Undesireable Citizens: Education, Care and Control of the "Feeble-minded" in the Swedish Province of Malmöhus, 1900–1950

Abstract

This paper contains the main results of a recently completed historical research project about the situation of persons categorized as “feeble-minded” in Sweden. In this study, the case of Malmöhus province constitutes the micro-historical core. Here, educational and care institutions such as schools, asylums and working homes were particularly established in the first half of the 20th century. The motives behind these foundations will be discussed and the working routines in those institutions will be analysed in terms of teaching and after-care of the inmates and their exclusion justified by social constructs such as “uneducable” or “moral imbecile”. This paper aims at demonstrating how feeble-mindedness was perceived as a social problem, and how close the efforts of education and care were connected to eugenic ideology and control. Thereby, the history of the feeble-minded will be interpreted as a striking example of the contradictions of modernity. The coincidence of social inclusion and exclusion was a characteristic of the situation of an undesirable group of citizens in the Swedish society under the era of modernization. This outcome is of high relevance for understanding the early historical development of the Nordic welfare state.