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LABOUR MIGRATION IN SWEDEN

WORK

‘Swedish work-visa window too narrow’

Since 2008, migrants to Sweden can swap course from seeking asylum to seeking a work visa with the help of a Swedish employer. The Local speaks to one migrant who praises the system, while saying it could be improved.

'Swedish work-visa window too narrow'

Safaa Badij Abdulwahid, 42, first applied for asylum when he came to Sweden in 2007. It was rejected, but Abdulwahid became one of a few thousands migrants since Sweden’s labour migration reform in 2008 who first applied for asylum, and then chose the work-visa route.

“Finding a job and getting a work permit is better than seeking asylum,” he told The Local.

He advised other would-be migrants to opt for a job solution if possible before entering into the asylum process, which Abdulwahid described as “taxing and long”, but added that he in any case would always prefer being employed.

“Working makes you feel like a human, you feel independent,” Abdulwahid said. He was joined by his wife and two children, aged eight and 14, in 2010.

On Thursday, the Swedish Migration Board (Migrationsverket) published a report entitled New Route (Ny väg), in which researchers said there was not enough information among people pondering a move to Sweden about the opportunities to reside here on a work visa.

Abdulwahib praised the Swedish system that now allows migrants to swap course in their application to stay in Sweden without having to return to their country of origin.

In Abdulwahid’s case, being made to apply for his papers from abroad would have been troublesome, as Sweden’s embassy in Baghdad is not open to the public.

“I avoided a lot of complications, partly because I would have had to have gone to a third country to file my work-visa application,” he said.

Yet he would ideally like to see further reform, as the two-week window between a rejected asylum application and the deadline for filing work-visa papers from Sweden is in his view too narrow.

“I panicked when my asylum was denied because I only had two weeks. I think they should widen the window to two months,” Abdulwahid said.

He welcomed the Migration Board’s plans to improve communication about the possibilities of labour migration to Sweden, partly because it could undercut the market for traffickers.

“I think the smugglers will shut shop if more people apply for work visas rather than asylum.”

Ann Törnkvist

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WORK

Drug and harassment allegations plunge Bejart Ballet into turmoil

Switzerland's prestigious Bejart Ballet Lausanne company faces a probe as allegations of drug use, harassment and abuse of power raise the question why nothing apparently changed after an earlier investigation raised similar issues.

Drug and harassment allegations plunge Bejart Ballet into turmoil
Bejart Ballet dancers perform at Igor Stravinsky's "The Rite of Spring" in the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow, on April 3, 2013. credit: YURI KADOBNOV / AFP

The company, founded by the late legendary French choreographer Maurice Bejart, was placed under audit on June 4 over allegations touching on its “working environment and inappropriate behaviour”.

The Maurice Bejart Foundation announced the audit just a week after revealing that the affiliated Rudra Bejart ballet school had fired its
director and stage manager and suspended all classes for a year due to “serious shortcomings” in management.

While the foundation has revealed few details of the allegations facing the two institutions, anonymous testimonies gathered by trade union
representatives and the media paint a bleak picture.

Swiss public broadcaster RTS reported that a number of unidentified former members of the Bejart Ballet Lausanne (BBL) company had written to the foundation, describing the “omnipresence of drugs, nepotism, as well as psychological and sexual harassment”.

Many of the accusations allegedly focus on Gil Roman, who took the helm of BBL when its founder died in 2007.

Roman did not respond to AFP requests to the foundation or BBL seeking comment.

‘Denigration, humiliation’

The French choreographer faced similar allegations during a secret audit a year later, but was permitted to stay on and continue as before, according to RTS and the union representing the dancers.

“We cannot understand what might have been in that audit that would have allowed them to clear him completely,” Anne Papilloud, head of the SSRS union that represents stage performers in the French-speaking part of Switzerland, told AFP.

“The accusations back then were word-for-word the same as today: harassment, denigration, humiliation, insults, temper tantrums, drugs,” she said, citing former company members who had contacted the union in recent weeks and had said they were around during the 2008 audit.

One dancer told RTS on condition of anonymity that it was common for Roman to publicly humiliate dancers who made a misstep, while another said he often asked dancers to bring him marijuana.

“Drugs were part of everyday life at Bejart Ballet,” the broadcaster reported her saying.

Papilloud meanwhile told AFP that the “vast majority of the testimonies I have heard have been about psychological harassment”.

Drug-use had been mentioned, mainly linked to how the drugs “provoked outbursts of anger”, she said.

She said she had also heard a small number of complaints about sexual harassment, although not involving Roman.

‘Terror’

But what stood out most in the dozens of accounts she had heard in recent weeks was the sheer “terror” people described.

Their reaction to what they had been through was “extremely strong”, she said, “almost at the level of post-traumatic stress”.

Papilloud said that as a union representative she had long been aware that BBL was considered a difficult place to work, with low pay compared to the industry standard and little respect for working hours.

But the recent revelations of “an extremely toxic working environment” had come as a shock, she said.

Over 30 current and former BBL members had contacted the union following the upheaval at the Rudra Bejart ballet school, she said.

The school, which halted classes and fired its long-time director Michel Gascard and stage manager Valerie Lacaze, his wife, was reportedly fraught with psychological abuse and tyrannical over-training.

One student described how she had found herself surrounded by teachers and other students who “humiliated and belittled” her, the president of the foundation’s board, Solange Peters, told RTS.

One teacher present at the time reportedly compared the scene to a “lynching”.

The revelations about the school appeared to have “opened a Pandora’s Box”, spurring alleged victims of similar abuse at BBL to come forward, according to Papilloud.

“We have really been inundated,” she said, adding that many hope that “this time, things can change”.

Following close communication with the foundation, the union too is hopeful that the current audit will be handled differently than the last one, with more openness and independence, Papilloud said.

“I think this will not be an audit where things are swept under the carpet.”

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