From Religious to Ethno-Religious: Identity Change Among Assyrians/Syriacs in Sweden

This paper examines identity changes in a migration context by focusing upon a Middle Eastern Christian community in Sweden known as Assyrians/Syriacs. Originating from the lands of contemporary Iraq, Iran, Turkey, Syria and Lebanon and belonging to several Middle Eastern Christian denominations, Assyrians/Syriacs first settled in Sweden in the late 1960s, and soon transformed one of the country's cities – Södertälje – into their unofficial capital. From having a primarily religious identity for centuries, it is argued that the promotion of the term ‘Assyrian’ by Western missionaries in the nineteenth century led to the development of an ethno-religious identity. The dual name used in Sweden indicates a disagreement over identity amongst elite members in this community. Instigated by both the Syriac Orthodox Church and some powerful families from Turkey (lay elites), the Swedish community split into ‘Assyrier’ and ‘Syrianer’ factions. Scholars have characterised this division as the Assyrian modernist and secularist interpretation in competition with the Syriac traditionalist and religious understanding of the community (Gaunt, 2010). Focusing primarily on a micro level, this paper will analyse the role of the actors involved in constructing the Assyrian/Syriac identity in Sweden, the methods used in achieving their goals, the relations and reactions between the two groups, the role of the media and banal nationalism (Anderson, 1983; Billig, 1995; Castells, 2000), arguing that an ethno-religious identity has been constructed by elite actors within this community. The research is based on the findings from two electronic surveys (2010, 2014) and fieldwork (30 semi-structured interviews with actively involved community members in addition to participant observation) conducted in Spring 2014 in Stockholm and Södertälje as part of the HERA (EU) funded Defining and Identifying Middle Eastern Christian Communities in Europe project, which compares the migrant experiences of Middle Eastern Christians in the UK, Denmark and Sweden.