Sweden breaks with its liberal past on the migration issue

Welcome back. This month, Sweden’s Justice Ministry released a fascinating statement that received little attention outside the country’s borders. For the first time in more than 50 years, more people are emigrating from Sweden than are arriving there as migrants, the ministry said.

What is the reason for this change? What does it tell us about Europe’s approach to legal and illegal migration, asylum seekers, labour shortages, demographic pressures and national identities? Contact me at [email protected].

Sweden’s paradigm shift

The days when Sweden was known worldwide for its welcoming of migrants and asylum seekers are over. During the Cold War and some 30 years after the end of communism in Eastern Europe in 1989, Sweden took in numerous people fleeing political persecution or wars all over the world, from the Balkans to the Middle East.

According to the Liechtenstein-based Geopolitical Intelligence Service, an independent network of experts, around 20 percent of Sweden’s 10.6 million inhabitants will be born abroad in 2022, more than twice as many as in 2000.

Today, a centre-right coalition governs the country with parliamentary support from the far-right Sweden Democrats. Asylum and immigration policy has also changed accordingly.

The government puts it this way:

Sweden’s migration policy is currently undergoing a paradigm shift. The government is intensifying its efforts to reduce the number of migrants entering Sweden illegally – in full compliance with Sweden’s international obligations.

Fraud and abuse in labour immigration must be stopped and the ‘shadow society’ must be combated. Sweden will continue to have humane reception standards and those who are not entitled to protection or have any other right to stay in Sweden must be expelled.

(The term “shadow society” refers to foreigners who live in Sweden without a residence permit and work in the informal labour market.)

“Hired Swedish child soldiers”

Part of the explanation for the country’s tougher policies lies in the rise of gang violence in Swedish cities, a phenomenon that Richard Milne of the Financial Times wrote a good report about in November.

The criminal gangs involved in Sweden’s urban conflicts are largely run by second-generation immigrants, Richard reported, leading to often painful debates about the “failed integration” of many newcomers and their families, as Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson described it last year.

Sweden was once one of the safest places to live in Europe (and is still generally safe, despite all this), but as the graph below shows, it now has one of the highest per capita firearm death rates on the continent.

The violence is straining Sweden’s relations with its neighbors. This month, the Danish government announced it would tighten border controls with Sweden in response to the alleged arrival of “hired Swedish child soldiers” seeking to commit crimes in Copenhagen.

According to the government in Stockholm, Sweden will record the lowest number of asylum seekers since 1997 this year due to its tougher stance against unwanted immigrants.

As for the reversal of net migration, Swedish statistics show that the main reason for this is that thousands of residents born in countries such as Iraq, Somalia and Syria have decided to leave Sweden.

Henry Ford’s melting pot ceremony

The Swedish discussion of “failed integration” has parallels in most Western European countries. Broadly speaking, there are two models of integration in Europe, as Jessica Tollette explained in a 2017 article for the US group Humanity in Action.

She defined this as assimilation and multiculturalism:

Assimilation is the process by which immigrants abandon the customs and cultural practices of their home country and instead adopt the ideals and values ​​of the host country.

While some European countries, such as France, opted for more assimilation practices, several European countries, including the United Kingdom, Finland, the Netherlands and Sweden, pushed for a multicultural integration model.

In terms of assimilation, no European politician went as far as the American industrialist Henry Ford did in the first half of the 20th century. He founded an English school not only to teach his guest workers the language, but also to mold them into American citizens.

The workers’ graduation ceremony was an unforgettable sight, as Tara Zahra, a historian at the University of Chicago, wrote in her book last year Against the world: anti-globalism and mass politics between the world wars:

The “graduates” came dressed in national costumes and sang songs from their home countries while climbing a ladder into a giant papier-mâché “melting pot.”

They came out the other side as “Americans,” dressed in derby hats and polka dot ties, singing the “Star-Spangled Banner.”

