Sober on New Year's Eve? Surely you jest!

You've gotta love surveys. Whether it's the oh-so-scientific surveys conducted on newspapers' websites ("What party do you plan on voting for?" asked DN.se, the results of which can immediately be deemed completely pointless) or the ones we used to get in our student post boxes at Olaf from clearly naive psychology students ("How much money do your parents make?" one asked in a survey that was about how we were paying our tuition, without any question about whether or not our parents were actually contributing).

A survey on DN.se's homepage today asks "Hur ska du ta dig hem på nyårsafton?" (How do you plan on getting home on New Year's Eve?). The choices offered me are taxi, bus/train, on foot or bike, hiring a "fyllechaffis" (a person to drive you because you're drunk yourself), I'm staying home, or other.

The possibility of driving oneself or riding with a friend is apparently not an option, as staying sober (at least without getting paid for it) is clearly unthinkable...

Gender Equality

Another example of an article where the author throws out an inaccurate generalization about the U.S. in order to support her otherwise pretty shaky thesis: The Economic Crisis can Bring us More Equality.

The program I studied in order to get my Swedish teaching degree was called Aspirantutbildningen, and was specifically for immigrated academics who wanted to become certified teachers in Sweden. The majority of the participants were women, though not overwhelmingly so (a higher percentage of our class was men than in the corresponding teaching program for "natives"). We came from quite a variety of different cultures, from the U.S. and England to several from Iraq, Syria and Bosnia. We had lived in Sweden for varying amounts of time, from 2 years in my case and the case of the girl from England (who is now one of my dearest friends) to 14 years or more for others. Some of my classmates were in their early twenties, and the two ladies from Russia were in their 50s.

We got along with each other very well, and it was a fun class to be in. We often bristled at our classes about democracy and equality and tolerance, though -- especially the "Democracy and value questions" class that was mandatory for us but not even offered for the Swedish teaching students. When we had a visiting scholar come to our class and lecture on the subject of gender equality (jämställdhet), we were in fairly unanimous agreement: her lecture was shit, and we were sick of the Swedish idea of what gender equality means.

We took this up with our teacher afterwards, and got into a long discussion with him about the same example that came up and was hotly debated (with most of us firmly on the one side and the lecturer, and later our male teacher, on the other side) during the lecture: it's okay that most teachers are women. It's okay if there are more women that want to stay home with their kids than there are men who want to do so, and it's okay that there are more male CEOs than female CEOs. It's okay -- and this is where we really made people cover their ears and scream "OH NO THEY DI'IN!" -- for men and women to want different things and to believe that biology plays a roll in those desires. Feminism, according to us, is the view that everyone, regardless of gender, should be able to make all these choices for themselves, and without feeling ashamed of their choices, and that the Swedish view of gender equality was therefore, ironically enough, often at odds with the true spirit of feminism.

That was our side, of course. The other side was to tell us that we just THINK we chose to be teachers and that we would like to work part time in order to be home with our children, but that we're really brain-washed by society and don't know what's best for us. It honestly never ceases to blow my mind that telling me I shouldn't be what I want to be because I don't know what's best for me sounds like feminism to some people.

Anyway, the point is that our teacher -- who I liked don't get me wrong -- was baffled by our attitude, an attitude that seemed to him to be a classroom full of foreign women who were just dying to subject themselves to the big nasty patriarchy. He saw it as a sign that we didn't understand that we were "living in a man's world" and that there was still work to be done. This is, as I understood it later upon private discussion with him, his reason for telling us a rather depressing story about a 13-year old girl from Motala who was liqoured up and raped by some adults and about the legal system's subsequent appallingly stupid and indifferent response to the incident.

So, the reason I start with this rather long discussion about this experience from my university days is so I can make the disclaimer: I am in no way under the illusion that any society, even the U.S. or Sweden, is the utopian ideal of gender equality and that I don't live in what is still "a man's world."

