My Swedish friends called it "invandrare ghetto" - immigrant's ghetto. I found myself living in a distant Stockholm “suburb” called Rinkeby years ago as I started a fellowship in Sweden. My new friends were appalled that the Stockholm School of Economics located me where no Swedes lived and so far away from the school. Truth is; they held Rinkeby in great disdain. Three weeks into my experience, they found a downtown apartment for me and christened it with a rather unforgettable party.
What I saw in Rinkeby – and what exists today in nearby Husby, the focal point of the Stockholm riots – was an interesting, restless pastiche of Turkish, Moroccan, Syrian, Croatian and Ethiopian guest workers and their families. Like many of Europe’s northern economies, then and now, Sweden encouraged people from the “south” to take low-level manufacturing, restaurant, hospital and service jobs. And the immigrants came, attracted no doubt to Sweden’s social-welfare amenities.
There was and remains a clear though unspoken problem. Insufficient efforts have been made to assimilate guest workers into Swedish society. They are treated as outcasts and, indeed, subject to racial abuse by a tiny but attention-getting number of Swedes – especially late at night on Stockholm’s subway and buses. Nations cannot invite others to join them, treat them poorly, keep them isolated and somehow expect to maintain peace. Of course, the immigrants themselves must do a better job of not defaulting to their own enclaves and turning inward, though this is easier said than done. Expect more cars to burn, and worse. This problem is not going away.
Twitter @jessicamcwade
What I saw in Rinkeby – and what exists today in nearby Husby, the focal point of the Stockholm riots – was an interesting, restless pastiche of Turkish, Moroccan, Syrian, Croatian and Ethiopian guest workers and their families. Like many of Europe’s northern economies, then and now, Sweden encouraged people from the “south” to take low-level manufacturing, restaurant, hospital and service jobs. And the immigrants came, attracted no doubt to Sweden’s social-welfare amenities.
There was and remains a clear though unspoken problem. Insufficient efforts have been made to assimilate guest workers into Swedish society. They are treated as outcasts and, indeed, subject to racial abuse by a tiny but attention-getting number of Swedes – especially late at night on Stockholm’s subway and buses. Nations cannot invite others to join them, treat them poorly, keep them isolated and somehow expect to maintain peace. Of course, the immigrants themselves must do a better job of not defaulting to their own enclaves and turning inward, though this is easier said than done. Expect more cars to burn, and worse. This problem is not going away.
Twitter @jessicamcwade