ИММИГРАЦИОННЫЕ ЗАБОТЫ ШВЕЦИИ

Abstract

For many decades, Sweden was firmly committed to the open doors policy towards immigration. Until the 1990s the immigration had come mostly from Christian countries and favoured economic performance due to its mainly labour nature. Afterwards the asylum seekers from the Middle East and Africa have become prevailing in its structure. Therefore, mostly labour migration was replaced by mostly asylum migration. Sweden received a record 163,000 asylum seekers in 2015. That was the highest per-capita rate in Europe. Processing and supporting such large numbers of migrants is costly for the state budget. Besides the fact that the integration of Muslims has turned out to be immensely difficult, an increasing criminality in the society has been observed. The theory and practice of multiculturalism are now considered as unsuccessful. The riots in Rinkeby (2010, 2013 and 2017) as well as in other predominantly migrant-populated suburbs and, at last, the terrorist attack performed by an Uzbekistan native in Stockholm on April 7, 2017 when four people were killed, manifested the failure of multiculturalism. The migrant problem has come to the fore, sparked new disagreements and an unprecedented for the last decades discord in the Swedish society. Along with this, a search for a new integration model for people with diverse cultural backgrounds has been intensified. The Swedes’ general attitude to immigrants is considered to be the most benevolent in Europe. However, since 2015 it has worsened. And what is especially important is that the analysis of the Swedes’ stance on specific issues of immigration uncovers their much more critical relation to it. It means that the government immigration policy has to be restricted. Otherwise, the electoral influence of the right populist Sweden Democrats’ party will keep rising which is fraught with serious social and political perturbations.&nbsp