No “Swedish” Model can Guarantee Integration for Immigrants

The idea of Sweden as a historically ethnically homogeneous country has long shaped discussions about immigration.

particularly amid the surge in the 21st century caused by imperialist wars in the Middle East.

Although this is the view that bourgeois media presents, it is important to note that it misrepresents reality.

In reality, Sweden has experienced several different waves of immigration as the modes of production have developed.

We should also say that this idea that Sweden has always had ethnic homogeneity has zero historical evidence behind it.

Sweden as a whole has always been characterized by different dialects and ethnic groups. In fact, the country was founded when the king of the Swedes tribe (in today’s Mälardalen) conquered and subdued the Götar tribe (in today’s Västergötland).

As it is the advent of the modern Swedish state which is typically of interest, the history of the Swedish tribes is usually not discussed. The ethnic origins of the Swedes are largely considered irrelevant to the Swedish national identity.

Whatever the “culture” of Sweden was, it certainly changed under the influence of later modes of production.

The average worker in Sweden has always had, and always will have, more in common—culturally and in terms of interests—with his class brothers from other countries than with the “culturally similar” bourgeoisie.

Although the constitution departs from historical reality by claiming that the Sami people of the Norwegians are the only indigenous people of Sweden, the fact is that both Sami and Germanic cultures arrived in what is now Sweden at about the same time, hybridizing with prehistoric cultures already present in Scandinavia at the time.

The first wave of migration—following the arrival of the two “indigenous” groups—arrived in Sweden at the end of the Viking Age.

This was due to the end of the Viking tribute system—a system in which Vikings raided, kidnapped, and pillaged or, more commonly, extorted tribute from medieval coastal societies—that often caused considerable upheaval in affected societies.

In response, the rest of Europe was forced to improve naval technology and build stronger fortifications. These advancements in defense ultimately led to the disappearance of the tribute system.

This sealed the fate of Viking seamanship.

It was then that the feudal mode of production was established in the Nordic countries.

However, some feudal norms such as serfdom never took hold north of the province of Scania (in the southern part of the peninsula).

Although the dates are not exactly certain, it was around the time of the Christianization of Sweden that the conquest of Finland began.

While the precise catalyst is not known,  it is certain that it was caused by the abundant harvests of the Medieval Warm Period, around the end of the millennium.

This was also when the Swedes began to move toward Sapmi in the north, while the Germans moved toward the Baltic.

There were multiple motivations for these settlements.

First, the tax advantage for individual settlers:

Christian settlers in pagan Finland received a four-year tax exemption.

Second, the early Swedish state had an imperative to stop pagan incursions from Estonia, Finland, etc.

The development of Sweden’s power, especially the Baltic trade, immensely changed the dynamics of Swedish relations with the continent.

As a result, the first period of voluntary migration to Sweden began in the form of German-speaking merchants interested in the iron ore trade.

This meant the start of the systematic exploitation of the Bergslagen iron ore mine.

This is why German-speakers (specifically, Low German) made up the majority of Stockholm’s inhabitants in 1350.

In 1434, miners, led by Engelbrekt Engelbrektsson, rose up against the Kalmar Union, freeing Sweden from the Danish feudal yoke.

In 1434, miners, led by Engelbrekt Engelbrektsson, rose up against the Kalmar Union, freeing Sweden from the Danish feudal yoke. In the early 16th century, the Hanseatic Germans’ trading monopoly in the Baltic Sea region was broken by the Dutch, ending the influx of North Germans.

The noble Gustavus Vasa continued—in a certain sense—the Engelbrekt rebellion when in 1523 we finally overthrew the Union and declared himself King Gustavus I. Thus, the first hereditary monarchy of Sweden was created.

This was made possible by the alliance Gustavus had established with the German merchant bourgeoisie in Stockholm.

Gustavus I Vasa and his government unified Sweden through reform and expropriation of the Catholic Church, and this state later became a military power under the rule of his sons—in particular, his grandson Gustavus Adolphus.

Thus, the unification of the state and the expansion of the empire caused a second wave of migration.

The empire-building effort was possible mainly because of Finnish peasants from the conquered territories in the east, Dutch merchants, Walloon blacksmiths, and, to a lesser extent, Jews from various professions.

By and large, this situation continued throughout Sweden’s “Age of Greatness” (1611-1721).

Later, especially during industrialization, an emigration of Swedes to the United States began.

Simultaneously, middle class industrialists from Scotland, England, Central Europe, etc also began to immigrate to Sweden.

This influx of investment, among other things, was the basis of Swedish industrial development during this period, a development that continued during the era of imperialism, when Sweden once again became a great power.

Thanks to a steadily growing accumulation of capital, undisturbed by the carnage of the world wars, Sweden had transformed itself from a backward country to a world leader in several industries, especially steel, and with Volvo and Saab for the automobile industry.

