Integrating the Immigrant the Swedish Way? Understandings of Citizenship and Integration in Swedish Local Civic Integration Projects

ABSTRACT

In Sweden, integration is a pressing issue particularly following the large influx of immigrants in 2015. Swedish municipalities play an important role in civic integration, with responsibility for newly arrived immigrants receiving a basic understanding of Swedish society, their rights and obligations. We analyse data from 204 applications granted funding 2016/2017 for projects improving the integration of refugees into society by co-operation between municipalities and other actors. Using thematic analysis, we identify two broad themes. One concerning the ‘what’ of integration – the Swedish values, norms and behaviours that immigrants are expected to learn in order to become ‘good’ Swedish citizens, and the other concerning the means or the ‘how’ of integration. However, although these projects are well-meaning, they may have normalizing and disciplining effects whereby the immigrant is constructed as subordinate, as the Other. Swedish gender-equality is heavily emphasized and we see how, in relation to this, the immigrant is constructed as unmodern, bound by tradition and unequal. Particularly immigrant women are produced as passive objects rather than active subjects, in need of special women’s activities and lacking as parents in comparison with the Swedish ideal.

KEYWORDS:

• Civic integration
• organized encounter
• gender-equality
• the ‘good’ parent
• Sweden

Introduction

Since the end of the 1990s, Sweden has moved away from a policy of multiculturalism to one of civic integration (Borevi 2012; Hudson et al. 2021; Lidén and Nyhlén 2015). Public debate has increasingly come to focus on the obligations of refugees and migrants to ‘integrate themselves’ into society, living by Swedish values and norms, mastering the language and adjusting to the Swedish way of life (Schmauch 2011; Dahlstedt and Hertzberg 2007). In this way they can ‘learn’ how to be the ‘good’ Swedish citizen (Elmersjö et al. 2022). However, integration is frequently seen as being hindered by immigrants’ failure to acquire these skills and knowledge (Arora-Jonsson 2017). Municipalities play an important role in the reception and integration of refugees (Lidén and Nyhlén 2015; Hudson et al. 2021) not just by providing services such as housing, health care, and schooling for children, but also (themselves or co-ordinated with other actors) through activities such as civic orientation, language training and work training/experience. They are required by law (Förordning 2010: 1138) to ensure that all newly arrived immigrants receive a civic orientation that gives them a basic understanding of Swedish society and facilitates their integration into society and the labour market. The aim is that the participants should learn about human rights and fundamental democratic values, the individual’s rights and responsibilities, how Swedish society is organized and practical aspects regarding everyday life.

The unprecedented influx of asylum seekers to Sweden in 2015 and the need to speed up their integration into Swedish society has presented a major challenge for many municipalities. There is a strong tradition of civil society organizing in Sweden (Rothstein and Trädgårdh 2007) and municipalities have turned increasingly to the voluntary sector for assistance. Joining a voluntary association has been described as a schooling in democracy in which members learn to follow democratic processes and reach decisions in accordance with democratic principles. Indeed, membership of voluntary associations has been seen as a possible way to facilitate immigrants’ integration into Swedish society (DS 2004:49, 2004). In order to encourage co-operation between local government and civil society organizations, national government has provided funding under paragraph § 37a of a government ordinance (Förordning 2010: 1122) for projects that aim to improve the integration of refugees into society.

Initially our focus was on the meanings being given to civic integration as expressed in the applications for funding under this paragraph. What immigrants are described as needing and expected to learn in order to become ‘good’, well-integrated, Swedish citizens and the consequences of this for the subject positions accorded to them. However, as we familiarized ourselves with the empirical material, it became increasingly clear that importance is given not only to what immigrants need to learn but also how they are to gain this knowledge. Creating organized encounters where the immigrants can meet Swedes and learn Swedish values and norms and ways of being figured recurrently in the applications. This led us to also analyse how the immigrant is to meet ‘the Swedish’ and how these encounters may work to (re)construct them as citizens appropriate for Swedish society. The paper is structured as follows: we introduce our methodological approach followed by a discussion of civic integration and the concept of encounter. We then present our analysis of the applications and the themes we generated. Finally, we draw some conclusions.

