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MOVING TO SWEDEN

Reader question: Why are EU citizens getting rejected from SFI classes?

State-funded Swedish for Immigrants (SFI) classes are often cited as key to integrating immigrants into Swedish society and the Swedish job market. So why are some of our readers from the EU being barred from attending?

Published: 15 March 2022 15:49 CET
A Swedish for Immigrants class in Täby outside Stockholm back in 2017.
A Swedish for Immigrants class in Täby outside Stockholm back in 2017. Photo: Fredrik Sandberg/TT

What rights do EU citizens have?

According to the Swedish Education Act (Skollagen), an individual has the right to study SFI from July in the year they turn 16 if they live in Sweden and lack the basic knowledge of the Swedish language which the course is designed to teach.

Usually, “living in Sweden” means that an applicant needs to be registered in the Tax Agency’s population register, meaning that they have a personal number (personnummer), the 10- or 12-digit number which grants access to a wide range of important aspects of Swedish society.

However, under EU law, EU citizens (as well as EES and Swiss citizens), have the right to study SFI in Sweden even if they don’t have this number.  

Despite this, multiple Swedish municipalities wrongly require EU citizens applying to study SFI to provide a personnummer or, in some cases, a coordination number (samordningsnummer). A coordination number is a temporary number which can be provided to those who don’t qualify for a personnummer, but who still need an identification number in order, for example, to pay tax. 

What has happened?

EU citizens who should be eligible for SFI studies are having their applications rejected.

One dual Irish/UK citizen in Gothenburg, who got in touch with The Local about this issue, tried to apply for SFI in Gothenburg. He is currently working in a part-time job which does not qualify him for a personnummer under the Tax Agency’s rules, and he believed that speaking Swedish would increase his chances of finding a permanent job.

“We’re planning on staying here and believed it would increase his chances of finding a more suitable permanent job here,” his partner, also a dual Irish/UK citizen, told The Local.

The city of Gothenburg states on its website that EU citizens require a personnummer to study SFI in Gothenburg, and that a samordningsnummer will not be accepted.

“He attempted to register quoting the relevant section of the law and was refused,” the man’s partner told The Local. “We received an email from the city of Gothenburg (ironically in Swedish) indicating that their ‘lawyer has interpreted those sections of the Education act differently’ and that they will not register anyone without a personnummer“.

In the email, seen by The Local, a representative from the city of Gothenburg’s SFI programme wrote that “Skolverket [The Swedish National Agency for Education] have interpreted EU law in one way. Here at the Department for the Labour Market and Adult Education, our lawyer has interpreted EU law in a different way. Currently, you cannot apply to SFI in Gothenburg if you don’t have a personnummer.”

Gothenburg isn’t the only municipality in Sweden who demand that EU citizens fulfil requirements which are not set out in the Education Act.

Södertälje municipality, south of Stockholm, states on its website that EU citizens “must have the right to work or study in Sweden as well as be able to provide a job contract or proof of studies” in order to register for SFI.

Botkyrka municipality, also near Stockholm, requires a samordningsnummer.

The city of Malmö requires that you provide proof that you are either working, seeking employment, a student, can support youself financially with comprehensive health insurance, or are staying with a family member who fulfils one of these requirements in order to apply for SFI.

Is this legal?

It’s hard to say. 

A spokesperson for The Swedish National Agency for Education (Skolverket) told The Local that “the right to education is not specifically linked to having a personnummer or a samordningsnummer“.

“Skolverket can provide information on legislation, but we cannot take a position on or discuss individual cases,” the agency wrote in an email.

“Generally, however, the rule is that a municipality does not have the right to set their own requirements for admission which are not found in the legislation. The question of whether a certain municipality is acting correctly or incorrectly must be decided in each specific case. Which Skolverket can’t do.”

The agency’s spokesperson said that only supervisory authorities or courts were able to make the call as to whether a municipality is acting illegally, and that, in this case, those affected could contact the Swedish Board of Appeal for Education (Skolväsandets överklagandenämnd) to appeal a municipality’s decision.

The Local has contacted the Swedish Board of Appeal for Education for information on whether they have handled any appeals on this topic, and is awaiting a response.

Why are municipalities not following the Education Act?

The Local contacted the city of Gothenburg directly in February 2022 to ask for more information on why they require EU citizens to have a personnummer in order to be accepted on to SFI courses, and were told by a lawyer at the Department for the Labour Market and Adult Education that a personnummer was not a necessary requirement for EU citizens applying for SFI courses in Gothenburg.

“The information which is available on our website will be assessed going forward and corrected, as it has not been updated,” he wrote. “There is no requirement from the Department for the Labour Market and Adult Education that an individual must have a Swedish personnummer to study SFI, but the individual must be considered to be resident in Sweden according to the Education Act in order to study SFI”.