Denmark’s terrifying naturalization test

When immigrants to European countries wish to acquire citizenship, they are often required to pass tests on their knowledge of the history and culture of the country they wish to settle in permanently. In some cases, the knowledge required is so sophisticated that even natives, if they were required to take the tests, would be baffled.

A typical example is Denmark, where the test in 2016 included the following question:

“What do the runestones say about the deeds of Harald Bluetooth on his journey to Jelling in 965?”

(You can find the answer in the link above!)

Migrants compensate for bottlenecks in the labour market

Across Europe the picture is mixed.

The paradox in some Western European countries is that formal barriers to immigration – let alone acquiring citizenship – are rising at a time when the need to replace a dwindling workforce is greater than ever before.

In this analysis for the Robert Bosch Foundation, Jessica Bither and Hannes Einsporn write:

Demographic changes and shortages of skilled professionals and workers are requiring immigration on an unprecedented scale in many OECD countries, while new global competition for talent, particularly in sectors such as healthcare and information technology, is making recruitment more difficult.

The authors assume that Germany could need a net immigration of 400,000 people per year to compensate for these bottlenecks. In Italy, the working-age population will shrink by about 630,000 people over the next three years, they write.

Birth rates, migrants and population decline

Another excellent study appeared in June, written by Maryna Tverdostup for the Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies. She says:

After decades of rising population numbers, the EU now faces a bleak demographic outlook. With stagnating birth rates and a rising ratio of older to younger residents, positive net migration has been the main driver of population growth over the past 30 years and will become even more important in the coming decades.

Over the past three decades, most immigrants to Europe have come from the Middle East and Africa, she writes.

Between 2014 and 2022, the share of “third-country nationals” (defined as people who do not come from EU countries, EU candidate countries (from 2015) or European Free Trade Association countries) in the total population more than doubled in Bulgaria, Ireland, Malta and Hungary, and even increased by over 50 percent in Finland, Germany, Poland and Slovakia.

In Central and Eastern European countries, this increase is largely due to the arrival of Ukrainian refugees following the Russian invasion in February 2022. (Ukraine only became a candidate for EU membership in June 2022.)

Otherwise, the region is experiencing a sharp population decline. Tverdostup estimates that between 2012 and 2022, the population fell by 9.8 percent in Croatia, 8.3 percent in Lithuania, 6.7 percent in Bulgaria and 6.6 percent in Latvia.

Irregular border crossings are decreasing

There is a realisation at both EU and national level that demographic pressures need to be addressed by opening the door to immigration. However, governments do not always present this to their voters as a benefit for society.

The idea is to combine orderly legal immigration with a tougher approach to illegal entry. Recent data suggests that the EU policy is having some effect.

A report published this week by the EU border agency Frontex estimates that the number of irregular border crossings into the EU fell by 36 percent to 113,400 people in the first seven months of this year compared to the same period in 2023.

The decline is particularly pronounced in the central Mediterranean, suggesting that the EU’s policy of offering financial incentives to North African countries in return for cracking down on illegal immigration may be paying off.

On the other hand, irregular border crossings on the West African route into the EU increased, and departures across the Channel to Great Britain also increased (by 22 percent to 33,183 people, according to Frontex).

Overall, the EU and national governments are still struggling to find the right balance in their migration and asylum policies, an area that will certainly keep EU politicians busy once the new European Commission takes office at the end of the year.

More on the topic

Irregular migration and the next European Commission – an analysis by Sergio Carrera and Davide Colombi for the Brussels-based think tank Centre for European Policy Studies

Tony’s tips of the week

• Up to half of all British jobseekers use artificial intelligence tools to search for and apply for jobs, but recruiters say the quality of AI-powered applications is often lower than the quantity, report the FT’s Cristina Criddle and Delphine Strauss.

• Russia’s growing influence in Africa’s Sahel region is likely to wane over time, and the U.S. fixation on Moscow’s activities there is a distraction, writes Dan Whitman for the Philadelphia-based Foreign Policy Research Institute.