Method and Materials

The material analysed in this article are all the 204 applications granted funding by the Swedish County Administrative Boards (the extended arm of the state in the regions) under paragraph § 37a of the Government Ordinance (Förordning) 2010: 1122 during the period 2016–2017. These are public documents that can be made available on request. The projects are activities that are conducted on a non-profit basis and are carried out by the municipality either by itself, but more usually in collaboration with one or more civil society organizations. The target group for §37a initiatives are newly arrived¹ immigrants, asylum seekers and unaccompanied children. The successful project applications are from 137 municipalities which represent almost half of the 290 municipalities in Sweden and range from major cities to small, rural communities. A considerable variety of projects are included, varying in cost between 50 000 and 1 500 000 SEK and involving a range of activities. An advantage of studying all the successful applications is that they form part of a wider policy narrative (Fischer 2003) and provide us with an opportunity to obtain a broader picture of how civic integration is being interpreted in a Swedish context. The design of the application form gives us an insight into what is being emphasized as important by national government, and the content of the applications (the proposed projects) provides us with an overview of how civic integration is being understood by local communities. A disadvantage of this approach is that we cannot capture the lived effects of the projects for those participating.

The applications are written according to a given template with set headings and we see how the application form and project format may have a steering effect on the design and content of the projects. The applications must include: a description of the partners; a background to the suggested project (including potential obstacles to integration); an analysis of the needs currently not being met that the project will meet; its aim, goals and target group; and a description of the planned implementation (including methods, time frame and an activity plan, how it should be followed up and evaluated, and a description of the division of responsibilities). They must also describe how the need for the project is anchored in the municipality and with possible partners. There are also two separate sections that are to be developed, one concerning gender-equality and the other equal rights and children’s best interests. The completed application forms are from 10 pages upwards. We consider that the projects provide a good picture not only of the on-going efforts towards integration but also identify what are seen as current challenges. By analysing the problem(s) that different projects are said to solve, we can study the way in which integration is being represented and negotiated.

Using reflexive thematic analysis (Braun and Clarke 2006; 2019), we began by familiarizing ourselves with the material, reading the applications several times, making initial comments and noting recurring ideas and topics (Ryan and Bernard 2003). We coded the individual applications seeking to capture the shared or repeated patterns of meanings being given to integration (Ritchie et al. 2014). We initially generated a number of themes that coalesced around WHAT immigrants were expected to learn in terms of values and norms (descriptions of Swedishness) in order to become ‘good’ Swedish citizens. However, reflecting on our initial themes, we realized that these failed to capture the shared understandings of how immigrants were to acquire the desired values and norms that could be discerned in the material. This led us to generate a theme concerning HOW immigrants were to learn ‘Swedishness’ through organized encounters. It is important, however, to place these meanings in context to grasp their import. To this end, the quotes presented are used to illustrate the positions that could be discerned among the applications. For ethical reasons, we have anonymized these quotes.

Civic Integration

Kærgaard Andersen et al. (2018) argue that in a world increasingly defined by mobility, it is important to approach citizenship, not just as juridical rights, but as embodied, practiced and performed acts of what it means to be a citizen. ‘In this sense, citizenship is not a formal right that you acquire; rather it is a process of becoming, involving a variety of cultural, social and spatial expressions’. (Kærgaard Andersen et al. 2018: 211). In line with other European countries, Sweden has increasingly focused on the idea of ‘civic integration’ (Rodin 2017) and civic culture, or ‘good citizenship’ is increasingly emphasized as a means of integrating culturally plural societies (Borevi et al. 2017). This marks a shift from rights to duties (Bech et al. 2017). According to Goodman (2010), it ‘is predominantly concerned with the performance and degree of incorporation of newcomers in a host society’ (Goodman 2010: 755) and means that immigrants are encouraged to acquire nationally specific ‘civic skills’. These include some degree of proficiency in the national language, knowledge of the host society/culture, adherence to a nationally shared value system and, in the Nordic countries, it

is about inculcating the importance, indeed the moral requirement, of work, productivity and economic contribution to the welfare state. It is also about developing an egalitarian, autonomy enhancing way of life, particularly in relation to gender relations and ideals of the good work life. (Bech et al. 2017: 18)

In Sweden, civic values and norms relating to family-life and gender-equality (Grip 2020) and being a ‘good’ parent the ‘Swedish way’ (Elmersjö et al 2022) are strongly emphasized.

However, civic integration policies have been seen as marking a shift to a symbolic politics of subjugation and of disciplining the ‘Other’ (Lentin and Titley 2011) and have been criticized for ‘normativity, the negative objectification of migrants as ‘other’, an outdated imaginary of society, methodological nationalism, and a narrow focus on migrants in the factors shaping integration processes’ Magazzini (2021: 5). They have been seen as creating hierarchically ordered categories of, for example, ‘the Swede’ and ‘the immigrant’ where the Swede becomes the taken-for-granted norm and the immigrant is subordinated and becomes ‘the Other’, the unmodern, lacking in gender-equality (Dahlstedt and Hertzberg 2007; Blankvoort et al. 2021). Further as Magazzini (2020) points out, the problems of integration are seen as located in the immigrants themselves and the burden of solving them tends to be placed on them, effectively silencing issues of racial discrimination, inequality and poverty (Lentin and Titley 2011).