I do not deny that at least one very good point is brought up in the article: the fact that Volvo has had to lay off a bunch of people has been splashed across the media day in and day out and has launched floods of politicians into action. The fact that Coop is going to lay off 1000 people has not been treated nearly as seriously. The article is trying to say that this is because auto workers are mostly men and that grocery store workers are mostly women.

I'm sure there is truth in this. However, my first bit of devil's advocacy on that point is that we can't go around blaming only our politicians for the inconsistency. I had NO IDEA whatsoever that Coop was laying off people, which means the "fourth branch of government" -- the news media -- can take credit for seriously dropping the ball as far as responding equally to the two different incidents. I also think it's a far less fair comparison than the editorial writer suggests, partly because she has inaccurately said that 1300 people have been given pink slips at Volvo (adding up the several waves of "varsel" that have come out from Volvo gives a number much higher than 1300*), and partly because what we're talking about here is the possible bigger picture of both Volvo and Saab completely going under and all the domino-effect ramifications that can have for other industries and the Swedish economy. No one is concerned that some layoffs from Coop are going to shut down the entire business of buying and selling food in Sweden, and rightfully so. It may be an economic crisis, but we're still a spoiled western country -- we're not going to stop buying food, for crying out loud.

The main point of the editorial is to discuss whether or not an economic crisis will help or hurt the cause of gender equality. After first discussing what the author feels is the more obvious theoretical result -- that an economic crisis will force us into a sort of "panic" or "comfort" mode where gender stereotypes are embraced more tightly -- she then goes on to point out that the opposite can be the case, and gives examples of how many of gender equality's most important steps forward came during times of crisis in the 1900s. To show that gender equality can be "harmed" by good economic times, she says, "Alldeles nyss rådde, mitt i galnaste högkonjunktur, värsta hemmafruvurmen på decennier." Translated: "Just recently, right in the middle of the craziest of economic booms, we had the worst 'housewife craze' in decades." To show that gender equality can be "helped" by bad economic times, she says: "När män blir arbetslösa kan man tänka sig att deras hittills deltidsarbetande fruar kräver att få gå upp på heltid." Translated: When men lose their jobs, you can imagine that their part-time working wives demand to be able to work full time."

Again, while I have no problem with the author's basic thesis -- that an economic crisis can surely be both positive and negative for gender equality -- I bristle at the illustrative examples she uses (and the ironically chosen words) as to what is equality and what is not. I can't help but ask for the fifty-eleventh time what is so horrible about being a housewife if that's what you choose to be. Similarly, what is so horrible about working part time, and why on earth would a woman have to "demand" to her husband that he "allow" her to work full time? Why this 1950s assumption that a woman who works part time or stays at home does so because her husband has put her in her place? That she's sitting at home longing to work full time and that she requires a full-blown world crisis in order to have that opportunity? In a country where the men are constantly getting lambasted for not staying home enough, why is it so impossible to accept that a woman might choose to stay home and that she might consider the very possibility a freedom -- and consider working full-time during an economic crisis an unfortunate necessity rather than an opportunity? Why is it that the mere fact that women make a certain choice more often than men makes that choice an admirable one for men to make but a shameful one for women to make?

Now we come to the obligatory false generalization about America that seemingly has to be thrown into every editorial about society in order to sooth some sort of underlying little brother complex. After a paragraph that strikes me as both self-satisfied glorification of Swedes and Sweden, saying that Swedes are simply excellent at everything that's tolerant and modern while simultaneously missing the irony in the proposal to force immigrants to sign a contract stating that they will be just as Swedishly modern and tolerant, the author writes: "Kan det vara så enkelt som en fråga om var någonstans man hittar sin trygghet. Det är ju tryggheten vi kräver i oroliga tider och amerikanerna hittar sin trygghet i en bred mansfamn. Då får kvinnan krympa så att hon får plats där." Translated: "Could it be a matter simply of where we find security? It's security that we demand in uncertain times and Americans find their security in the protective arms of masculinity. Women have to shrink in order to fit in."

