Earlier this month, Swedish Minister of Finance Magdalena Andersson delivered her maiden speech as head of the Swedish Social Democratic Party and thus, the presumptive successor to longtime Prime Minister Stefan Lofven. Andersson began, predictably enough, by celebrating the triumph of the Swedish welfare state over the neoliberalism of the “grinning bankers on Wall Street”. Then, in a turn that shocked some loyal party members, Andersson directly addressed the country’s 2 million-odd refugees and migrants.
“If you are young,” she said, “you must obtain a high school diploma and go on to get a job or higher education.” If you receive financial aid from the state, “you must learn Swedish and work a certain number of hours a week.” What’s more, “here in Sweden, both men and women work and contribute to welfare.” Swedish gender equality applies “no matter what fathers, mothers, spouses, or brothers think and feel.”
In 2015, Swedes took immense pride in the country’s decision to accept 163,000 refugees, most from Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan. “My Europe takes in refugees,” Lofven said at the time. “My Europe doesn’t build walls.” That was the heroic rhetoric of an all-but-vanished Sweden. The Social Democrats now deploy the harsh language only far-right nativists of the Sweden Democrats party used in 2015. Indeed, a social democratic organ recently noted with satisfaction that since “all major parties today stand for a restrictive migration policy with a strong focus on law and order”, the refugee issue is no longer a political liability.
Five years ago, I wrote a long article about the tide of refugees arriving in Sweden with the inflammatory title (which I was not consulted on) “The Death of the Most Generous Nation on Earth”. Sweden plainly hasn’t died since then, and last week, I contacted many of the people I spoke to then with the expectation of issuing a mea culpa and acknowledging that social democracies have more resilience than I was prepared to acknowledge.
I was, it turned out, wrong about being wrong.
Sweden had opened itself to the desperate people fleeing Middle Eastern civil wars and tyranny not because, like Germany, it had a terrible sin to expiate but rather out of a sense of universal moral obligation. Their Europe did not build walls. But, of course, the actual Europe of 2015 did just that, leaving very few countries — above all, Germany and Sweden — to bear the burden of what I then called “unshared idealism.”
Nevertheless, Sweden’s leaders, like Germany’s, were prepared to shoulder that burden. Loyal social democrats, I found, were confident, almost complacent, about Sweden’s ability to integrate vast numbers of barely literate Afghan children and deeply pious and conservative Syrians, just as they had with cosmopolitan Bosnians and Iranians in past years. “A strong state can take care of many things,” the head of Sweden’s Left Party reassured me.
Swedes have learned since 2015 that even the most benevolent state has its limits. In recent years, the country has suffered from soaring crime rates. According to a report by the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention, over the last 20 years, Sweden has gone from having one of the lowest to one of the highest levels of gun violence in Europe — worse than Italy or eastern Europe. “The increase in gun homicide in Sweden is closely linked to criminal milieux in socially disadvantaged areas,” the report said.
Gangs — whose members are second-generation immigrants, many from Somalia, Eritrea, Morocco, and elsewhere in North Africa — specialize in drug trafficking and the use of explosives. Crime has become the number one issue in Sweden; before she said a word about migration, Andersson boasted that her party added 7000 new police officers, built more prisons, and drafted laws creating 30 new crimes. She decried “those who claim that it is certain cultures, certain languages, certain religions that make people more likely to commit crimes” — yet her own government has substantiated those claims.
It’s hardly surprising that newcomers lag behind Swedes on every index of well-being, but the gap is very large. In a recent book, Mass Challenge: The Socioeconomic Impact of Migration to a Scandinavian Welfare State, Tino Sanandaji, an economist of Kurdish origin who has become a leading critic of Sweden’s migration policies, writes “foreign-born represent 53% of individuals with long prison sentences, 58% of the unemployed, and receive 65% of social welfare expenditures; 77% of Sweden’s child poverty is present in households with a foreign background, while 90% of suspects in public shootings have immigrant backgrounds.” Figures like these have become widely known; the number of Swedes who favor increased migration has dropped from 58% in 2015 to 40% today.
