Bromma flygplats och kampen om marken - En studie av diskurser och problemformuleringar

Sammanfattning

In recent years, the future of Bromma Airport in Stockholm has become a recurring and contested issue in Swedish public debate, shaped by shifting political priorities, climate ambitions and urban development needs. This thesis examines how Bromma Airport is problematized in Swedish public documents, which competing actors and discourses can be identified and how are arguments for and against closure of the airport legitimized and delegitimized? To answer this, the thesis applies Carol Bacchi’s What’s the Problem Represented to be? (WPR) approach as its theoretical and analytical framework. The empirical material consists of municipal documents, media- and debatearticles. A qualitative document analysis is combined with a discourse-oriented interpretation of how actors frame the issue. The analysis identifies four dominant discourses that shape the construction of Bromma as a policy problem, a climate discourse, economic discourse, capacity and infrastructure discourse and a governance and legitimacy discourse. These discourses construct competing understandings of what the problem is, and they legitimize or delegitimize closure of the airport through different normative strategic claims. The thesis contributes to existing research by offering a contemporary discourse analysis that examines how Bromma is problematized rather than discussing whether it should close or not.