As usual, this mention of the U.S. comes seemingly out of left field -- it comes from nowhere and goes nowhere and just seems to be a strange mini-departure from the article's main argument. This goes hand-in-hand with the other "as usual": nothing is offered to support this wild generalization, which is understandable if it was just thrown in as a sort of egotistical verbal masturbation.

The author clearly holds to the definition of feminism and equality that claims we would have more of both if more CEOs and business executives were women, more nurses and teachers were men, and if all housework and child-rearing were shared so fanatically equally that number of square inches of floor mopped and grass cut were 50/50 to within the breadth of a human hair. This means I can't help but assume that she has no more experience with America than what she gets from her secret habit of uncritically viewing Jerry Springer and Ricky Lake. Otherwise she would know that the divide between "women's occupations" and "men's occupations" is not nearly as drastic in the U.S. and that women tend to go back to work quite quickly after having a baby in the States. Sure, the reason women go back to work right away and chuck their kids into daycare is because there isn't the almost year and a half of paid parental leave in the States that we're blessed with in Sweden, but I think Swedes need to stop providing that opportunity and simultaneously bitching and moaning that women are using it -- you can't have your frickin' cake and eat it, too.

Am I saying that women and men are more equal in the States than they are in Sweden? No. What I'm saying is that I don't believe there's more equality in Sweden, either; that there are several attitudes and laws in place in the States with the very purpose of securing more gender equality (for instance, that a woman who stays at home earns Social Security in the same amount as her husband) that would be called "kvinnofällor" -- traps for women -- in Sweden. That there are clearly several different ways to define what makes men and women equal. That you can be practical and actually do things to solve actual diseases -- like the fact that women earn less for the same work than men -- or you can bang your head against the wall trying to patch up the resulting symptoms of those diseases that you, arguably mistakenly, perceive as problems -- like the fact that women use more of the state-provided parental leave than men do or the fact that more women will choose to stay home with their children than men.

The simple fact of the matter is that I rarely felt limited by my gender before moving to Sweden. The times that I have felt manipulated or discriminated against because of my gender have come pretty exclusively from people who think they're "encouraging me" or helping me "realize my potential". I spent two miserable years as a PhD student in mathematics because everyone that I ever looked up to was totally right about my possessing the talent to be a professional mathematician but totally blind to the fact that I didn't WANT to be one. It was such a "waste" for a person as smart or talented as me to become "just a teacher" that my desire to teach was met with an assumption that I must be joking or being sarcastic; it was half-subtly suggested that such a frivolous choice would be a let-down to women everywhere. But my worst experiences with being told what was right or wrong for me to do as a woman came after I had moved to this country, and in an eerie echo from arguments about why women shouldn't be allowed to vote or to learn how to read, I was told it was because someone else knows better than I do when it comes to what's best for me and what I really, actually want out of life. I understand that in its infancy feminism was about women getting jobs and the same jobs as men hold. But there comes a point where it's time for feminism to grow up and return to its very axioms: that every individual should have full and exclusive control over their own life choices, regardless of their gender. That more mature brand of feminism clearly hasn't come in this county. So I don't think it's time for us as Swedes to have yet another session of patting ourselves on the back and saying "We're just so awesome and equal and tolerant and open to new ideas, which is why ALL OTHER IDEAS ARE WRONG!"

---

*A quick search finds:
Sept. 30: Volvo anläggninsmaskiner "varslar" 500 employees (a warning that 500 people will be laid off)
Oct. 8: 3,300 employees at Volvo personvagnar
Oct. 23: 850 employees at Volvo Construction Equipment
Nov. 11: 900 employees at Volvo Powertrain

Boiling Point

Okay, now that I've started vent-blogging about stories in the Swedish news, it's getting difficult to stop.

I could easily write about what bullshit is coming from the Swedish Government (translation of Government with a big G for my parliamentarily challenged fellow Americans: the Administration) in the form of a recent pre-legislative study about gambling and who should be allowed to provide the service. But I'll leave Fredrik to roll his eyes prosaically at that one.