The Encounter

The idea of encounter or meeting as important in finding ways of living with difference, of encouraging inclusiveness and breaking down prejudices has been promoted in both urban geography and city planning (see for example Valentine 2008; Amin 2002) and as important in civic integration (Matejskova and Leitner 2011). However, as Gill Valentine argues such encounters in public space always involve ‘a set of contextual expectations about appropriate ways of behaving which regulate our coexistence. These serve as an implicit regulatory framework for our performances and practices’ (Valentine 2008: 328–9). Indeed Wilson (2017a) argues that encounter is value laden and implies much about ‘conflict and difference and can shape our thinking about the lived experience of power and how it registers in momentary and fragmentary ways’ (Wilson 2017b: 609). Adopting a relational view of encounters, she sees them as not simply about the meeting of already defined differences but that encounters also create difference and that we are constituted in and by our encounters with others. As Ahmed (2000) argues, it is in meetings with others that subjects are continually reconstituted ‘the work of identity formation is never over but can be understood as the sliding across of subjects in their meetings with others’ (Ahmed 2000: 9). Although encounter holds the risk of reinforcing our prejudices towards and stereotypes of the ‘Other’, it also provides potential for challenging these prejudices and creating the possibility for change and transformation. It holds open the possibility of destabilizing boundaries and creating new spaces for negotiating across difference (Leitner 2012). Thus, it is important that such encounters are meaningful in terms of being interactions that may challenge entrenched, generally negative conceptions of the ‘other’. In this way helping to reduce social tension, encourage the development of inclusive notions of citizenship and enable minority rights to public space (Askins 2016).

The emphasis in most of these discussions of encounter are from the perspective of the majority population meeting the immigrant and learning about the ‘Other’ as a way of combating their prejudices, learning tolerance and respect for difference. However, organized encounters may also be used as a way of ‘teaching’ the immigrant about the new culture; so they can learn what is expected of them if they are to become ‘good’ citizens and integrated members of society. We can understand this in relation to Foucault’s (1991) concept of the conduct of conduct. Power is exercised not only through dominance and coercion, but by shaping actors’ desires, aspirations and beliefs, and creating self-governing subjects who conduct themselves in accordance with societal norms and values. Thus, the organized encounter may have a disciplining and normalizing effect in which the national identity, for example, ‘the Swedish’ becomes the normal, the taken-for-granted and the immigrant is constituted as the ‘Other’, as subordinate.

To summarize: our analytical framework involves the concepts of civic integration and of encounter. Working reflexively, we move iteratively between these concepts and our empirical material (Braun and Clarke 2019). Integration has been seen as a contested concept (Magazzini 2020) with multiple and shifting meanings that differ in time and space (Ager and Strang 2008). Thus, its understandings are contextual and here we scrutinize how the concept of civic integration is filled with meaning in the Swedish context, enabling us to identify the ‘what’ of integration. We then draw on the concept of encounter to help us understand ‘how’ immigrants are to learn Swedishness.

Integration to the Swedish Way of Life: The ‘What’ of Integration

Conceptions of Swedishness and otherness, similarity and difference, permeate the Swedish integration debate, policy and rhetoric. ‘Sweden and “the Swedish” are described as something fixed, something obvious that does not need to be explained further’ (Grip 2012: 869). In other words, Swedishness is regarded as something that everyone knows and understands what it means to be Swedish. This is apparent in the integration projects studied here which become part of the creation of a picture of Swedish society, a policy narrative (Fischer 2003) of integration. Swedish values, norms and ways of behaving become a starting point, something desirable that it is important for immigrants to learn in order to integrate into Swedish society. This is a common theme across all the applications and, given the spread of applications from a broad range of Swedish municipalities, underlines the taken-for-granted of ‘Swedishness’ as the norm.

From the applications, we see that as well as learning the language, the new arrivals are expected to learn about Swedish society and culture. This includes Swedish codes and rules; Swedish values and norms such as democracy, gender-equality, and being a ‘good’ parent; Swedish laws concerning children’s rights, the Swedish countryside and so forth. The importance of exercise (how to swim and cycle) and the importance of education and skills training to facilitate future employment by making themselves attractive in the labour market are stressed. The need to become an active member of society, to participate in Swedish civil society organizations and associations, create social networks and make contacts with Swedes as ways of improving their chances of obtaining employment and integrating into Swedish society are also emphasized. This is summed up by one municipality as:

It is desirable that all can learn about how society works, what prospects and expectations await, what responsibilities they have according to Swedish law and with regard to children’s rights, gender-equality and so forth. However, what is most important is that those who are new in the municipality are welcomed as a resource and that they are given hope that they will be able to take advantage of opportunities, make new contacts and orientate themselves towards a future in which they are an active member of society. (Municipality 1, 2016)

There is a strong emphasis on integration through employment present in national policy regimes (Schmauch and Nygren 2020) which is also reflected in the integration projects we study. Central in the applications is that the immigrants should be attractive in the labour market and become employable as quickly as possible. For example, Municipality 2 (2017) stresses that employment is one of the most important ways into society and that it often takes a long time for the newly arrived immigrant to enter the labour market and establish themselves in society.

