pic: gp.se
Ardalan Shekarabi might post as “a social democrat” on facebook, but he’s actually Minister for Public Administration (civilminister), not some random self-identified voter on the internet. Therefore it’s no featherweight suggestion he makes there that Sweden needs “a sustainable immigration policy and to keep the number of new immigrants low” ().
His facebook post reflects the split in the Social Democratic party regarding immigration, with several prominent persons expressing themselves rather in favor of a more restrictive immigration. As SvD notes, the youth wing of the party, SSU, came out in favour of an EU-wide immigration policy, stating that Sweden can’t be the only country taking asylum responsibility (). The thinktank Tiden has asked prominent Social Democrat, and Norrköping City Council member, Lars Stjernkvist, to formulate a future immigration policy in which the dreaded word “volume” is discussed ().
Shekarabi writes that “extreme segregation” is a threat to social cohesion, and that he would like to create “an inclusive national identity.”
This comes at almost the same time as the government has decreed (today) that new immigrants who decide for themselves that they want to live in a “socially vulnerable area” – IOW an area that is populated largely with immigrants who are low on the socioeconomic scale – will lose their daily social allowances (dagsersättning) from the government ().
The Liberal party immigration spokesperson Fredrik Malm remarked that there are problems of extremely crowded living and segregation associated with these areas: School children, for example, can’t concentrate on their studies when they live in crowded conditions. If new immigrants live in state-run institutions, it is easier to reach them and provide social services, it is argued ().
However, no one has suggested actually revoking the Law of Own Accommodation (EBO-lagen – lagen om eget boende), that was begun in 1995 and allowed new immigrants to establish themselves wherever in the country they wanted. Quite naturally, this turned out to be where they found others from their country, and where they didn’t feel so alone. This has turned out to be city suburbs, and the rest is segregation history. In many respects, these areas are economic grey areas anyway, and it is unsure whether the threat of taking away allowances is going to have any effect.
Meanwhile, Shekarabi’s post may only be his way of jockeying for a better position in the race to succeed Löfven as party leader. As Rahm Emanuel said to Obama in the beginning of Obama’s first term as president, at the height of the 2008 economic crisis, “you never want a serious crisis to go to waste” (nyti.ms/NYTimesBiggestCrisis).