I could snort derisively at the fact that, according to this article on DI.se, Näringslivets etiska råd mot könsdiskriminerande reklam (Translation: Swedish Commerce's Ethical Council Against Sexual Discrimination in Advertising, *pant pant*) is... well, I don't know what they're doing, because I don't get who they are or what authority they have, but the long and short of it is that they're bitching about a Coca-Cola Zero TV ad that they think is sexist because it gives a tongue-in-cheek representation of the "perfect break-up," where the girl who's just been dumped says "Sure, no reason to stick to me where there are so many pretty girls out there. Call me when you want to have a good time," and then the guy walks away with 4 other hot girls. They complain that this is a blatant feeding of the stereotype that men are more interested in purely sexual relationships than women, and that the hot women are "scantily clad". I could roll my eyes and complain about how sexist it is that it's ALWAYS women in mascara ads, and point out that Magnum ice cream bars are marketed with TV ads that contain scantily clad women, but really, doesn't this one sort of take care of itself?

But the following article cannot be left without comment: Fetus Aborted by Mistake. Here's the short translation: a 28-year old woman sought treatment at a hospital in Stockholm because she was having trouble getting pregnant ("involuntary childlessness"). The doctor found that she has "cell changes" in her uterus and therefore performed a D&C. He apparently didn't realize that she actually was pregnant, and that during the D&C he scraped out the fetus. The National Board of Health and Welfare is gravely critical of the doctor, thinking he ought to have done a pregnancy test and paid attention to the patient when she mentioned that her period was 2 weeks overdue. They demand better routines and documentation.

But, jaw-droppingly, the last sentence in the article reads: "Men det vetenskapliga rådet på Socialstyrelsen tror inte att det inträffade inneburit några men för patienten och att hon bör kunna bli gravid igen."

Translation: "But the scientific panel at The National Board does not feel that the incident caused any injury for the patient and that she ought to be able to become pregnant again."

I want to point out that the word "men" that I've translated to injury suggests more of a general or even mental injury rather than purely a physical one. As in, it's the word that you would use if you said something liked "Walking in on his parents' bondage session scarred Billy for life."

I'm sorry, but what can I say? The only thing that seems to want to creep out of my dropped jaw is "FUCK. YOU."

Perhaps I'm reading too much into this here; perhaps this scientific panel's job is merely to state the purely practical medical facts, and perhaps by "men" they DID mean physical injury, i.e. physical chance to get pregnant again. But even in that case they're not being entirely serious, because having experienced an aborted or lost pregnancy, especially with a D&C involved, does actually change one thing or another for the woman's next pregnancy. Since she was seeking help for difficulty in getting pregnant, I think it's safe to assume she's going to want to be pregnant again. And believe me, after my experience, I've chatted with enough women who have had miscarriages and D&Cs and read enough about all the things that can go wrong during pregnancy to know that there's at least a slightly bigger chance of certain complications (infection and scarring that can cause infertility, pre-term labor and placenta acretia during a subsequent pregnancy, for example) if you've previously been pregnant, had an abortion, miscarried, or had a D&C.

But I can't help but read this sentence as a dismissal of even the psychological aspects of any harm that might have been done to the woman. I'm sorry, that brings me back to my original reaction. Fuck them right in the ear. People who know me are well aware of the fact that I'm a supporter of abortion rights, so they will not take the meaning of my following sentences incorrectly. I will say for the hundredth time this year that the ability to have a new baby does not erase the fact that the baby you already had inside you has died. A wanted baby is not just raw materials. In this case, the baby didn't just die because of a cruel and unexplainable fluke of nature, but because of human negligence. You have a woman who clearly WANTED a child, had also presumably required a long time in order to become pregnant, and then that was taken away from her because some idiots shouldn't be trusted with a white coat and a stethoscope.

I will forever see red whenever I think of what happened to me in the emergency room when I lost our "Beiron" and will always fantasize about finding that nurse and screaming at her about the pain I will carry with me for the rest of my life because of her. But at least I can always remind myself -- though I do not gain much comfort from it and do not feel it makes her actions any more excusable -- that her actions are not what caused our baby to die. In the case described in the article, I just have no words. Except of course for one last "Jebus on a scooter, fuck that doctor with a chainsaw" for good measure.