Sweden is no longer a welcoming country and does not wish to be seen as one. In June 2016, the country revised its longstanding policy to deny refugees permanent asylum; those admitted were given temporary permits of either three months or three years, figures dictated by the minimum permissible under European Union rules. The law was meant to be a temporary response to the crisis of the previous fall, when the country literally ran out of places to put asylum-seekers; it has since been renewed.
Last year, the country accepted only 13,000 refugees, the lowest number in 30 years. A recent study written by a senior Swedish migration official concludes that Norway and Denmark, both notoriously inhospitable to refugees, are “increasingly seen as positive examples of how to deal with refugees and international migration”.
Social Democrats are hardly alone in their shift to the right. The center-right Moderate Party now works with the Sweden Democrats on migration issues, though they are not formally affiliated. Diana Janse, a diplomat and former government official who is running for Parliament as a moderate, complains the ruling party has kept the Sweden Democrats at the margins of Swedish politics by what she calls “brown-smearing — labeling party members as fascists or ‘Brownshirts.’” Janse held a much less sympathetic view of the right-wing party when we spoke six years ago. The Sweden Democrats have held steady at around 20 percent in polls and in Parliament; the number almost certainly would have grown had many factions in the center of the spectrum not adopt the party’s rhetoric on migration. “What was extreme in 2015 is mainstream today,” Janse put it.
The abandonment of old ideals is profoundly dismaying to Sweden’s progressives. Lisa Pelling, head of research at the Arena Ide think tank in Stockholm, conceded “we’ve definitely seen a repressive turn in political language” as well as in policy. Pelling acknowledged — which she did not in 2015 — that “there was a need to do something” to stem the immense refugee flow but believes the restrictions should have been allowed to lapse once that tide receded. She pointed out that temporary permits — even if renewed, as they normally are — often prevent asylum-seekers from receiving the kind of long-term vocational training they need to enter the labor market.
That is hardly the only impediment to work: Sweden also lacks the extraordinary conveyer belt that carries newcomers in Germany from language programs to vocational training to internships to jobs. Perhaps the state needs to be stronger, but the Swedes have run out of generosity on that front. It’s not hard to sympathise: In 2016, the country spent a stupefying US$6 billion on refugees — more than 5% of its total budget.
That inflammatory headline was not quite as hyperbolic as I thought. Of course, Sweden remains an enormously prosperous, relatively egalitarian, and quite safe country. It is rather some deep Swedish impulse that has died. Sweden asked too much of itself. Over the last 20 years, an ancient and homogeneous culture subjected itself — without any prior intention or even public debate — to a demographic transformation of breathtaking proportions.
The United States slammed the gates of immigration shut in 1924 when the percentage of foreign-born citizens reached about 15%. That figure in Sweden is now 20%; and thanks to ongoing labor migration and family reunification, the number of migrants continues to grow every year by about 100,000 people (or almost 1% of the population). Virtually all of these migrants come from societies radically different from Sweden — less educated, less secular. In response, Sweden didn’t “die.” It changed cherished values to survive.
Sweden is Europe writ large. The European Union responded to growing backlash against the arrival of more than a million migrants in the late summer and early fall of 2015 by reaching a deal with Turkey in 2016 to prevent refugees from crossing into Europe. That solved the political problem without addressing the underlying humanitarian crisis. Since then, Europe has tried, not very effectually, to help African and Middle Eastern nations that now host the overwhelming majority of those who have fled from violence and repression in the region.
The current standoff at the edge of the continent, in which Belarus has sought to blackmail Europe by sending refugees from all over the world into Poland and Lithuania, has been all too telling: EU leaders have voiced full support for Poland’s brutal response, even if it leaves thousands of helpless people exposed to freezing temperatures in forests near the Polish-Belarusian border. No one has suggested vetting their claims of persecution for fear that tens of thousands more would come.
