Multicultural Ideology and Transnational Family Ties among Descendants of Cape Verdeans in Sweden

This article explores the relationship between the dominant Swedish multicultural ideology and second-generation Swedish-Cape Verdeans' perceptions of their transnational family relations. It examines how young Swedish-Cape Verdeans use their kinship relations to carve out an identity and sense of belonging that is reconcilable with Swedish multicultural ideology, and how the racist speech and xenophobic rejection they experience fuels their desire to create a transnational belonging. In Swedish public discourse, proper integration entails 'preserving one's culture' while simultaneously achieving socio-economic assimilation, especially in the labour market. Thus, official Swedish multicultural ideology, and its translation into popular understandings of 'culture' and 'origin', affect how the young Swedish-Cape Verdeans relate to their transnational kin, and to the more blatant discrimination.