Suspicion Confirmed

A more thorough article about the school starting time study can be found at CNN: Falling asleep in class? Blame biology.

This article confirms my suspicion that we're talking about an earlier starting time than is typical at Swedish high school. The Kentucky school's original start time was 7:30 am, and another school in Minneapolis that had tried later start times originally started the school day at 7:15.

The article also suggests that the explanation for the improvement is the one I labeled as number 3 -- a biological factor regarding how teenagers produce melatonin. But that forces me to repeat the fact that the possible applications of this knowledge in Sweden are either a very short school day in the winter, switching from a summer to a winter break, or just accepting the fact that we live in a dark hell hole in the winter where people are tired all day no matter how much they sleep.

On another note, the article makes me feel like I've been cheated out of the proper melatonin/aging pattern. I had no problem getting out of bed for a 6:24 am school start when I was 16, only to later come home for a short break before going to a 6-hour cashiering shift at 3 pm. These days 3 pm is more likely to be the start of nap time, despite the fact that I lethargically ooze out of bed at 8 am most days. Ahh, to be a young whipper-snapper again...

Sleeping In

Another article from DN.se: Sleeping In Reduces Accidents.

The headline of the article is a bit misleading since, while the article does mention that a study of middle and high school students in Kentucky showed a decrease in traffic accidents for the kids involved, the main focus of both the study and the article was the fact that starting school one hour later led to more kids getting 8 hours of sleep a night and less tiredness in the classroom.

I remember hearing of a similar study when I was in high school myself, and I also remember that my reaction was the one mentioned in the article: if we're allowed to start school one hour later, then we'll just go to bed later, and nothing will be solved. I probably also was in the group of people that felt that getting up early was character-building for us youngins.

I don't know what to say today about the character-building part. I was a great student and it was difficult to get me to stay home from school even when I was nursing some sort of half-fatal lung infection, or that day I nearly broke my neck playing baseball in the rain in gym class (I had a math test I didn't want to miss!) -- and yet, nowadays I have difficulty dragging my ass out of bed to get to work at 9 am. So THAT much character couldn't have been built by the fact that our school day started at 7:22.

But it is that very fact -- that our school day started at 7:22 -- that makes me extremely skeptical in the face of the conclusion of the article. "Det är högst sannolikt att vi skulle uppnå lika goda effekter i Sverige med en senareläggning av skoldagen. Nu får ju inte svenska 16-åringar köra bil, så effekten här skulle snarare ses i en minskad trötthet och bättre funktionsförmåga i skolan, säger Torbjörn Åkerstedt." Translated: Torbjörn Åkerstedt, a professor in behavioral science, says it's "highly likely" that starting school later in the day would be beneficial to Swedish youths and their education.

The school day at the Swedish high school where I taught for 2 years started at 8:15 am. I don't know how it was at the test school in Kentucky, but my school day in high school started at 7:22 am. That's when the first bell rang, and the butts were supposed to be in those homeroom seats. Depending on what courses you choose to study, some of us started at 6:24 am, although that was voluntary masochism on our part. As far as I know, the 8:15 start is quite normal compared to other high schools in this area, and our 7:22 am start was quite normal for schools in the Twin Cities area.

The point is that it's very possible that most Swedish schools already begin their day one hour later than the schools in the named study. This begs that question -- what is it that makes the later start work better, and does it really translate to a similar improvement in Sweden if Swedish schools already start their days later?

It seems to me that the possible explanations for the improvement are:

1. The benefit is independent of time of day, being instead a result of the relatively later school start.
   
2. The benefit is NOT independent of time of day, but is rather a result of social factors and influences from surrounding society.
   
