Narrativizing (and laughing) spatial identities together in Meänkieli-speaking minorities

•Humor is a creative way to make sense of, produce and contest socio-spatial relations.•For linguistic minorities humor functions as a means to contest hegemonic discourses.•Laughter is a narrative method for approaching spatial identities.•Meänkieli-speaking minorities utilize humor in their language revitalization work.

This paper scrutinizes how the Meänkieli-speaking minority in The Torne Valley, northern Sweden, use humor in the process of narrativizing their shifting spatial identities, as well as in maintaining and contesting prevailing power relations. A great deal of the research focusing on the social and political nature of humor, and its geographical dimensions, has concerned the humor directed at ethnic and national minorities, with minority groups typically being approached as targets of laughter. However, less interest has been paid to how minorities use and experience humor in their everyday lives and environments. Humor is approached here as an integral part of how people make sense of culture and society in a creative manner and cope with and challenge subordinating power-relations and social inequality. In terms of methodology, laughing together operates as a (research) approach through which spatial identities of linguistic minorities can be renegotiated. The study is based on group discussions held with local culture workers and activists between September 2015 and February 2016 in Swedish Torne Valley. The paper produces new theoretical and empirical knowledge concerning how humor is used in a creative manner to make sense of, produce and contest socio-spatial relations.