The Swedish social democratic welfare state seems to be the result of some unique historical set of circumstances. A vital condition seems to be that reform instead of revolution became the king’s way to changing society. In practice this meant that a certain set of problematizationswere put to use which pointed toward the welfare state as a political solution. My interest here is how the welfare state was opened as a political arena. For Vanessa Barker the social democratic welfare state is not the solution to “(…) a more just and equal penal order” (2013, p. 21). On the contrary, due to ethno-nationalism and weak constitutional traditions regarding individual rights, the Swedish welfare state has a tendency toward repressiveness against individuals deemed as “others.”