3. The benefit is not independent of time of day, but is rather a result of biological factors.

So what I mean in case number one is this: it wouldn't matter what time the school day started -- we would see the same increase in the kids' effectiveness and wakefulness and the same decrease in number of car accidents regardless of whether the start of the school day was shifted from 7 am to 8 am or from 8 am to 9 am. But if the number of kids who get 8 hours of sleep goes up from 36% to 50% (the benefit stated in the article) regardless of whether they're starting school at 8 am or 9 am, then obviously the average time at which the kids go to bed is directly correlated with the time they have to get up in the morning. That would seem to suggest that the bedtimes would eventually slide later and later after the change and that the benefits would therefore be only temporary.

What do I mean by the second case then? I mean that the specific time of day IS important -- that is, that you would see more or less benefits at the school that shifted from 7 am to 8 am than at the school that shifted from 8 am to 9 am, and that the underlying reason is social and societal factors such as when adults tend to go to work or when people typically eat dinner. But this is where the fact that the Swedish school day already has a later start than an American school day comes into play. If it is the mere fact that school starts at 8 am that works, then it ought to already be working in Sweden.

The same goes for case 3, in which it is the time of day that matters, but that it is biological rather than surrounding social factors that make it work. My argument on this point is similar to in point 2 -- that the Swedish school day already does start later -- but with the added issue of the vastly different sunrise and sunset times in Sweden. After all, if the benefits of starting school later are based on biological factors that are wholly independent of social calendar norms, then it must be the sun that's behind it all. But if you check out sunrise and sunset times in Kentucky and then compare them to those in Sweden, you'd be forced to conclude that the only thing for it is a school day of 11 am to 2 pm during the Swedish winter in order for there to be any hope of an open eye or two in the classroom. If this is the case, than I CAN actually buy that starting school at 9:30 am in Sweden would give about the same levels of sleep and wakefulness as starting at 8:30 am in Kentucky, without it being a matter merely of changeable habit. But then we're clearly looking at the wrong solution -- instead of starting the school day later, we should be changing the school YEAR. Summers in school, and winters off, would obviously be of more benefit than just shifting the existing school day one hour later.

Wouldn't THAT be popular! ;)

Integration

So, C# course over, weekend here -- thank god -- back to the business at hand. Integration.

So the study I linked in my last post -- Refugees Integrate Quicker if Allowed to Choose Own Residence -- shows that immigrants to Sweden integrate with Swedish society more quickly if they are allowed to choose for themselves where they will live. This will come as a shock to the "red-green" side of Swedish politics -- the socialist and far-left parties who have had power in Sweden for most of the last 100 years but who were kicked out of power by the liberal and moderate parties (read: Sweden's right wing) in 2006. Like in so many other cases, they believe that beautiful, symmetrical statistics are the solution to everything; to them, making sure immigrants are spread out over the country as much as possible -- and more importantly, forced to blend with Swedes rather than others from their home country -- was as obvious a goal unto itself and a solution to all the world's ills as making sure all workplaces have exactly 50% female employees.

To a person who has moved to Sweden from another country, it comes as absolutely no surprise that the integration process actually proceeds more quickly and smoothly if the immigrant is given the freedom to choose where they want to live, even if (ESPECIALLY if!) this means they ends up living with their own relatives and friends from their home country.

It's strange that this isn't obvious to a people that easily break into the top 10 for world's most reserved and shy. They imagine that immigrants will more quickly learn Sweden's language, customs, values, etc., if they have Swedish neighbors both to the left and to the right, as if people in this country go around chatting with their neighbors on a regular basis. In reality, people who merely say hello to their neighbors in this country tend to cause said neighbor to start walking on the other side of the street and casting about suspicious looks. And if Swedes aren't known for sparking up a friendly chat with Mr. Lars Gustafsson on the street, you can bet your savings that they're DEFINITELY not the types to strike up a friendly chat with Mr. Akhmed Mohammed. Perhaps the typical Swede who holds to this theory thinks "Well, if I moved to China, I'd go out and try to talk to people!" Perhaps you would. But a Swede moving to China is not the same thing as a Somali or an Arab moving to Sweden. If Lars Gustafsson moves to China, I can guarantee he hasn't done it as a refugee, and I'll even give you 95% confidence that he had a job lined up before he got there. Neither is Lars going to convince me that he will quickly learn Chinese or stop pining after knäckebröd. And if Lars has another comparison for me, one that involves him moving to a place any less exotic than China (I can just HEAR his story about his year in U.S. America on this tip of his tongue), then I don't want to hear it. Lars, you're embarrassing yourself.

