This chapter reviews a period of tumultuous structural change and new sociocultural conditions in Sweden. It begins with the paradigmatic shift of the 1980s away from the Keynesian–corporatist–Fordist epoch and looks at the reinvention of the notion of the not-for-profit ‘social economy’ sector in a Swedish context. Through several cases of different immigrant groups and the ‘host’ population, the chapter explores the relevance and applicability of these changes for individuals at risk.

The cases portray some dramatic shifts in Swedish history. The lives of some began between the 1950s and 1970s, when both society and the workplace appeared monocultural, and political and organisational messages were rather confident. These cases show that the 1990s brought a fragmentation of messages, and even a lack of belief in coherent ideologies. The development of opportunities for individuals from a range of age groups and ethnic backgrounds in the social economy (the non-profit enterprise sector) are also considered, together with their backgrounds in a number of key Swedish firms.

A common argument in current social policy in Sweden is that, in certain more advanced branches of the economy, linguistic barriers represent powerful and genuine barriers to cross-cultural participation. At the same time, ‘cultural excuses’ are often deployed as a reason for excluding immigrants, so that they meet ‘glass ceilings and doors’ that are not necessary. This chapter explores varying strategies of members of immigrant groups in overcoming such obstacles.

Post-Fordism and the welfare state model

Corporatism can be briefly defined as a regime under which corporations on the one hand and trade unions on the other moved from one collective settlement to another with the support of the state as the ‘third party’. The apogee of corporatism in modern democratic society (with Sweden as the most developed model) coincided with the age of Keynesianism and Fordism – the standardisation of mass production for mass consumption.

The post-1980 period represented something both new and old. Previous collective settlements were replaced by individualised contracts between employer and employee. Fordism became post-Fordism when flexibility and flexible specialisation were substituted for standardised mass production in the ‘imperial centre’ of ‘the West’, and when – under the impact of intensifying International Monetary Fund/World Trade Organisation structural adjustments for outside the imperial centre – the national markets and resources of non-Western societies were increasingly forced open as locations for more profitable material extraction and/or industrial production.