In any case, Europe will not serve as the sanctuary of the world’s 70 million refugees and displaced people; the great bulk of those people must be settled closer to home, though wealthy countries will have to foot most of the cost of offering them a decent life.
Democratic societies do not rest on the abstract principles expressed in their founding documents. They rest — as Americans have now learned, to their great chagrin — on the collective beliefs of their own citizens. Abstract principles exercise a strong hold, but lived experience can unmoor people even from values deemed sacred. It falls to leaders not simply to remind people of those values but to curb, harness, and reshape the forces that most deeply threaten democratic principles.
Perhaps we need a new global rule or two. You know, something along the lines of 1) you colonise, rapaciously take resources from and grow rich off the backs of your colonies, you take refugees and migrants from them, no excuses; and 2) you invade and control a land for military purposes (essentially act as an occupier), you take refugees and migrants from that (those) country (counties). We could even link (2) to the length of occupation (so, for example, the US, UK and Australia would take Iraqis for 8 years – no excuses; the US, and NATO and others for 20 years from Afghanistan). That may help redress historical imbalances and crimes, and help focus the minds of war-keen governments on the long term impact of their blood-rush antics.
maybe some help, but two of the main sources of refugees in Australia are Iran and Sri Lanka – what do we owe them?
Postprandial guilt?
Or the Morning After?
This is such a fraught area, with no easy solutions. (It annoys me that cases like ‘the Biloela family’ get so much attention, as if being more lenient on a few media-friendly cases would solve the problem of tens of millions of legitimate refugees).
Yes, adapting to an aleien culture is hard. The older, less-educated and more culturally different you are, the harder it is – yet these are the people in the most desperate situation. And no matter how many refugees are resettled in rich countries, no matter how carefully helped to integrate they are, that will never be a solution for the huge numbers in need.
The Biloela B/S has done more to cruel intelligent discussion than anything the IPA brain trust could have propagated.
When emotion becomes dominant in public discourse, it is guaranteed to be all downhill thereafter.
The parents’ asylum claims, separately & together, have failed ever evaluation and adjudication process but they went ahead a married, had children (who are not anchor babies thanks to a 1984 Hawke government law change) and now are playing on the heartstrings rather than brains of the general populace – or being played by those with ulterior motives.
Long live Crikey. A thoughtful article about a country that did migration differently, plus respectful and constructive contributions in comments.
Would it be wrong for us to preference refugees who can fit in relatively easily? Sweden had success with cosmopolitan Bosnians and Iranians. There are refugees from Afghanistan who are educated and cosmopolitan, would it be wrong to rescue them first?
Former head of the ADF Chris Barrie made a heartfelt plea to rescue the women and girls of Kabul, who thought they were safe and could study and work. We have a special moral responsibility to countries where we have been at war.
I would advocate that ONLY women & girls be fast tracked for entry – no matter their antecedents.
How to ensure that they are adequately assimilated before they start applying for male family reunification?
Taking a cultures women away to sleep with foreigners (because who else are they going to marry?) would be a PR and diplomatic disaster, let alone humanitarian disaster.
Who mentioned ‘taking’?
Try “offering haven” – from their barbarous compatriots.
Highly educated people always settle much more easily. But they aren’t always the one who are refugees who need a new home.
More articles like this that can present both sides of an issue, and I’d be willing to renew my subscription.
It is a conundrum, and a confronting one. I remember thinking at the time that they had their work cut out for them. I have always had this struggle with myself, knowing that there are several countries I love visiting, but one of the reasons they are so attractive is that they are monocultural. Japan is another obvious one that springs to mind.
What this article brings home, and briefly alludes to, is that the issue of refugees is a global one and demands a global, bi-partisan, compassionate approach. People are dying on the sea. They are living pointless lives with no hope in hellholes called refugee camps. Children are growing up knowing no home and having no country to call their own. And we have so much.