The idea behind "Ankeborg doesn't have many immigrants -- perfect, we'll send this family of refugees there!" becomes more silly when you imagine Mr. Mohammed trying to find a job. A job is, after all, pretty much the very keystone of integration, if not in first place then an extremely close second to learning Swedish. Do the supporters of this theory of "residence quotas" or whatever you might call it imagine that it's easier to get a job if we send him to a place where the people aren't used to immigrants? Perhaps they imagine that Swedes react to new faces and accents by thinking "Wow, how cool! We have to hire him!" but then they've never met themselves. Perhaps Ankeborg doesn't have jack when it comes to industries that Mr. Mohammed is educated to work in? Not that Sweden gives a crap about what Mr. Mohammed is educated to do; he will be told that his foreign education is worthless and that he needs to redo it at a Swedish university in order for us to believe he knows anything -- and they think it's who his neighbors are that are helping or hindering his integration! -- but then the next problem is that Ankeborg doesn't have a college where Mr. Mohammed -- who probably has an advanced degree in nuclear physics -- can sit and learn about basic math and chemistry and feel degraded and disrespected.

No, the reasons that people from the same country tend to congregate in the same cities and housing areas is no more strange than the fact that urban places tend to contain more homosexuals and liberals and people with university educations; it's no more strange than the fact that almost every single one of my neighbors has a civil engineer's degree and works within 200 meters of my own workplace.

But the real problem, as is clear in the article, is not actually what city the immigrant lives in, who his neighbors are, etc., but whether or not he lives with his family. I get the idea behind this theory -- they see the foreign family as a crutch or an influence that is at odds with learning to speak Swedish or socializing with Swedes. Again, aside from the skepticism I've already described, I think it's a lack of imagination and an embracing of a widespread misunderstanding of how people learn languages that is behind this theory. The only thing achieved by immersing an already vulnerable person in a new language and a new environment without the benefit of a social support network is frustration and depression, and a frustrated, depressed person thinks that giving up looks very attractive. I don't think you can pretend that that kind of social support network can be provided by strangers that don't know your language and that represent everything you're frustrated and depressed about. In contrast, a person who moves here from another country and moves in with family and friends that have more experience with the country have an extremely valuable resource at their fingertips: people that they trust and that can translate not only words but even all aspects of society for them, comparatively and on exactly the level they understand. Just like the fact that a Swede can be the absolute worst teacher of the Swedish language and a recently taught foreigner can be the best, an integrated family member is the best possible ambassador for the immigrant's new country, and a native Swede's word ("Seriously, our country rocks") and experience ("But you have to take a kölapp... you know, a kölapp? Don't they have kölapps in your country? How odd.") mean quite little.

People who know about my situation might say, hey wait, you integrated really well, and you moved in with a Swede! Yes, I did. But I figure that the red-greens aren't suggesting that Ahkmed should actually move IN with a Swede. Plus, Fredrik isn't just a Swede, he's also my family, and a fluent speaker of American English. So he fits into both categories. And given that we've always spoken exclusively English at home, he fits far more into the "family" category than the "Swede" category. And as my English-speaking "crutch," he was vital in my successful integration. While I was learning Swedish, I always had someone that I could ask "How do I say this word in Swedish?" I always had someone to explain what I was reading or seeing on TV or what strange letters I got in the mail from Landstinget were about. I had someone who could help me make friends and be the "middle man" between me and the scary new world that I lived in. I had someone who fought for me when I was unfairly rejected from the course at the university that I had to study in order to become a teacher here. He supported me financially so that I could focus full-time on finishing that education, learning the language, and getting a job. No number of random Grade A Authentic Swedes surrounding me as neighbors, shop cashiers, co-workers, classmates, etc., could have done the job that he did with me. And if the fact that I melted in just fine despite living with English-speaking family isn't enough, then I ought to point out that my first 4 years here also had me surrounded by other immigrants in other ways -- in my Swedish course and my Teaching Program for Immigrants -- and in an environment where I spoke only my native language -- a year of English studies to round off my teaching degree.

