3 - Sweden: Remedies with Limited Legal Recognition of Responsibility

Summary

This chapter analyses the Swedish sterilisation laws of 1934 and 1941, castration law of 1944 and sterilisation precondition in the gender recognition act of 1972. More specifically, it considers their establishment, abolition and partial remedy. Exploring both written sources and interviews, the chapter uncovers the processes leading to the compensation acts of 1999 and 2018, and how (particularly trans) victims have mobilised for, and accessed, remedies. The chapter discloses an underlying tension between the limited legal admission of responsibility and the remedies established as ex gratia compensation schemes. It compares the unequal remedies given to each different victim group against their diverging degree of mobilisation. In order to understand their dissimilar recognition and redress, the chapter analyses how grievances have formed and been individually, collectively, publicly and/or institutionally recognised for the different groups. In doing so, it illustrates how the victims’ claims have aligned with a master frame of rights and achieved legal and socio-cultural resonance to diverging degrees