Industrial development in Sweden led to significant immigration of workers.

This importation of workers began during the interwar period. However, it was not until after World War II that Sweden began to represent a true melting pot.

In the early days, when economic activity was booming, it was natural for the old Finnish colony, newly independent thanks to Lenin, to lend its proletarians as a labor reserve.

We should note that many Finns worked at the pharmaceutical company Astra AB and in the factories of the vehicle manufacturer Scania in Södertälje.

When there were no more Finns to employ due to the development of Finland itself, the Swedish-Finns (not to be confused with the Swedish-speaking Finns, the former settlers) and the Meänkieli-Tornidals (Finns indigenous to northern Sweden) were joined by a mass of proletarians from all over the world.

Other ethnic groups such as former Yugoslavs, Assyrians, Turks, Greeks, and Italians came to make up a substantial part of Swedish cities in the 1960s.

The latest wave of immigration, said to have begun in 2015, has received particular attention amid Sweden’s extreme media frenzy over the past decade.

However, refugees from the conflicts in the 1990s in the Western Balkans, Turkey, and Iraq should be considered part of the current wave.

Those arriving in Sweden are, as always, proletarians looking for work.

The migration wave of 2015 is not much different from the previous refugee waves of the 1990s:

as all of them came from countries at war.

However, there are two main points of disagreement:

the number of migrants and their young age.

It should also be added that immigration policy since the early 1990s has been a cynical attempt by the right wing of capital to increase the labor reserve army.

In the mid to late 1980s, the Swedish population was expected to decline—immigration, together with the rising birth rate, stopped this.

This cynical import of lower wages was openly declared by the Confederation of Swedish Enterprises at the time.

Since then, however, it has become more fashionable for the right wing to protect the domestic market from “incompatible cultures,” while the left wing of capital, i.e., the Social Democrats and leftists, have taken up arms to defend the previous view of the Confederation of Swedish Enterprises (how the tables are turning!).

Both blocs of capital are united in their sub-goal:

the division of the working class into different but equally controlled camps of the bourgeoisie.

One could feel the backlash simmering beneath the surface against this influx of refugees, especially after then moderate party prime minister Fredrik Reinfeldt said “we must open our hearts [to refugees].”

The Sweden Democrats, who took the baton from the Social Democrats’ slowly but surely declining migration policy which demanded both:

that the border should be a wall against economic migrants and a defense of “Swedishness.” But that is not what we mean by backlash.

Rather, we mean the way in which capital turns from one wing to the other when the quota for the reserve army goes against the interests of the working-class aristocracy, which is represented precisely by the Sweden Democrats.

Being a turncoat is as much a bourgeois political habit as electoral promise, and it is no surprise.

Bourgeois society reaffirms its principle that it has no principles.

Therefore, criticizing the bourgeoisie for not respecting principles makes no sense; the problem is not that the bourgeoisie are amoral, stupid, etc., but that it is the class of Capital.

Talking heads complain that the integration of migrants is doomed to “failure.”

Actually, integration has not failed so much as it has not been attempted.

The lack of integration serves the purpose of having a cheap reserve army, which is highly effective when there is no opportunity to “integrate.”

On the one hand, Capital wants to give out as low a wage as possible, on the other, it demands the passivity of the labor aristocracy. The result is an unintegrated (unorganized), foreign-speaking—in a word, outside—group of the working class.

The consequences for the working class are exacerbated.

The goal from the beginning is to crush and exploit the working class by any means, wherever it can be exploited.

In this respect, integration has been remarkably successful; the working class is sharply divided.

The method of integrating refugees was to first put them all in camps wherever it was possible to build them, where capitalists could extort millions from the state by housing refugees in unworthy housing. We saw this in the infamous case of Bert Karlssons, who made tens of millions of euros by building shoddy housing in Skara.

Later, as tried and tested between the 1960s and 1990s, the plan was to segregate immigrant workers from Swedish-majority workers (majoritetssvenskar) in the suburbs—mainly in the three big cities, Stockholm, Gothenburg and Malmö.

In the Stockholm suburb of Rinkeby, for example, 62.2% of residents were born abroad and 92% have a foreign background (at least one parent born outside Sweden), while in Spånga, on the border with Rinkeby, only 29.4% have a foreign background.

This is also the case in most medium-sized Swedish cities.

Usually the majority of the city is predominantly Swedish, but there are special areas where those who are foreign-born or have a foreign background are a marked majority.

Widespread segregation is not simply an indication of racism, as it is often misinterpreted.

The neighborhoods where immigrant workers and their children make up the majority were once also the neighborhoods where the poorest Swedish workers lived. Sweden has always segregated its inhabitants by class, and today is no different.

However, it is only now, when the poorest have recognizable skin color, that segregation statistics have become apparent to scholars.

