I have dual citizenship, in Sweden and Great Britain. But I only became a Swedish citizen 19 months ago, in October 2017. In the Swedish general election of 2014, the far right-wing Sweden Democrats did even better than in 2010, when they entered parliament for the first time. As I was not a Swedish citizen in 2014, I couldn’t vote in the general election, which was a pity. During that autumn, there was the risk of a new election and that was when I decided to apply for Swedish citizenship. I felt the need to have my say and add my vote. But the Social Democratic leader Stefan Löfven reached an agreement with the right-wing Alliance and avoided a new election. Basically, the pressure was off and Swedish citizenship no longer felt desperately urgent.
Then came the referendum in the UK and later, the decision to leave the EU – and that was it. I didn’t send in my citizenship application immediately but got around to it after the summer of 2017. I did not want to be forced to leave Europe. The application process was much easier than I expected. I should have known it would be easy as we mostly don’t do bureaucracy here. So I filled in the application online, paid the fee, sent them my passport and it was fixed. I think it took a month, then I had my certificate of citizenship. It was pretty exciting and I had the certificate hanging on my wall at work for about a year. Champagne!
At the general election in September 2018 me and my family (daughter voting for the first time) went to the local school in Kungsgården to vote. Doing that together was also worth celebrating, even though the election result was crap and chaos reigned for months. I’m anyway grateful to be living in a democratic country. I only hope that people use their democratic right to vote to keep this country democratic.
Circus Games is a song by Scottish band Skids, from the album The Absolute Game (1980). An old favourite.