Let’s be clear, refugee movements over the past couple of decades are not about people trying to get in the book door. We are in one of the great mass migrations that happen throughout human history. The difference between this and earlier mass migrations is that we now have sovereign states and hard borders. But these migrations happen for a reason. People don’t willingly leave their people and the land they know. The world has to come to grips with this, and work out a way that people can live safely and with homes, food, healthcare, and education in their own countries. To tell them they are not welcome in our countries, and then flaunt our wealth in front of them is simply obscene. We took the wealth from their countries, and used it to build our own. Time to give it back.
Millions of people have willingly left their people and the land they know, my forbears included and probably yours too.
And your point is?
Disputing this:
People don’t willingly leave their people and the land they know.
Just because people leave of their own accord doesn’t mean they leave willingly. Very few people do. Pretty sure my forebears didn’t, and that few in the past did.
Who about the huge number of recent migrants from India, China etc? They chose to come because they thought their life would be better.
We didn’t cause some of the problems. We caused all of them. When I say ‘we’ I mean our countries and the countries which we come from historically. We stole their wealth, and we continue to do so. We redrew their boundaries, we killed them, we imprisoned them, we installed puppet governments, we encouraged civil and inter country wars. All so we could steal their resources and create wealth. It is not your supposed ‘freedom’ that creates wealth. It is bloody murder and thriving and butchering of whole populations, and then leaving them so impoverished they struggle to recover.
Of course, were it otherwise and the countries we come from had never been colonisers, had never done any of those things, maybe we would still be rich and they would still be poor. But we can’t know that, and we have to work with what we do know. And what we do know is that colonisation was a disaster for the colonised which resonates to this day.
I could not agree more with you Camille. I know that around these parts at Crikey you are likely to encounter opposition to views such as those you have expressed but I am more than happy to support you 110%.
Congratulations on having the courage to express those views!!!!
Just say Australia becomes inhabitable due to climate change and we are all forced to seek refuge in other countries. Just say you are offered protection by a culturally different country, say, Turkey: are you prepared to become fluent in Turkish and become a Muslim? And how do you learn Turkish if the availability of language programs is limited? How do you get a job and support yourself if you can’t speak the language? And what if Turkey expects you to cast aside your language and culture and just embrace Turkish culture? And criticises you for not being Turkish enough? What do you imagine your life will be like? ( not suggesting Turkey would actually act like this)
May I be so bold as to reply to your post JMNO?
Let’s accept your scenario. If I was offered protection in Turkey (perish the thought but I will go along with your example) as a result of Australia becoming uninhabitable, yes I would be prepared to become fluent in Turkish (that would be one of my first priorities). I would only hope that the Turkish government would provide the same opportunities for me to learn the local language as the Australian Government has provided for immigrants to this country (many free hours of tuition). I don’t know why you make the snide and indirect suggestion that opportunities here are limited for migrants to learn English. Perhaps that view suits your political ideology. I have known immigrants who have attended these classes and I have a close relative who is a teacher in a state run facility that provides English language courses for migrants for free.
I have just this minute, consulted one of my close immigrant friends who advises me in no uncertain terms that access to these classes here in Australia is easy and free. I was informed by this impeccable source that learning the language itself may be difficult, especially for older people.
You are setting up a ‘straw-man’ with your (presumably rhetorical) question:
“How do you get a job and support yourself if you can’t speak the language?”
Answer – you take the time and trouble to learn the language. (Gosh, who would have thought!)
Then JMNO it gets worse.
“And what if Turkey expects you to cast aside your language and culture and just embrace Turkish culture?”
JMNO, if I had decided to settle down in Turkey and make the place my permanent home then I would embrace Turkish culture.
And JMNO, where is the expectation (from the Australian government is what you are clearly really getting at) for anyone to “cast aside their language”? That is quite different to the very reasonable expectation that you learn the local language. Also, JMNO in Australia we still have the idiocy of ‘multiculturalism’, which, as I understand it, means that you can come here and live in an enclave and not be expected to speak or understand any English, or acquire any understanding of the local culture.
