The concept of poor, rural people living in trailer parks in North America has always struck me as somewhat wildly romantic, reminiscent of pioneer wagon life; although I am sure it’s not.
The term “Trailer Trash” is one of those wonderfully succinct, but cruel terms the English language has so many of. I’m afraid we have nothing similar in Sweden, but we do, of course, have people living at the lower end of the demographic curve.
It’s usually not possible to tell them apart from the middle class though. They speak the same way, dress the same way, and even live in similar buildings.
Here, this is low demographics in Sweden; government funded apartments:
You can sometimes tell by the kinds of cars they drive, what shape they are in, and that they’ve got plenty of them standing around in the yard if it’s in the countryside that you are looking at someone who isn’t doing so well, but that’s pretty much it:
They will often drive ancient Volvos and Saabs, because used spare parts are easily available. More recently, that segment of the population goes for Saab cars from this side of the year 2000, because they are dirt cheap now, though for good reason (they’ve been “opeled” to death and don’t really work like proper Saabs used to):
There isn’t really anything typical that people like that do, as it might be the case elsewhere.
Not like Australia’s “Bogans” or Great Britain’s working class with their trademark accents and tattoos (although people do have tattoos here, and they are usually not typical for successful neuro surgeons or lawyers).
I know some people like that around the countryside, because my wife likes to go to second hand shops on farms, and you often meet that segment of the population there, hunting for treasures. Other than a sometimes physically obvious love of fast food, I wouldn’t know how to point out a member of that class.
0 Comments