A new report has criticised the Swedish policy of attempting to control where refugees and immigrants settle, claiming instead that freely-chosen segregation isn’t necessarily a bad option.
“Closeness to fellow countrymen can actually be positive, especially if the group has a relatively strong socioeconomic position,” claim economists Olof Aslund and Oskar Nordstrom Skans in their report in newspaper Dagens Nyheter (DN).
The authors, in making their presentation of the Swedish Centre for Business and Policy Studies report for 2009 on welfare, suggest that there is no evidence that the ethnic composition of an individual’s surrounding has any decisive role in the effectiveness of integration into schools or labour markets.
The Local reveals that the existing placement system in Sweden is built upon a theory of dispersing refugees to widespread locations across the country and also providing incentives to entice new arrivals to areas with smaller immigrant populations. Skans and Aslund say that while the move does result in reduced housing market discrimination it also makes it more difficult for immigrants to successfully integrate into the local workforce. “Our conclusion from this review is that a policy which aims to control immigrants’ residency patterns is wrong,” they state.
Rather, the authors suggest, politicians should be addressing fundamental issues such as poverty and long-term unemployment in immigrant communities. Skans and Aslund also add that abiding by the same laws and responsibilities as other Swedes should be self-evident. “But with that it follows as well, in our opinion, that society ought to treat those who immigrate as equal members of society with the same rights as others,” the pair writes.
The researchers feel that choices made by immigrants as to where they choose to live, work, go to school and seek partners should be accepted by society as it would be among their own citizens.
[…] Swedish study claims segregation can be good […]
After World War 2 nearly a quarter of million Polish people were settled in the British Isles with no problems as they were dispersed throughout the country. My Uncle was in charge of their resettlement. And they were a valuable addition to our nation.
This report is so wrong – You only have to look at the UK to see why. Every town and city has it’s own segrigated immigrant area, when you go into them it’s like visiting another country and a lot of them are no go areas for certain other sections of the population, some of them even want to set their owm laws based on their beliefs/cultures (which many came here to escape), even if it means going against the laws of the land. This has led to a great deal of mis-trust and racial/religeous tensions between these independant communities, we would be a far better and more balanced society if dispersal had been more wide spread as it would have encouraged more understanding and tolerance between all the different cultures and people involved.