JMNO I think that you have a rather jaded view of Australia. Perhaps you need to get out a bit more.
I am glad you would make the effort.
However multilculturalism doesn’t mean living in an enclave and not be expected to learn or speak English.
It has been defined differently over time, but the guiding principles were first laid out in the Globally Report in 1978:
‘(a) all members of our society must have equal opportunity to realise their full potential and must have equal access to programs and services;
(b) every person should be able to maintain his or her culture without prejudice or disadvantage and should be encouraged to understand and embrace other cultures;
(c) needs of migrants should, in general, be met by programs and services available to the whole community but special services and programs are necessary at present to ensure equality of access and provision;
(d) services and programs should be designed and operated in full consultation with clients, and self-help should be encouraged as much as possible with a view to helping migrants to become self-reliant quickly.’
I know many people who attend English language classes. I volunteer at a place where they are taught. But for people who come as adults, who aren’t well educated, women who are denied an education in their home country, those who don’t have the opportunity to mix with English speakers in their day-to-day life, becoming fluent in English is quite difficult.
Perhaps my attempt at readers putting themselves in the place of other people wasn’t very successful but I do hear a lot of people saying ‘why don’t they make an effort to become like us’, whereas there are a lot of obstacles to that happening.
I have also helped refugees and migrants look for work and it has become a lot more difficult. Employers go through labor hire companies and contractors and want people who already have skills and local experience, unwilling to take people who might need training. Or in a lot of cases they want the temporary migrants to whom they can offer inferior conditions of employment. It is quite hard to break into the labour market,even at the semi and unskilled level for people who don’t already have contacts.
Thanks for your very fair reply too, JMNO. I accept your comments. I also congratulate you on your work with migrants.
Your comments about adults who come here, who are not well educated and women who have been denied an education in their own country, are consistent with those I hear from my close relative who teaches English to migrants. Some of the stories I hear from my relative are quite sad and disturbing.
I also very much share your concerns about employers who only wish to exploit migrant workers. But we live in a capitalist system and in that regard, I expect this to be the norm rather than the exception.
Dole is around $45 pd and min wage is supposed to be around $25. Two hours a day is not a lot of work!!!
I hate to break it to you but a lot of people who come as refugees are the ones doing the low-paid and insecure works as security guards, aged care workers and cleaners. You can’t live on Centrelink even when in public housing.
The point is the work is insecure and not enough to live on. Some end up still getting some Centrelink whilst also working that is how little they get paid. Shifts get arbitrarily cut and people can’t pay their rent.
All those aged care workers, security guards that came to everyone’s attention during COVID – work for three different employers or an agency, no sick pay, no holiday pay.
Agree, too many Australians have been drawn back into the old chestnuts derived from the eugenics movement of native exceptionalism, fixation on language, borders, national sovereignty etc., promoted by legacy media, bipartisan bigotry and niche NGOs’ all in aid of promoting nostalgia for an old white Oz when everything was perfect…….
By the way, there is no such ethnicity as Turkish, while significant minorities in Turkey speak Turkish as a second language i.e. Kurdish, Arab, Laz etc, and often not very well…..
The conundrum you raise is correct, but more correct than you realise. It’s not just white christian societies that want to protect their culture from outside influences, most societies do it. Tibetans vs chinese, fijians vs indians, japanese vs koreans. Hindus vs muslims etc. Trying to paint this as a specific character trait of white Christian societies stops us understanding the issues and finding workable solutions. We need migrants for our own parochial goals, they want to immigrate so let’s find a sustainable way to make it work.
One of the best techniques practiced in guru busting was to take the besotted & deluded, in all their khadi finery, beads & holy charms for a walk along the Promenade from the Gateway of India triumphal arch along the foreshore until they break down sobbing, having been refused antry to the many ‘Caste Hindu Only’ bathing spots.