He also stated that the applications of EU citizens who are not registered in the population register who apply for SFI courses are assessed on an individual basis, “regardless of what is stated on the website.”

The Local also contacted Södertälje municipality and Botkyrka municipality for their comments, and are awaiting a response.

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For members

LEARNING SWEDISH

How positive are Swedes towards foreign accents?

Swedes respond most positively to people speaking Swedish with English, Finnish and German accents, according to a new study from Sweden's Institute for Language and Folklore that took an in-depth look at a dozen foreign accents.

Published: 2 May 2024 15:29 CEST
How positive are Swedes towards foreign accents?

The study asked Swedes to identify the accents of 12 different people speaking Swedish, before rating the speakers on their trustworthiness, friendliness, ambition, confidence, appeal and whether they were ordentlig, a Swedish word which describes something similar to being “proper” or an upstanding citizen. 

These qualities were then ranked from one (not at all) to six (a lot), before being combined into a total score for each speaker.

Respondents were not told if they had guessed the accent of a speaker correctly or incorrectly before ranking them.

Speakers of Swedish with an English accent had the highest score on this scale: 3.86, although this is still low considering that the highest possible score was six. The English speaker spoke British English and has lived in Sweden for 41 years.

Finns came just behind on 3.85, with Germans coming third with a score of 3.79.

These three accents were also considered to be the easiest to understand, no matter how strong or weak the accents were considered to be.

In fourth place with a score of 3.62 was a female speaker with a förortsaccent, which is not an accent at all but rather a dialect of Swedish spoken in the often immigrant-heavy suburbs (förorter) of large cities. Although some aspects of förortssvenska have been influenced by languages spoken by people who have immigrated to these parts of Sweden from abroad, many speakers of förortssvenska were born in Sweden and have lived their entire lives here.

Next up were Somali, Arabic and Turkish accents, with scores of 3.32, 3.29 and 3.24 respectively. Polish, Persian and Spanish accents followed with scores of 3.23, 3.21 and 3.15, with a Bosnian accent the lowest placing foreign accent at 3.06.

The lowest result in the study overall was for a male speaker with a förortsaccent, with a score of just 2.95.

Women ranked more highly than men

Interestingly, female speakers made up four of the top five, although the most positively rated accent (English) was a male speaker. There was also only one woman in the bottom five (the Spanish speaker) suggesting that Swedes are more positive towards women with foreign accents than men.

The respondents were also asked to guess what level of education the speakers had, where they could choose between junior high school or equivalent (grundskola), senior high school or equivalent (gymnasium), post-secondary school education that was not university-level, and university-level studies.

Accents from closer countries scored more highly

As a general rule, Swedes assumed that people from countries which are closer geographically had a higher level of education than those who were from further away. English came top again, followed by German and Finnish, while a male speaker of förortssvenska came last, with the speaker with a Bosnian accent coming second to last.

In general, speakers of the accents which scored highly in terms of positive associations were also assumed to have a higher level of education, and the same can be said for the accents which had the most negative ratings.

There is a caveat, however. The positively-rated accents – English, Finnish and German – were those which speakers were best at identifying. Almost 90 percent of Swedes in the study recognised an Finnish accent, with just under 85 percent recognising an English accent and slightly under 70 percent recognising a German one.

This means that in these cases, respondents were judging these specific accents, and may have been influenced by prior contact with speakers of Swedish from these countries such as friends, coworkers or public figures, or commonly held assumptions about them.

That was also the case for the male förortsaccent, which was the fourth-most recognised accent – just over 40 percent of listeners identified it correctly.

For the other accents, listeners were unsure of their guesses, even those who guessed correctly. Only one in twenty listeners could recognise the Turkish accent, for example.

This means that assumptions made about speakers with less easily identified accents may be due to other factors than their nationality, such as the strength of their accent and their gender.

Indeed, the most common incorrect guess when a listener could not identify an accent was Arabic, often bringing with it negative ratings in the other categories.

Political views also make a difference

The study also looked at whether certain traits or beliefs in the listening Swedes affected how they ranked each speaker.

Men rated each speaker more negatively than the average score given by all listeners, while women rated them more positively.

There were also clear differences when it comes to politics, with right-wing voters more likely to have a negative opinion of foreign accents.

Listeners who identified as Sweden Democrats or Moderates rated almost all accents significantly lower than the average (Sweden Democrats rated English and Finnish roughly the same as average listeners, and Moderates rated German accents roughly the same as the average).

Christian Democrats and Liberals rated the accents similar to the average result for all listeners, while left-bloc voters belonging to the Centre Party, Social Democrats, Green Party and Left Party rated almost all accents significantly higher than the average. 

The groups with the most positive attitude towards people speaking Swedish with an accent were women, the highly educated, voters in the left-wing bloc and, to a lesser extent, older people and people who earn less than 25,000 kronor a month.

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