The Integration of Immigrants in Sweden

Controversies over the integration of immigrants into society is not just an issue in the United States.  The NY Times (click here)ran a story on a controversial Swedish pro-assimilationist politician.  NYAMKO SABUNI, the recently appointed minister for integration and gender equality in Sweden, has drawn attention for her unusually blunt pronouncements about the place of immigrants in Swedish society. One of the most interesting things about Sabuni is that she is a Swedish immigrant success story. The daughter of a frequently jailed opposition politician in Congo, then Zaire, who fled to Sweden as a political refugee, Ms. Sabuni arrived here with her parents and five of her siblings at the age of 12, learned Swedish, thrived in school and in college and ultimately got elected to Parliament and elevated to the cabinet. As an opposition politician, Ms. Sabuni proposed banning the veil for girls under the age of 15. She proposed that schoolgirls undergo compulsory medical examinations to check for evidence of genital mutilation. She denounced what she called the “honor culture” of some immigrant groups, proposed outlawing arranged marriages and called for an end to state financing of religious schools. Even as furious immigrant and minority groups demand that she be removed from her post, Ms. Sabuni, 37, insists that she is not as extreme as people make her out to be. Nonetheless, she stands by her basic premise: that immigrants must try harder to fit in to their adopted country. For example, she is quoted as saying that “If [immigrants] want to live here, have kids, have grandchildren, they must make an effort to adapt to the society where they live.”

KJ