ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines the contours of penal nationalism, grounding it in the sociology of punishment and border criminology, conceptually and empirically. It builds on the key insights of sociology of punishment into penal power: namely, its structural capacity in producing and reproducing political authority and its communicative capacity to classify wrongdoing and membership like no other public authority. Penal nationalism relies on coercive tools such as expulsion, eviction, criminalization, and penalization to respond to mass mobility, which is perceived to be a social threat to order rather than a political expression of rights. Penal nationalism relies on coercive criminal justice tools for nationalistic purposes, particularly welfare state preservation. Sweden has been characterized by its relatively mild penal order and its relatively open approach to refugees and migration control. Penal nationalism made the border closing possible as it gave the government the tools, means, symbolic and material power of the criminal justice to make it happen and give it legitimacy.
