| Summary: | The issue of civic integration and requirements for citizenship has been a far-reaching debate that has taken place in the Swedish political context for several years. From the Liberals’ pioneering proposal for a language test for immigrants in 2002, the issue has 19 years later moved towards an increasing consensus that today finds majority support in the Swedish parliament. Although the proposal seems to contribute to greater integration, there are many critical approaches to analyse. The question that arises is whether these types of proposals, through their discursive design, create conditions that actually support integration or instead induce discrimination and exclusion of certain groups. The purpose of this thesis is twofold. One aim is to critically examine and analyse the political proposal on language- and civic knowledge for Swedish citizenship by looking at government documents and motions from Sweden's opposition parties. The thesis examines whether racist discourses are reproduced or maintained by analysing the proposal to review further how it is legitimised. The secondary purpose will be to problematise how such a proposal can affect the right to citizenship based on the risks of discrimination and exclusion. This is done by guidance from Fairclough's three- dimensional model, whose method allows to examine the textual structure, the discursive and social practice of the given material. The theoretical framework evolved from theories that sufficiently understand how civic requirements can be understood based on different exclusion mechanisms. The essay concludes that the proposal raises issues of human rights, that the state legitimises the proposal through discursive means and that there are tendencies that reproduce racist discourses.
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