Logo: to the web site of the Swedish Defence University

The Swedish Armed Forces aim to reflect Swedish society, including its ethnical composition. Despite these ambitions and the fact that non-native Swedes are overrepresented among unemployed Swedes, recruitment is over all slow. Perhaps the Swedish Armed Forces know too little about what motivates this potential group of recruits? And perhaps the recruitment process is discriminating against non-native Swedes? This essay aims to answer what attracts foreign born citizens to join the military and what makes them stay in the service. The research methodology includes interviews and surveys of immigrants. The results of these interviews and surveys are subsequently analysed and viewed through the perspective of military sociologist Fabrizio Battistellis’ theory about soldiers' incentives. According to Battistelli, three types of incentives exist: the paleomodern, the modern and the postmodern. His own study, Peacekeeping and the Postmodern Soldier, determined Italian solders primarily enlisted for postmodern incentives. Swedish scholars has found that the same pattern applies to Swedish military personnel. But how about the non-native Swedes? This study shows that predominantly modern incentives attract non-native Swedes to join the military, and mainly paleomodern incentives make them stay within it.  However, while Swedish soldiers seem to be driven by postmodern incentives, immigrants are not influenced by these in any noticeable way. Instead the study’s results indicate that there are further categories of motives affecting the non-native Swedes, namely contextual and cultural incentives.