Several applications point out that conflicts and misunderstandings occur because the newly arrived immigrants lack knowledge about Swedish norms, rules and social codes. Often it is not stated in the material what the conflicts are about, but the examples given include disputes over use of the laundry room, with neighbours in the apartments where they live, and at discos. Here more or less fixed rules become apparent about how one should behave in certain situations and that these are non-negotiable, and that the immigrant needs to learn them. For example, Municipality 3 (2016) is running a project ‘Good Neighbours’ providing knowledge about norms and rules connected to housing such as how an inner courtyard can be used. Municipality 4’s (2016) application raises the problem of disagreement between newly arrived and established Swedes and suggests this can be solved by newly arrived immigrants learning civic orientation in order to ‘feel more secure and more involved in the community’. Hence, the applications set the framework for what is expected of someone who is to become Swedish, and what is valued in Sweden. In particular, they emphasize the importance of learning about Swedish gender-equality and being the ‘good’ parent.

Learning Swedish Gender-Equality

The importance given to gender-equality is reflected in the structure of the nationally designed application form. As we mentioned earlier, there is a specific section where the gendered aspects of the proposed project are to be discussed. This reflects that ‘(t)he specific Swedish approach to gender-equality has become an important marker, a national self-image and a certain “success story”’ (Carlson 2017: 53). We see this clearly reflected in the applications we have analysed where descriptions of ‘Swedish values’ are particularly prevalent in writings on gender-equality. These deal with everything ranging from the immigrant’s role as a parent to projects where immigrant women learn to ride a bicycle. However, as Carlson (2017) points out there is a backside to the Swedish gender-equality. Binary classifications function as demarcations between ‘Swedes’ and ‘the Other’ where the Swede becomes the taken-for-granted norm and the ‘Other’ is produced as subordinate (Dahlstedt and Hertzberg 2007). In the material we analyse, inequality among new arrivals is often raised and immigrants are constructed almost automatically as more bound by tradition and less equal than Swedish women and men. Women are, for example, described as being isolated in the home and there are expectations that girls will not participate in activities to the same extent as boys. In the applications, this becomes clear through projects about language training, knowledge about and establishment in the labour market, learning about gender-equality and good parenting, for example, how parental leave should be shared between the parents to enable newly arrived parents to be better role models for their children. There are recurring descriptions of language as a central issue for gender-equality – knowing the language is a matter of power, the opportunity to receive information, to feel involved, and for women to know their rights and obligations. There is a strong emphasis on women in relation to gender-equality. This is in line with a broader trend where the increasing recognition of gender in relation to migration has predominantly meant a focus on women immigrants. Male immigrants have been invisibilized or seen in negative and homogenizing terms, for example, as patriarchs abusing power (Charsley and Wray 2015). Naming men as agents of inequality constructs refugee societies as traditional and backward. Thus, male immigrants are ‘not agents of inequality because they are men, but because they are primitive. Refugee men's masculinities are thereby pathologized and they are constructed as subjects in need of modernization and reform’ (Olivius 2016: 64).

Gender-Equality – Producing the ‘Good’ Parent

The importance of gender-equality in producing the ‘good’ parent is strongly emphasized in our material. It is argued that the isolation, slow integration and non-participation of newly arrived women in the labour market mean that they can indirectly be understood to be ‘worse’ parents and that their children lack the opportunities for health and development that are otherwise to be expected as a result of good integration. Analysing material used in teaching civics for newly arrived immigrants, Silow Kallenberg and Sigvardsdotter (2019) found that parenthood was a theme that was given a considerable amount of space. They suggest the centrality given to it in integration measures is possibly because parenthood is closely associated with gender-equality and with the Swedish self-image of being best at gender-equality. This is reflected in the applications we study which frequently describe that it is important for the children and for integration that both parents participate in activities and create networks in the community, that they meet other (Swedish) parents and ‘learn’ parenthood as the following examples illustrate:

It is important for children to experience that both their parents have social networks. There is a tendency for the mothers to stay at home to a greater extent, and we want to try to counteract that. (Municipality 5, 2017)

The parental education given within the framework for the project aims to give the mothers tools for their parental role and enable them to balance their parental role with an active life which will put the children’s best in focus. (Municipality 6, 2017)

