ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how women and families from different minority ethnic backgrounds are treated within the Swedish welfare state by focusing on a space in which the Swedish welfare state meets migrant families in very powerful ways: the delivery room. It begins with a short overview of the Swedish health care system and the Swedish immigration regime, with a particular focus on the changes that have occurred since the 1990s. The sociological racialization of Western narratives about 'us' and 'them' is enacted, among other things, through a very clear and evident distribution wherein 'normal families' are studied within sociology and 'other families' are placed within the framework of social work or anthropology. The provision of childcare and maternity leave, as well as the high degree of women in the labour market, education and the political sphere, are, despite their limitations, vital achievements from a postcolonial feminist perspective.
