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The Social Democrats have given a sneak preview of their plan to eradicate Sweden's so-called 'vulnerable areas', where extreme segregation is combined with severe crime problems. Would it make a difference?
With “strategic demolitions” in the most segregated and crime-ridden housing areas, a ban on people on benefits moving into them, and a limit on the share of rental housing in such areas, the plan sketched out in an opinion piece in the Svenska Dagbladet newspaper on Sunday is the boldest new policy proposal the Social Democrats have made in years.
It’s basically a sanitised version of the “ghetto plan” launched in Denmark back in 2018.
And judging by the reaction – with right-wing commentators decrying what they call tvångsblandning (forced mixing) and bussning (using buses to swap pupils between areas) and left-wing ones decrying the demolition plans and proposals to let educated people jump rental queues, it promises to be almost as controversial.
But what’s the alternative, Lawen Redar, the Social Democrat MP who led the working group on segregation, asked Swedish public broadcaster SVT on Sunday.
“Should we just leave the situation like it is today?” she said of Sweden’s 59 problem housing areas, in some of which 80 percent or more have an immigrant background. “I am extremely frustrated over this. Something must be done.”
What are the Social Democrats proposing?
Redar and her three colleagues made 11 proposals in their article:
1. A national list of “vulnerable areas” with a set of targets to promote: the physical reconstruction of the areas to combat segregation and promote integration; a better mix in the population; an increase in the use of Swedish language in welfare services; bold moves to increase the amount of people in work; and an increased police presence to fight criminality.
2. Central government to hold so-called “Sweden negotiations” with municipalities to jointly fund physical improvement of the areas, by new building, densification, strategic demolitions, and new traffic and public transport solutions.
3. A limit to the proportion of rental apartments in vulnerable areas. Areas with high levels of rental apartments would be required to take action to increase the share of private and cooperative housing.
4. Government to give credit guarantees to companies building detached, semi-detached, and terraced houses in vulnerable areas.
5. Government funds for renovation and upgrading of “Million Programme” areas.
6. Minimum income for those moving to vulnerable areas. Landlords would be banned from renting out property in vulnerable areas to anyone who has lived off benefits in the last six months.
7. People with university degrees would be given priority in the queue for rental apartments in vulnerable areas.
8. New regulations to prevent landlords setting high income requirements for rental properties outside vulnerable areas.
9. Government to give credit guarantees and other forms of investment support to companies building affordable rental apartments outside vulnerable areas.
10. An inquiry into how to increase the share of rental properties owned by non-profit and public housing companies outside vulnerable areas
11. An inquiry into how to give municipalities first right to bidding on socially important and strategic land.
What’s the problem?
Although Sweden’s recent epidemic of gang shootings has been blamed by many on the country’s extreme housing segregation, Redar and her colleagues said that this was far from the only problem.
Fully 40 percent of adults between the ages of 20-64 in Sweden’s 59 “vulnerable areas” cannot support themselves through their work, three out of 10 children in such areas leave secondary school without the grades needed to go to upper secondary school or gymnasium.
Part of Sweden’s segregation problem, as Lawar recognised, is built into the architecture. The Social Democrats’ “Million Homes programme”, enacted between the mid 1960s and the mid-1970s, may have rescued people from slum conditions, but it also created a series of isolated urban communities on the outskirts of Sweden’s cities, often cut off from the rest of towns and cities by motorway ring-roads.
Although they were initially built for working-class ethnic Swedes, as the rate of immigration to Sweden picked up in the 1980s,1990s and early 2000s, Swedes became outnumbered as part of so-called “white flight”.
Fully 80 percent of those living in the so called “especially vulnerable areas” now have a foreign background, a share that rises to above 90 percent in five of the most segregated districts.
“We believe that there is no more important task for Sweden than breaking segregation and fighting the class society. No task is more urgent,” Redar and her colleagues wrote in their article.
“The fact that children and young people are growing up in this cemented inequality is nothing less than a social failure which brings shame to our country. It must come to an end.”
What are opponents saying about it?
Fredrik Kopsch from the right-wing Timbro thinktank complained that efforts to increase the number of people with immigrant backgrounds in middle class and rich areas of Swedish cities would not work.
“The income requirement [for rental apartments] will be reduced through the law, and state subsidies will create cheap rental apartmments in socio-economically strong areas. It is detached from reality to think that this will help deprived people,” he wrote in an article in Svenska Dagbladet.
Will it help the Social Democrats?
The Social Democrats were criticised for lacking concrete policy proposals, both in the run-up to the 2022 general election and in their first year and a half in opposition.
With this proposal, together with a proposal to make kindergarten compulsory for children over three years old, that has changed.
If the rest of the 11 policy working groups set to present their conclusions at the party’s congress in August come up with similarly detailed proposals, the party will be overflowing with new ideas.
While this will finally give its politicians something to say for themselves, it will also make them easier to attack.
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Do a better job integrating refugees, even if that means what could be considered islamophobic measures. For example, forbid any kind of religious requirements on women and girls to help get them accustomed to life in an egalitarian society, not one where they are required to be submissive to men.
Do not forget the Swedes, if you wast to be accepted and to be included in the life and culture of the country you come to then respect its culture and costumes in the first place. The Swedish people don’t have to change after all they would be accepted to adjust to the other cultures if they moved or visited those countries.
1. Have all the public administration websites in English. For example even skatteverket’s app/website has a lot of content not translated in English.
2. Encourage more the swedish language by providing allowance/benefits for the newcomers to learn the language. In this way people can be integrated easier.
I imagine a group(s) of volunteers who will participate in activities to bridge the gap between the locals and immigrants. We can have organized local events where everyone can come with the goal of exchanging culture and food.
We can also have an online platform for locals and immigrants to have honest and genuine dialogues with each other. To ask questions, to tell personal stories, to spread love and care. The platform will be moderated to remove any negative content.
We can learn from how the far right movement have grown so well across Europe. Of course we will not be using troll factories to push our love agenda. But we can take advantage of social media and create lots of contents and documentaries to spread the message of love and unity. We can educate people through awareness and understanding of each other’s cultures. Differences don’t always mean bad. We just need understanding and compassion. Humans tend to be afraid of the unfamiliar and the unknown. All we need to do is to make things more familiar and known to everyone.
Lastly, through all the connections we make, we may be able to help refugees find jobs within the community and help out one another. Refugees typically come from war torn zones and do not have the best opportunities to have the resources and education and experience to work in higher demand jobs.
P.S. We can also learn from Singapore, who became one of the richest countries in the world through embracing multiculturalism instead of forcing assimilation to one mainstream culture. It’s an environment where everyone can coexist equally.
This article details all of their history and government’s relentless initiatives to make it happen.
https://www.sg101.gov.sg/social-national-identity/multicultural/
“In a multiracial society one soon learns that no one people has a monopoly of wisdom and that one’s culture is not without flaws. This not only breeds tolerance for different viewpoints but also a readiness to learn and borrow from the accumulated wisdom of other people.
These are, we have discovered, attitudes of mind essential for the smooth and constructive development of a multi-racial and multi-cultural society.”
– Singapore’s First Foreign Minister S. Rajaratnam,
at the United Nations General Assembly on 21 September 1965.