In their study of the parental support offered to migrants by civil society, Elmersjö et al argue that immigrant parents are continually defined as cultural Others in relation to ‘an imagined ideal, ethnic Swedish, white cultural self; and as risky parents with an inability to seek or accept assistance or adapt to Swedish society’ (Elmersjö et al 2022: 336). We see this in the images of good Swedish citizens and good Swedish parents and the way in which immigrant parents are constructed as lacking in comparison to the Swedish ideal. It is also reflected in the emphasis placed in many applications on the immigrant parents’ need for practical learning that they need Swedish role models. Here the Swedish gender-equality is represented in terms of Swedish women are ‘out in society’, are educated, work and are financially independent and in this way are also better role models for their children. The aim becomes that

(t)he newly arrived women will be more independent and can become wise and integrated parents for their children. (Municipality 7, 2016)

In other words, the implicit assumption is that if the immigrant women become more like their gender-equal Swedish counterparts they will (automatically) be better parents.

Gender-equality – Producing the Gender (Un)Equal Immigrant Woman?

In our analysis of the applications, we see that inequality is presented in terms of us-and-them when, for example, the newly arrived women are to learn about Swedish gender-equality and the ‘role of women’. Here inequality is represented as not being part of Swedish society, in other words, it is not a Swedish problem, but rather is implicitly inherent in the immigrant culture. The issue is raised through, for example, pointing out the at-home immigrant woman's lack or low level of participation in society. She is portrayed as passive and bound by tradition. Gender-equality is made into a ‘female’ issue and is about girls and women learning to look after themselves and taking place in society in the same way as men and becoming active subjects. How boys/men should learn about gender-equality is rarely mentioned. The problem is described in terms of immigrant women not having the same access to the public space or not participating to the same extent and the negative effects this has on their lives, their children and their opportunities for financial independence. However, there is little discussion of the reasons why they are failing to participate. Instead, the emphasis is on solving immigrant women’s lack of integration by increasing their participation, as the following example focusing specifically on women illustrates:

(t)hrough meetings with sponsors and activities within the project, the participants in the project will receive information on and experiences of gender-equality and gender roles in Swedish society. (Municipality 8, 2017)

Projects are also proposed that will enable women and girls to increase their freedom. The bicycle, for example, is made into a symbol of freedom – to be able to get around on one’s own initiative, and as an important tool for women’s mobility and independence in society enabling them to become more ‘Swedish’. This is illustrated in the following example:

Everyone must be able to cycle, at least in Sweden […] When most Swedes can cycle that ability is part of feeling that you are like everyone else. Being able to cycle also means that you are much more mobile, freer and can reach a much larger area in the municipality in a simple and cheap way. (Municipality 9, 2017)

Particularly men and women who have migrated to Sweden from non-Nordic countries tend to be positioned as bound by tradition and less gender-equal than men and women born in Sweden. The category ‘immigrant’ is constructed as unmodern and unequal in opposition to the conception of a modern and equal national Swedish community. A corresponding model of an active and independent immigrant woman participating in working life in the same way as the independent, equal Swedish woman is lacking. Instead, immigrant women’s ‘problematic situation’ is often emphasized thus requiring the need for government intervention (Grip 2020). It is important to understand this in relation to what Towns (2002) calls Sweden’s problematic gender-equality discourse. She points out that while it is fundamentally concerned with equality between men and women, it is also contributing to a new inequality whereby, the Swedish population is categorized into ‘Swedes’ and ‘immigrants’ and that these categories are hierarchically ordered. Thus:

the conceptualization and subsequent attempted elimination of one form of oppression, that of women, has helped first define and then stigmatize the entire category of “immigrants”, including “immigrant” women. Ironically, these representations help reproduce the alleged crime of “immigrant” men, namely the assumption of “immigrant” women’s subordination and treatment of them as passive objects rather than acting subjects. (Towns 2002: 174)

In the applications, the positioning of the immigrant women’s ‘problematic situation’ can be seen in, for example, separate projects for women and men. This is seen as a way to enable immigrant women to take place and

Give space for raising questions that can be seen as breaking cultural norms which we believe will, in the long term, foster gender-equality. (Municipality 10, 2017)

There seems to be an (unspoken) image of the ‘backward patriarch’ from whom the women need to be emancipated. In other words, the inequality amongst immigrant communities is seen as necessitating separate spaces for women so that traditional cultural norms can be challenged, and they can become less dependent on male family members, gain a stronger position in the family and

increase their power over their own life, financially, socially and emotionally. (Municipality 7, 2016)

There is a recurring emphasis in the applications on the importance of newly arrived women being active in society rather than being isolated at home, that they must be given the opportunity to participate in activities and join associations. Here we discern an underlying assumption that this will enable them to become more independent, more equal and, ultimately, more like the ‘gender-equal’ Swedish women.

