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Article published In:
Journal of Language and Politics
Vol. 20:2 (2021) ► pp.254–276

The legitimization of the use of sweat shops by H&M in the Swedish press

| Örebro University , Sweden
ORCID logo | Zhejiang University , China

In the Swedish news-media we find sporadic critical, or reflective, reporting on the production conditions of Swedish ‘sweat-shop’ factories in the Global South, used to supply Transnational Corporations (TNCs). In this paper we carry out a critical discourse analysis, in particular using Van Leeuwen’s social actor and social action analysis, to look at examples from a larger corpus of 88 news reports and editorials from the Swedish press, between 2012–2017, which report and comment on activities of the Swedish company H&M in relation to its production chains. Analysis reveals how these recontextualize events, processes and motives, to represent Sweden and Swedish TNCs as characterized by a benevolent, democratic, humane, form of capitalism, drawing on discourses of a former social democratic Sweden of the 1960s before it became highly neo-liberalized. This nationalism converges with other discourses promoting the exploitation of the Global South.

Keywords: Sweden, nationalism, transnational corporations, sweatshops, fashion industry, working conditions, news
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Global supply chains and exploitation of workers
  • 3.H&M and its global suppliers
  • 4.The news media and reporting the Global South
  • 5.Theory and methods
  • 6.Analysis
    • 6.1Article 1: ‘Exporting Trade-union rights – H&M and IF Metall want to fight bad working conditions in Cambodian factories’ (SvenskaDagbladet, 23/10/2012)
      • 6.1.1How the participants are represented
        • 6.1.1.1The Swedish participants
        • 6.1.1.2Chinese and other participants
      • 6.1.2What the participants are represented as doing
        • 6.1.2.1What the Swedish participants are doing
        • 6.1.2.2What the factory owners/bosses are doing
        • 6.1.2.3What the workers are doing
    • 6.2Article 2: Now it’s the time for Africa (Sydsvenskan 27/7/2013)
      • 6.2.1The participants in the report
      • 6.2.2What are these participants doing?
  • 7.Conclusion
  • References
Published online: 10 November 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/jlp.20015.cot
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