> Those on the right largely blame immigration, which has added 2mn people to the country in recent decades. Those on the left point to social factors, including the privatisation of Sweden’s welfare system which has led to worse services in deprived areas.
Probably both things are true.
When countries take in large amounts of immigration, their generous welfare systems can become stressed.
I thought that I play with is that the internet is also partially to blame – hear me out.
In pre-internet times, immigrants faced the prospect of limited social contact unless they integrated with their communities. Alternatives to this was the formation of a cultural community such as a "little italy", "china town", or even a ghetto. However integration on some level would still be needed.
It's logical to believe that governments got a good idea of how many people they can import from each country while still maintaining a high level of integration.
Now enter the internet - it's now easy to stay connected with our cultural peers, function solely in our mother tongues and our problems from "back home" still feel close and worth hanging onto. It's also easier to avoid integrating into the community since many regular points of interaction, such as shopping, can be done online and in isolation.
This might mean that our previous numbers for how many people we bring in from each area will need to be reevaluated, possibly leaning into more mixing and conditions that ensure better integration such as requiring higher levels of language proficiency.
Sweden appears to be the victim of its own careless immigration, that'll be a difficult pandora's box to shut - but not impossible.
There is definitely something to your idea. I have moved countries a couple of times in recent years and found that I get fewer opportunities to use the local language than in past moves, simply because a lot of face-to-face interaction has been replaced with online interfaces (the bank, state offices) or automated kiosks. And I am the motivated, educated immigrant with plenty of time to spare who wants to learn the language and absorb all the idioms and local culture references expressed in it.
The flipside of this: locals also don't necessarily need to interact with foreigners. Altogether this might simply be another part of the "Loneliness Epidemic".
It's largely the result of an ideological deadlock, where legitimate logistical concerns about immigration and integration were lumped up with islamophobia and racism. Immigration was also seen as desirable in order to address the demographic crisis and low birth rates.
This in turn had the ironic side-effect of cementing a sort of structural racism where all these immigrants showed up and were given at best estate housing and a welfare check with very limited prospects for the same sort of quality of life as the natives.
Turns out very few people want to lead a shitty life doing menial jobs as a second class citizen. Isn't that weird?
Turns out if you give kids the career options of cleaning toilets or takeaway delivery (both for a pittance), a life of crime starts to look real appealing. Heck, it's a real testament to the humanity of these people that Sweden doesn't have more criminals than it already does.
Yeah, I have noticed exactly the same thing in Germany.
There are some nationalities doing low-paying jobs in disproportionate amounts. Turkish for example, the largest immigrant group here. If I divide my current company by "high paid" and "low paid" jobs, Turkish (plus Germans with Turkish background) are over-represented in the "low paid" half (more than 60% I estimate). On the other hand, there are only a handful in the "high paid" part (no engineers, for example, only a handful engineering-adjacent). These exceptions are often people coming straight from Turkey, from wealthier backgrounds, rather than 2nd/3rd generation German-born. This has been the situation in pretty much every company I worked or observed.
With recent housing problems, they also don't have as many options of where to live, so they end up in the same neighborhoods, where they rarely have a chance to speak German, let alone to integrate with the culture. Integration courses are crowded and extremely difficult to get into. If you're working full-time it's borderline impossible to find something after 5-6 PM. Religiousness also plays a role in making integration via integration courses hard (EDIT: but Turkish are more secular, this applies more to Arabs), there are specific classes for women, which is often composed only of Muslim women (since there are so few women-only classes, Muslim women are given priority), so few chances to chat with non-Muslim women.
One interesting anecdote that I can't prove, but I see a lot of people moving to Turkey in large numbers. Some of them are 2nd or 3rd generation and have never been there. Life is not easy.
"Turns out very few people want to lead a shitty life doing menial jobs as a second class citizen. Isn't that weird?"
This describes the huge population of gastarbeiter in West Germany in the 1960s and 1970s, but I am not aware of any violent movements arising from them being unhappy with their lot. (The violence one does remember from those years was from a different demographic entirely.) It describes the modern UAE, where I am unaware of any gang phenomena. So, is this really all that is to blame for Sweden's problems?
> "The violence one does remember from those years was from a different demographic entirely."
Indeed. Funny enough, in those discussions, a lot of people bring up the Vietnamese as a group that is well-represented in Germany, but are rarely if ever associated with violence.
