How is your part of the world doing (both current and future prospects) compared to how it was 30/40 years ago? Please say where you are in the world.
Edit- Thank you everyone for commenting. It has been very interesting for me and hopefully for others. If you are just coming to this post please still comment I am still reading them.
It’s a really delicate question.
I think the major failings have been that we have allowed a large part of the immigrants to move into neighborhoods with exclusively other immigrants, thus not being exposed to Swedish culture or values. This ties in with learning Swedish, which obviously is central to integration. This has become a vicious circle where entire suburbs can consist of immigrants. An example is where teachers in kindergarten speak poor Swedish and the kids also have poor Swedish. In many cases they don’t share a mother tounge and the result isn’t great. I get that you want to live with other people who speak your language, but the divide is too big in my opinion.
Then there’s the discussion about cultural values which I don’t think I know enough about to speak much about. But we can see that there are several groups that don’t want to be a real part of society, and that’s clearly a problem.
Thank you so much for your thoughtful replies. I could ask your questions about this till you run away, but I will leave it for now.
Let me just leave you with this though. Looking at other counties that have a longer history of large immigration. It seems to take 2 to 3 generations for immigrants to feel native. Maybe a little unconditional acceptance and patience will help this along.
I hope the best for you and your country.
Thank you!
We have several groups who have assimilated: Iranians, Finns, Baltics. Thank you for the hopeful words :)