Låginkomsttagarna: Expertis, politik och mediering i formandet av en ny kategori omkring 1968

This article discusses changing word- and concept-usages after the political radicalisation of the 1960s in Sweden. Following the concept of låginkomsttagare , low-income earner, in mainly newspapers, I show how different meanings were attributed to it by different users in the political spectrum. The theory and method used was inspired by historians like Reinhart Koselleck and Dror Wahrman in their history of concepts. Low-income earner was first used by social scientist and bureaucrats in the state commission "Låginkomstutredningen" (1965–1971), instigated to map the low-income earners in Sweden. These actors, mainly from the political left, described and statistically counted Swedish society according to income-groups, but they also shaped the political debate to give focus to what they described as growing inequalities and a society in social conflict. The concept of låginkomsttagare saw a remarkable career in usage in all sorts of contexts, pointing towards how wide the political radicalisation of the late 1960s spread – the concept became a part of the everyday Swedish vocabulary. However, soon the concept was overtaken and transformed by actors with different political goals in a struggle for the definition of who really were low-income earners. Låginkomsttagare gained a sort of moral status as society’s forgotten social group, and many wanted to claim that they belonged to this group.