The Organized Encounter as an Arena for Integration: The ‘How’ of Integration

The question arises of how the newly arrived immigrants are to learn ‘the right codes’, have a proper command of the language and the ‘rules of the game’ and share the fundamental principles on which the community is based and so on. We identify a reoccurring theme in the material that the desire to meet, for interpersonal exchange, is central for integration and something wanted by both newly arrived and established Swedes. A typical description of this can be found in the introduction to Municipality 11’s application (2017):

People who come to Sweden from other countries need to learn Swedish, how Swedish society works and get to know people who already live and work in Sweden. It is inherent in people’s nature to seek interpersonal meetings to widen their perspectives and gain new knowledge. When new in Sweden, many want to make friends so that they can learn Swedish more quickly and understand Swedish society. Newly arrived families want to mix on equal terms with people in the new country. In turn, people who are already established in Sweden seek opportunities to mix with people from another background and culture but have difficulty in finding venues where they can meet.

The key to integration becomes through the meeting/encounter and, if integration fails then it is implied that this will lead to alienation and social exclusion and various difficulties in the future. Thus, the lack of meeting places, often described as ‘natural’ or neutral meeting places where the immigrant and the Swede can meet on equal terms, is frequently taken up as a major hinder for a successful integration. For example, Municipality 12 (2016) despite having several apartments in the town centre for newly arrived refugees where it might be expected that they would encounter Swedes in their daily lives, nevertheless considers that it lacks a natural meeting place. This is reiterated by Municipality 13 (2017) which suggests that, given that there are many inhabitants who have newly arrived immigrants as neighbours, there is a need to create more opportunities for organized meetings that would make it easier to get to know and understand each other. A further example is found in Municipality 14’s (2016) application which describes how Swedish pupils and newly arrived immigrant youngsters attending the same school do not meet in school but require specific activities in order to do so. This is because the latter are studying a special introductory programme in the Swedish language and go in a separate class. Youngsters are described as needing to find common interests through actions on the part of adults and that both language and the spatial separation mean that there are obstacles for these pupils to meet on equal terms.

We see in the applications that, on the one hand, Swedes are described as wanting to interact with immigrants but lack knowledge about how and where they can meet. On the other, the spontaneous encounters of newly arrived and established Swedes, for example, in the laundry room or in the communal space are seen as insufficient as immigrants are unaware of the ‘Swedish rules’ of how one should behave in these spaces, and this can lead to conflicts. Hence many municipalities propose projects that aim at creating organized meeting places where Swedish values, norms, ways of behaving and so forth can be explained. Municipality 15 (2017), for example, emphasizes the importance of integration in the labour market and stresses the need for meeting places where newly arrived immigrants can make contacts, develop their social capital and their networks and improve their opportunities for employment. In relation to gender-equality and to learning to be the good parent, the organized encounter becomes an arena where these can be achieved by the newly arrived immigrants intermingling with Swedes and seeing how these values are put into practice. Other proposals focus on meeting places for activities concerning culture such as theatre, photo exhibitions, club activities, or study visits or outings in the countryside. However, more unusual is the type of proposal made by Municipality 16 (2017) involving the establishment of allotments between segregated areas with the aim of encouraging integration to take place physically. By allocating land and space, rather than using existing buildings, it intends to create something new where all are equally new and can in this way meet on more equal terms.

What emerges clearly in the material is that the encounter or the place for meeting needs to be created, as the following quote illustrates:

The need to create meeting places and bring together established Swedes and new arrivals is something that is continually pointed out in different contexts. Regrettably such meetings do not occur spontaneously, and it is hard to see how, without the proposed forum, people will themselves establish such contacts. (Municipality 17, 2017)

Integration can in this way be understood as something that will happen when it has been decided in advance that it will happen in an organized form – either in prearranged meetings or by newly arrived immigrants learning Swedish social codes through for example, participation in a study circle or joining an association. Thus, meeting places and contact opportunities are expected to contribute to greater knowledge and understanding of each other and thereby reduce prejudice and xenophobia. However, while the importance of the organized meeting is emphasized a problem emerges in terms of, on the one hand, the lack of Swedes, particularly men, participating and, on the other, the absence of immigrant women from these organized encounters.

