ABSTRACT
Building on a regional approach to race and racism, this chapter identifies both the specificities of the Nordic region and its relation to the broader European trajectories in terms of colonialism and racism. It develops the concept ‘racial nordicisation’ and outlines its main elements. These include notions of the Nordic countries as ‘innocent’ outsiders to colonialism and racism, and assumptions of welfare state egalitarianism and gender equality as markers of superiority. The chapter identifies racial politics as the central force in shaping racial formations. It ends with a discussion of postethnic activism as an internally differentiated and multiple field of political struggle and organising, through which political subjectivity and notions of the common are produced.