The consensus of socialists, leftists, and others—who all agree when it comes to identity politics—seems to be that the class point of view is best left to the International Communist Party.

We are thankful for this privilege.

In the 20th century, Sweden was so class-segregated that Stockholm had 3-4 sociolects.

Today, there are mainly two, Stockholm Swedish and suburban/immigrant Swedish (which, incidentally, should perhaps be classified as a working-class sociolect rather than an immigrant dialect, since it is prevalent among “blue-collar” people, who live where it is spoken regardless of ancestry).

Since the Swedish welfare system was not built for inclusion and cohesion, but to pacify the working class and suppress its more “subversive” elements, it is no wonder that newly arrived workers had difficulty finding a stable place in Swedish society.

Then, with the successful passivization of this welfare state, they began to demolish it, leaving the most disadvantaged to fend for themselves, which again favors capital.

The limping Swedish economy has, since 2008, set the stage for the ruin of not only parts of the petty bourgeoisie, but also of many proletarians. In turn, many proletarians have turned into a vast reserve army. Unemployment, petty crime and gang violence are the results.

This forms the basis for segregated suburbs to become increasingly impoverished and violent.

It is true that violence has increased and that Sweden has unfortunately become an epicenter of criminal networks, both compared to the past and to other Scandinavian countries.

But the figure is greatly exaggerated, because the rate of organized crime is much lower than Russia, Italy, and Turkey, and it is on par with that of Switzerland.

The idea that this has to do with the prior culture of the masses in the suburbs is a lie.

The proletarians in the misery of the suburbs are the product of the very foundations of the society of capital.

In 2023, the number of reported crimes per capita was highest in the Stockholm region, where there were 183 reported crimes per thousand inhabitants.

This is twice as many reported crimes as in the Northern region, which had 109 per capita.

London’s crime statistics, often labeled as a dire situation, show 105.8 crimes in 2023, Berlin’s 141.35, etc, more comparable to Sweden’s national average of 143.

Lethal violence has begun to spread across borders to Norway and Denmark under the auspices of Swedish crime networks.

In Norway, Swedish crime networks are now active in all districts and have been listed as the main threat to the northern district of Troms, although the main crime in Norway so far is mainly drug-related.

Denmark decided to tighten border controls with Sweden after the cross-border crime wave that began in August 2024.

Other crimes have also increased.

Since 1975, the share of drug crimes (+363%), robberies (+193%) and fraud (+242%) has increased, while burglaries (-52%) and vehicle thefts (-78%) have decreased.

The largest increase is in sexual offenses (+529%) and rape (+900%).

The overall increase in crimes since 1975 is +64%.

It is clear that Sweden as a model country is in decline.

Hate crimes have also increased in Sweden in recent years.

Because statistical methods have changed, it is not possible to compare post-2020 statistics with earlier ones, so we will look more closely at the latter rather than the more recent statistics, in the absence of a longer time frame.

Between 2012 and 2018, the number of race-related hate crimes increased from 3,979 to 4,865.

The total number of reported hate crimes was 5,518 and 7,090 respectively, which means that in 2018 the number of racially motivated hate crimes accounted for about 70% of all hate crimes.

Ethnic hatred is not only directed against New Swedes.

It has also become clear that anti-Semitic crimes have increased since the start of the war in the Middle East in October 2023, with statistics showing a 500% increase in reported cases.

Crime has become the most debated political issue, and this has led to a tougher stance by the state on crime, with harsher punishments and more powers—especially arrest and search zones (visitationszoner) and secret wiretapping—given to the police.

These new police powers affect not only criminal networks but also labor organizations. Although the stated target is criminal elements, repression also reaches the class.

One thing that is almost never mentioned by the Swedish media when it comes to crime is the growing poverty in Sweden.

Although throughout the country there is only one percentage point more people living in relative poverty than in 2011, this poverty has spread to more areas, especially where immigrants have moved in.

To use the examples of Rinkeby and Spånga again, in 2021 45% of Rinkeby residents were living in relative poverty, while in Spånga it was only 7%, even though relative poverty in Rinkeby decreased by 8% points between 2011 and 2021.

The same poverty figure is repeated in most areas where those born abroad or with a foreign background constitute a large number or the majority.

The crime problem in Sweden should be seen as an effect of the united bourgeoisie’s offensive against the working class. Wherever there are reports of serious crime we find the most ruthless abandonment of the proletariat. It is the capitalist mode of production that creates misery in the suburbs, not the “culture of the suburbs”—this is its consequence. The two sides of the bourgeoisie are never interested in solving the real problems of the class, neither are the left or the socialists. They no longer talk about structural reforms, and when they did it was a cynical way of establishing the subordination of the working class. The line of the social democrats is indistinguishable from that of the moderates, there are the same harsh penalties and police powers. They are two sides of the same state.