Absent Swedish Men

Integration as a policy is often described as a two-way process, but as a practice it commonly ends up being a one-sided process of adaptation by the immigrants (Grip 2020; Schmauch and Nygren 2020). This description of integration as one-sided is a reoccurring narrative in the applications and is articulated in terms of the lack of Swedes for the immigrants to meet. On the one hand, the newly arrived immigrants seek to meet Swedes and on the other, stablished Swedes are described as wanting to have mutual exchanges with immigrants, but that the numbers participating in the integration activities such as language cafes, cultural events and so on are below expectations, particularly when it comes to men. For example, Municipality 9 (2017) discussing established Swedes’ lack of participation in language cafés writes that

We try to reach all groups. We mainly miss Swedish men and newly arrived women. (Municipality 9, 2017)

and is trying to develop additional activities that might attract Swedish men. However, while the difficulty in reaching Swedish men is often mentioned in the applications, it is generally not developed further. For example, Municipality 18 (2016) writes in its application that

There have sometimes been difficulties in reaching out to established Swedish men, which is why the project manager may need to put extra focus on this. (Municipality 18, 2016)

Although what this reaching out might entail is not discussed.

The absence of contact with established Swedes is frequently seen as meaning that the newly arrived immigrants will not have a Swedish contact network and thus lack an understanding of Swedish ways and social codes, which makes integration more difficult.

Many who have grown up in Sweden state that they would like to be better acquainted with the immigrants living in the urban areas in the municipality. At the same time, however, they can feel a bit uneasy about what this can mean in terms of the time it will take, how they will cope with the language or what they can find to do together. Think if you meet someone with whom you have nothing in common or match in terms of age and temperament? This results in not taking the initiative to making contact or organizing a meeting. To get round all these problems and conquer individuals’ fears, we need to develop a system for making contacts that are initiated on neutral ground and through an official contact person. (Municipality 19, 2017)

As the above quote illustrates, common reasons given as to why Swedes do not participate in integration measures are that it can be seen as too time consuming or binding. The applications stress the importance of participation being voluntary and flexible, involving mutual exchange and language training. Municipality 20 (2016) in its application for language ‘buddies’ writes for example,

Voluntarism means that both of those participating do so of their own free will. Both participate in their leisure time, if they have time and are interested in doing so. (Municipality 20, 2016)

Many initiatives build on various concepts concerned with matching where one person registers their interest and is matched with another person. The meetings are usually arranged through a civil society association that organizes, for example, cultural or sporting activities that the individuals can participate in together. What is stressed is the need to find someone who suits you, that you feel safe in the meeting, that you are not obliged to participate, that you will know in advance how much time you need to invest and what interests you have in common. The applications point out that generally the problem is that most of the volunteers are older women, and the majority of the newly arrived immigrants are young men which makes it harder to match people, particularly when it is unusual to pair together people of the opposite sex. Consequently, many young men are left without contacts with Swedish society or are ‘miss-matched’ with older women and this is often seen as a risk hindering their integration into Swedish society.

Missing Immigrant Women

A repeated narrative in the applications concerns the description of the difficulties in reaching newly arrived women as a group. There is often an explanation as to why these are more difficult to reach, frequently couched in terms of cultural differences between the immigrant cultures compared with the Swedish. There are also suggestions of what should be done both to reach them and to encourage their participation. Often this involves activities solely for women or adapting them to what are seen as typically female activities such as baking and handicrafts. There are a few exceptions, for example, Municipality 21 (2017) proposes a women only weightlifting group that will function as an integration strategy because Swedish women will also participate. Other suggested projects include football training for girls. It is, however, more common that culinary courses and sewing and knitting circles are suggested as ways to attract immigrant women. Here we discern an implicit assumption that this is because they relate to traditional women’s work. Again, this tends to reinforce the construction of immigrant women as more bound by tradition and less equal.

Generally, ‘targeted efforts’ are seen as necessary in the application both when it comes to reaching and including established Swedes and newly arrived women. However, there is a difference in how these groups are presented. The fact that newly arrived women are not integrated is represented as a problem and an important gender-equality issue and they are to be attracted through special ‘women's activities’ and separate meetings. However, the absence of Swedish men is not presented as an equally clear problem instead it tends simply to be stated as a fact. This silence around Swedish men seems to excuse them for their lack of participation whereas immigrant women’s absence is coupled to ‘deficiencies’ producing them as unmodern, passive, unequal and subordinate.

