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In a society, how much influence should citizens have over who their neighbours are?
The mass immigration into Sweden has caused complications across all sectors of society, just like elsewhere in Europe. Not needing to mention criminality and welfare problems, the social friction experienced in many European cities is one of the most fascinating and complex issues that define our times, as much as most politicians and media wish not to acknowledge it.
It is taken for granted that multicultural societies have a lower degree of social trust. The phenomenon of various cultural groups self-segregating has been demonstrated throughout history, but has been defiantly been described as a failure on behalf of society, and the state, by many forces in modern Western politics. This type of rhetoric usually accompanies acknowledgements about the failures of the prevailing migration policy. In practice, it shifts the responsibility away from the politicians and onto civil society and the citizens themselves.
People, regardless of their background, have a right to congregate with whomever they want. The state does not dictate friendships and social relations, and neither does it dictate where people are allowed to, by their own means, buy a home or rent their apartment. This underpins the individual freedom that has been one of the cornerstones of modern Western society since the abolition of serfdom in the Early Modern Era. And for a long time, the centre left evoked this right when the problem of immigrated parallel societies was pointed out.
Is the solution to forcibly mix the population?
In countries that have had a recent history of more or less disorderly reception of asylum seekers, such as Sweden, the consequences of the freedom for migrants to settle wherever they want have been debated. But before the problems of uncontrolled mass immigration became too apparent, the left more often came out in defense of the freedom to freely settle than not. This was rooted in the open leftist commitment to multiculturalism. The centre right was putting forward ideas about controlled distribution of migrants, while not necessarily opposing their entry into the country.
Today, the major divide concerning the internal distribution of migrants has been turned on its head; the Swedish Social Democrats are actively pushing for systematic redistribution of migrants, or expressed in more technical and obscure terms, socioeconomically vulnerable groups, to promote greater settlement in areas where there are fewer immigrants – such as largely Swedish middle class neighbourhoods. This policy, vaguely expressed by the party on a national level but put in practice on municipal levels, is executed by building rental apartments on a large scale in areas characterised by family villas, by utilising undeveloped space between houses. The expectation is then that the apartments are reserved for new arrivals, asylum seekers, or prioritised to groups moving away from immigrant-dominated areas. The policy has been derided as “tvångsblandning”, or literally “forced mixing” by critics on the right.
The right, on the other hand, has increasingly embraced the conservative rhetoric that “segregation”, which for a long time has been described as a societal ill and nothing else, is voluntary and inevitable. This coincides with more reasonable views on immigration, of course. The root of the problem with immigrant crime is the historical mistake that so many people were given entry and residence permits with little or no verification of their identity and long-term legal status. Segregation is not a driving factor in criminality, as evidence speaks to the fact that criminality is connected to certain groups (commonly people with at best loose asylum claims, and at worst out-right illegal status), not to people who live in segregation.
When the right wing has progressively managed to decouple genuine social problems, mainly crime, from the fact that people naturally tether to their own in-group, the left wing has increasingly made it its main mission to end segregation. In left-wing communication, immigration is almost always positive, but segregation is always negative. The general outline of the two camps is that the left wants to engage in social engineering through resettlement, while the right wants to keep the peace and solve immigration-derived problems by tackling crime and deporting illegals.
The result of a leftist political project that aims to shape the demographic make-up of entire neighbourhoods, or cities, is probably not the end of segregation. Such efforts will be running counter to well-documented human needs to congregate with family, countrymen, and cultural kin, and will effectively only be kicking the can further down the road as the “problem” locates somewhere else.
Even removing the politically charged aspect of forcibly mixing Swedes with immigrants, the large-scale housing project that the Social Democrats are planning is potentially massively unpopular anyway. Land development is one of the most controversial every-day political issues, with the way it affects people’s lives and their local area. Already many municipalities have their fair share of ongoing conflicts between authorities and local residents, concerning the clearing of woodlands and urban consolidation. Regardless of who the cheap rental apartments are dedicated to, this brutal approach will be met with a lot of resistance.
Is Sweden segregated for real?
The very word “segregation” might not be suitable to explain the ‘socio-economic’ situation in Sweden and other European countries in the same boat. Even if immigrants are concentrated in certain areas of cities, European urban areas are generally well-connected, and the social interactions between groups that the left wants to engineer through deliberate settling policy are already commonplace on public transport, in schools and work places, and in commercial areas. This aspect is commonly glossed over, and segregation is instead represented by the mere presence of immigrant-dominated residential areas.
In Sweden, the word “segregation” also carries the connotation that it is politically enforced, with examples such as the historical segregation of African Americans in the United States, or the Apartheid regime in South Africa being subconsciously evoked. This is a rhetoric employed particularly by certain radical voices on the left, who argue that politicians have wilfully concentrated immigrants in certain areas to keep them out of the public. In reality, as pointed out by the right wing, the ‘cluster’ tendency of immigrant communities is not rooted in antagonism from either party, but a result of basic human psychology to stick close to those one knows best.
The strength of the word used to describe the phenomenon may thus amplify it as a problem. It must be conceded that it is very difficult to succinctly explain this group psychology while avoiding negatively charged terminology.
How does one solve the problem?
The question is if segregation is a problem that needs to be solved. At its core it is a very theoretical issue. Focus should perhaps rather be on solving practical issues, such as criminality, and other problematic behaviours exhibited by people from segregated communities. If the negative elements of immigrant communities are marginalised through effective policing, education, and enforcement of migration laws, the supposed problem of groups concentrating in certain areas likely disappears. Eliminating the threats to life and property that are associated with certain immigrant-dominated areas will make them safer for everybody, and the social barriers that exist between natives and immigrants will subsequently likely disappear over time.
The Social Democrats’ “forced mixing” will only deepen suspicion between groups, and towards the state. Knowing cultural segregation is an inherent phenomenon in society, it will likely also only serve to uproot the culture of homogeneous residential areas, as Swedes who have willingly chosen not to live adjacent to immigrants will only pack their bags and move.
Immigrants who become subject to this leftist project will also be left feeling more like pawns without free will – not to mention, there are plenty of immigrants who grew up in areas plagued by crime and social problems, but who educated and worked themselves out of that outsidership, and now live among Swedes in the very areas that the Social Democrats claim are “segregated” from immigrants. Simply put, “forced mixing” will upset the active choices that immigrants as well as Swedes have made. Nobody is a winner, except the party’s social engineers who will never be running out of work.