifestyle Migrants as a distinct category of migrant, and away from an emphasis on fluid migration forms in the context of privilege. Here, instead we focus on the human-being-ness of all migrations, the ubiquitous search for community and belonging, and the work of inhabitance (Ahmed et al 2003: 1). We also draw attention to the new structures or sedimented forms of social life that emerge from this work of inhabitance. And we also draw attention to the lack of actual privilege for some of these supposedly privileged migrants. In this special issue, we explore the processes of settlement, belonging and home-making for Lifestyle Migrants that are evident in all migration trends (Walsh & Näre 2016). We wish to emphasise that, although Lifestyle Migrants have tended to be treated as a specific type or category of migrant, they are indeed migrants, just as refugees, asylum seekers, labour migrants, and returnee migrants are migrants. Similar processes are at play here even though theconditions of migration might differ. The people who moved to the coastal areas of southern Spain as permanent residents, seasonal visitors and long-stayers are as much mobile human beings as a category of Lifestyle Migrants. So, in this special issue, rather than focus on what is unique about Lifestyle Migration, we examine in depth the social life, the community makings and the everyday realities of British and Swedish lifestyle migrants as examples of global and diverse migrations. We hope the debates and empirical evidence presented here will thus contribute to a richer understanding of the processes of migration in the context of diverse conditions. Further, having been often subjected to an emphasis on fluidity, mobility, and flux (e.g., Cohen 2015), the papers in this special issue draw more attention than previously to the sedimented practices and outcomes of these migrations. The work that the migrants put into community, belonging, routines, patterns, and means of coping and living in everyday life leads to new forms of community, new ways of living, and new sedimented practices that, in turn, shape future lives and practices (cf. O’Reilly 2012).

This article demonstrates how large social clubs are operating at the locus of an ethnic community-making of Swedish migrants in Southern Spain. The clubs are selectively targeting the relatively wealthy (ethnic) Swedish individuals of older age, offering them a home-like social arena ‘in Swedish’ in which the mediation of information and services is just one of the ‘guidelines’ the clubs offer to ensure the members a comfortable lifestyle in Spain. In this social space, the Swedish migrants meet, socialise and, to some extent, also consume, rather than participating and integrating in Spanish society. The article argues that the practices used by the social clubs are becoming part of the infrastructure guiding migrants towards a Swedish diasporic lifestyle in Southern Spain.