The interesting part is that there used to be a problem with Vietnamese gangs post-reunification [1], entirely solved by now.
There are a bunch of other factors as well. For one, the Mexican cartels are trying to expand into Europe, and basically offering franchise rights to local gangs. Sweden isn't uniquely targeted in this, but it sure did have a whole lot of dissatisfied youths.
The Swedish legal system is also not very well suited to dealing with the problem, and the system for amending laws has a lot of inertia.
A big problem is laws against information sharing between government agencies dating back to the shocking revelations about the STASI during the fall of the DDR. In calmer times this is a fine principle, especially given how much data is stored on Swedish citizens, but when you want to deal with organized crime, it's absolutely disastrous.
This needs to be upvoted. This is exactly what I've noticed across Europe. It feels like there's a glass ceiling outside of the arts and maybe politics.
It doesn't feel like there are role models there like Satya Nadella, Jerry Yang, Alex Padilla, or Obama.
I don't think the issue is so much about skin color, as it is about language proficiency and integration. If you aren't fluent in Swedish or very proficient in western-style English, you have a significant uphill battle in terms of career and life prospects.
You have Iranians and Syrians and what have you in all manner of well paying jobs. But there is really no plausible path from refugee to those types of jobs.
I wasn't saying a racial glass ceiling but a ethnic one, largely for the same reasons you mentioned. Lack of language proficiency plus a bit of bias against foreign degrees forced plenty of white collar immigrants to take blue collar jobs in Europe (and even Canada). This decreases social mobility as you don't have the network to get an "in" into plenty of well paying industries. While skills absolutely matter, some form of network really helps out.
Europe in general is the backup plan for most immigrants. Our parents preferred immigrating to US, Canada, Australia, or New Zealand instead. You only ended up in Europe if you couldn't end up in those 4.
Netherlands and the UK have only started to change in the past 5-10 years.
Aside from politics, British Asians honestly aren't that notable in the business space. Most British Asian billionaires tend to be Indian and Pakistani oligarchs to took British citizenship (eg. Hinduja). The British Asian community always felt pretty dislocated and isolated compared to those of us in the US+Canada, despite us being a newer community in North America.
In Netherlands, similar story, though there has been a recent increase in white collar Asian immigration after the US Visa regime became much more backlogged.
Can't speak for the Arab+Turkish community in France and Germany, but I had a Tunisian coworker who made a point of how he preferred being in the US over France or Belgium. And on the German side, it's the backup plan for most immigrants as well. I can't think of a notable Turkish German or Arab German role model outside of arts and politics except for the COVID Vaccine guy, and that was very recent.
For example, in the 70s-90s Lebanese would have an easy time emigrating to France (and many have) due to French fluency, yet plenty preferred moving to Australia, Canada, or the US instead as there were more opportunities to climb up.
Conversely, there is plenty of Chinese and Indian immigration to Europe, but it tends to be blue collar in origin, as opportunities and social mobility is simply harder in Europe if you're an other.
Take a look at the Arab community in the US versus Germany for example - the American half is heavily Levantine (Palestinian, Jordanian, Syrian, Lebanese) like in Germany, yet better assimilated than the equivalent communities in Germany (even before the civil war). There have been Arab Americans as Governors (Atiyeh, Sununu) and Business Leaders (Maloof, Yagan, Salhany, Halaby), yet not in Germany.
As long as the immigrants coming are paying into the system more than they take it's not a problem. The issue is purely the type of immigrants Sweden welcomed.
We should be clear about this because even at scale immigration can work well, and be a net benefit economically.
Another problem Sweden though is that they also didn't import people with compatible cultural values. So you have a population of people who are unable to economically contribute, and often unwilling to integrate.
I just wish people listened years ago when people like myself suggested it was likely to play out like this instead of being so mean and accusing us of all having hateful motives. There's no going back now.
> I just wish people listened years ago when people like myself suggested it was likely to play out like this instead of being so mean and accusing us of all having hateful motives. There's no going back now.
Agreed. Unfortunately those people who leveled accusations will face no consequences. Even if you were to bring up that they wrong, naive, selfish, you'll just get a shrug from them and a "get over it". Like the results and end-game don't matter to them now, when before they swore with their life that it mattered and anyone in opposition was a xenophobic piece of crap.
Probably both things are true.
When countries take in large amounts of immigration, their generous welfare systems can become stressed.
Sweden didn't balance the concerns.