Conclusions

A picture emerges in the applications that the problem is that integration is too slow, that the immigrant’s establishment in the community, entry into the labour market and self-sufficiency take too long. This is often linked to negative consequences in terms of ill-health, social exclusion and various types of conflict. There is an emphasis on that this can be rectified, that integration can be speeded up through increasing the opportunities for the newly arrived immigrant to learn about and imbibe Swedish values, norms and culture. The organized meeting/encounter plays a central role in these projects as a way of achieving this goal, showing how Swedishness is articulated. However, we see that it is an encounter with the Swedish rather than the Swedes. Swedes are to a large extent absent while ‘Swedishness’ is highly present and palpable. There seems to be an implicit assumption that the Swedish way of democracy, of gender-equality is the ‘best’ way or even the ‘only’ way and that immigrants need to learn this. Through the organized meeting/encounter, immigrants are being fostered to perform citizenship the ‘Swedish’ way. This implies a nurturing, and we see how the integration project becomes a sort of fostering so that immigrants can become ‘proper’ Swedes. However, in this process they are constructed as subordinate, as the Other – the non-Swedish – needing to be ‘modernized’. This becomes particularly apparent in relation to immigrant women where the Swedish gender-equality is used as a benchmark against which they are found wanting. They are constructed as unmodern, bound by tradition, passive and unequal. There is an implicit assumption that this makes them a ‘worse’ parent and they need to be ‘taught’ how to be the ‘good’ Swedish parent.

The applications that we have analysed contain projects that are relevant and worthwhile and have the ambition to facilitate the integration of newly arrived immigrants into Swedish society. We do not deny the importance of the organized meeting/encounter. As, for example, Ager and Strang (2008) point out in their study on understanding integration ‘both refugees and non-refugees discussed integration in terms of participation of people from different groups in a range of activities’ (Ager and Strang 2008: 180) as this can facilitate building social bridges and links. Encounters may accumulate, and thus gradually shift relations and behaviour over time (Wilson 2017a) and it is perhaps in this sense that the organized encounter can have a more far-reaching effect. However, care needs to be taken to reflect on what is being taken-for-granted in these encounters. As Carlson (2017) shows in her study of Swedish for immigrants, the organized encounter can become an arena where the construction of ‘who is the immigrant and who is the Swede unfold, at the same time as attitudes will be conveyed as a sort of normalization and disciplining’ (Carlson 2017: 69). Further, while considerable efforts are often made to combat the exploitation, marginalization and powerlessness suffered by groups occupying subordinate positions, these are frequently encompassed within a framework of unequal power relations. These may work to render the immigrant as the ‘Other’ making them invisible or reducing them to stereotypes. Thus, well-meaning projects, as Dahlstedt and Hertzberg (2007) point out, may contribute to reproducing rather than challenging exclusion and the structural discrimination of immigrants. This risk is present in the applications where reflection is lacking on the taken-for-granted assumptions that the projects are built on and reproduce, and the consequences of these for those for whom the measures are intended.

There is much discussion about the importance of integration being a two-way process where the established Swede and the newly arrived immigrant get to know each other and learn about each other’s cultures and values. However, as Grip (2020) points out, studies of the practice of integration show, for example, that while the local municipality is the provider of key resources relating to education, health, housing and employment, it is up to the immigrant to use these resources to become integrated. This means that it often ends up being a one-sided process of adaptation by the immigrants (Schmauch 2011), particularly as they are not asked what their integration needs are. In the applications we have analysed, the absent Swedes are mostly present in the problem descriptions and not in the proposed measures, and the organized encounter becomes a meeting with civic organizations and associations rather than individual Swedes. It is through the organized meeting that Swedishness is to be taught. Given that Swedish society is highly organized with a high level of engagement in social, cultural and sporting associations (Rothstein and Trädgårdh 2007), this is perhaps not surprising. However, there is a risk that this may lead to the issue of integration becoming simply a matter of teaching the immigrant how Swedish society works and that values and norms relating to the immigrants’ own cultures are constituted as ‘the major obstacle, and the path to integration lies in enlightenment about the rules of Swedish society’ (Dahlstedt and Hertzberg 2007: 192). This underlines the danger of integration being a one-sided process and we see this in the projects we have analysed where it becomes almost a description of a one-sided meeting, a meeting that is not reciprocal and where processes of normalization and disciplining emerge. Hence, once the immigrant has learnt Swedish values and ways, s/he will have been ‘modernized’, learnt how to be the ‘good’ Swedish citizen, and thus be more easily integrated into Swedish society.

Acknowledgements

We would also like to thank two anonymous reviewers for their very helpful comments.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

A grant (2016-00989) from Forte, Swedish Research Council for Health, Working Life and Welfare is gratefully acknowledged.

Notes on contributors

Christine Hudson

Christine Hudson is a professor in political science at Umeå University.

Linda Sandberg

Linda Sandberg is associate professor at the Centre for Gender Studies at Umeå University.

Kristin Sundström

Kristin Sundström has a Masters in Gender Studies from Umeå University. (N.B.The details for Kristin Sundström's affiliation are in Swedish - in English it should read - Umeå Center for Gender Studies, Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden.

Notes

1 A newly arrived person is defined by the Swedish Migration Agency as someone who has been accepted by a municipality and has been granted a residence permit. A person is newly arrived during the period he or she is subject to the law on establishment measures i.e., two to three years.