Indigenous policies and inequalities in status perceptions between the Sámi and majority populations in Norway and Sweden

Most members of the Indigenous Sámi people live in Norway and Sweden – two countries that allocate quite different levels of self-determination to their respective national Sámi populations. Hence, striking cross-country policy differences can be found in areas such as Sámi self-governance, territorial rights, or Sámi language and education policies. The consequential question is what being addressed by differing policies implies for the Sámi as an Indigenous people. Previous political science research has to a great extent focused on Sámi politics and polity, with particular emphasis on the institutional differences between the Sámi Parliaments and their implications for Sámi self-determination and political integration in the two countries. Since the policy dimension has thus far received less attention, the ramifications of Norwegian and Swedish Sámi policies on their target groups are largely unknown. In this paper I zoom in on the link between Sámi policies and perceptions of political status and social positioning among Norwegian and Swedish Sámi. In reference to seminal works from the policy feedback literature I contrast Norwegian and Swedish policies’ general framing and portrayal of the Sámi as societal groups. I hypothesize that firstly, due to the citizenship messages conveyed by these policies the assessment of their own standing in politics and society should be lower among the Sámi than among the majority populations. Secondly, due to the comparatively less complaisant portrayal in Swedish Sámi policies the differences in status perceptions between the Sámi and majority population should be more pronounced in Sweden than in Norway. For the empirical analysis I use newly collected data from a comparative population survey conducted in Northern Norway and Sweden and contrast responses from participants that self-identify as Sámi with responses from members of the majority populations. The results indicate that there are considerable inequalities in perceptions of political and social status: In both countries Sámi respondents are less satisfied with the way democracy works and with their level of political influence. They are also more likely to have a low perception of their groups’ standing in the overall society and to affirm that they have recently experienced discrimination. Moreover, differences among Sámi and non-Sámi respondents are in most instances more clear-cut in Sweden than in Norway. Contrary to these types of status perceptions hardly any differences – across and within the countries – are found in terms of socioeconomic status perception. This suggests that the drivers behind the inequalities in political and social status perceptions are rather not of socioeconomic nature. Instead, the findings reflect the diverging principles of Norway’s and Sweden’s Sámi policies and the respective levels of self-determination available to the Sámi.