"(...) Today, Sweden has fallen into a situation where the public joins conflicting values. Extremely high tolerance for immigration is combined with the fact that many do not socialize with non-European immigrants. In addition, there is widespread pessimism about the possibility to achieve integration. Swedish daily Svenska Dagbladet (2016a) discusses this and Sweden’s often paradoxical culture in an interview with Associate Professor Bi Puranen at the Institute for Future Studies:
Three-quarters of the population believe that integration isn’t working well. Meanwhile, four out of ten Swedes don’t know any immigrants from a non- European country, according to new figures from SvD/Sifo. Yet Sweden is seen as a moral superpower. In a series of articles, Svenska Dagbladet investigates integration in Sweden, the world’s most different country. We see a new Sweden emerge, where “we” and “them” are becoming clearer. The resistance to accepting refugees continues to increase and integration is limping.
Sweden and the Swedes, who are we today and what do we represent? The current self-image, that we salute the Jante Law, bow down to Luther and are somewhat shy and introverted, is probably quite exaggerated. The Swede is rather a loner who celebrates privacy, with great trust in the state, and who continues to have relatively great respect for what’s different. This is shown by, among other things, Bi Puranen’s research.
She has also mapped out “culture and values collisions” – issues or opinions that stand out in comparison to other countries’ perceptions and which could be said to capture Swedishness in the year 2016: gender equality, religion, nationalism, views on premarital sex, abortion, parenting, divorce, LGBTQ issues, and domestic violence. Here, the Nordic countries – and mostly Sweden – differ from the international norm.
“This tolerance risks making us intolerant of other views and ideas and that we see ourselves as a moral superpower,” says Bi Puranen. Professor Assar Lindbeck has often been described as the doyen of Swedish economics, and expressed some unequivocally illustrious thoughts a few years back on an economics seminar (Lindbeck 2013):
Now, one should realize that these problems cannot be solved through a more flexible job market and increased wage distribution. It is, therefore, naive to believe that the employment difficulties of immigration can be solved by, during unrestricted immigration, allowing wages to fall to the level where low- skilled workers who can’t speak Swedish also get jobs.
A wealthy country like Sweden, with nine million inhabitants in a world of billions of poor people, could not possibly have unrestricted immigration. It must have a restrictive immigration. And it must be very restrictive if one is to protect the wages and welfare systems in wealthy nations.
This is absolutely inevitable. Even Gunnar Myrdal realized this many years ago when he wrote that the welfare state is a national project. With that, he believes that the benefits a nation manages to gain by successful economic development over a century cannot be offered the rest of the world without our system failing. "