Of course, whether or not I've integrated well is a subject that can be debated about 50 different ways. This is mostly because I don't think Swedes tend to remember what the goal of integration actually is. Some might not have seen the need for me to integrate at all. When I first moved here, people actually laughed at me when I called myself an immigrant. Why is that? I didn't speak Swedish, I didn't have a job, I wasn't a citizen, I'd moved here from a different country, I didn't even have a driver's license or understand the least little thing about how to get a bank account or buy stamps. That's well beyond the definition of "immigrant" I've got in my dictionary. But since I'm a white westerner, my giving myself the label of "immigrant" was humorous to them. Since that reaction tends to invoke stern looks and sterner words from me, I don't get it that often anymore. But it is the symptom of the larger problem that many Swedes tend to forget that integration is about making sure a new resident of Sweden can happily survive in and support themselves in this society -- it's about the language and about having a job and sending your kids to school. It's about having a ticket to society. It is NOT about making sure you dress like a Swede, eat like a Swede, and find Björn Gustafsson just as funny as everybody else does. My being accepted without even having to integrate first was not about whether or not I was comfortable with Sweden, but whether or not Sweden was comfortable with me. I wasn't going to bring in weird foreign foods or strange customs or anything else that they weren't comfortable with. In fact, in that respect, I was a dream immigrant, because I couldn't possibly bring anything here that they hadn't already voluntarily imported themselves.

The problem is that, even though this study now shows that giving the immigrant freedom to choose his residence not only doesn't hurt but actually helps his integration, most of the people who embrace the "quota" theory will not budge. It's not a group that I feel is often swayed by actual evidence, at least when that evidence doesn't fit with their view of how the world ought to work. Neither will my own reflections as an integrated foreigner mean anything to these self-convinced ivory tower experts -- we're talking here about people who can't even believe me when I say the U.S. doesn't have 52 states and that not all Americans celebrate Christmas on Christmas day. Honestly though, what would I know.

What needs to happen in Sweden in order for integration to actually work is what was promised several years ago but has yet to happen: the focus of the government's integration work needs to be not on the immigrants, but on the Swedes. People who have educated themselves in their home countries need to be respected as professionals when they get here, without being subjected to the brand of Swedish hubris that tells us human bodies or human minds or computers must be so different in another country that education in these areas can't be worth anything outside of Sweden's borders. Swedes need to be taught something that OUGHT to be obvious -- a person cannot learn a new language overnight, and that the fact that you speak half-assed English is for a myriad of reasons no argument for why you think a person freshly arrived from an Eastern European or Central Asian country ought to be fluent within months. Swedes need to learn that calling a kid who was born in Sweden to parents who were born in Sweden an immigrant just because she's got dark hair and a healthy tan is not "respectful of diversity" and is most certainly not going to help. We need to not act as if Sweden hadn't changed for hundreds of years before Ahkmed came here with his weird couscous and his fancy prayer rug. We need to stop inflexibly connecting "foreign" with "bad" and "good" with Sweden, which would require us to quit calling a woman who has lived here for several years and is fluent in Swedish "tyskan" ("The German lady") when she's charged with murder but calling the Greek winner of the Eurovision song contest a "svenska" just because she has an apartment in Göteborg.

To make a long story short, all I'm saying is, the line "Borg? Sounds Swedish," said by Lily in Star Trek: First Contact is one of the most ironically accurate lines ever spoken in a film, and since I ran into two NSF skinheads at the grocery store tonight, I felt like stream-of-consciousness bitching about it for a while.

Freedom works -- who knew?

I've written so much about American politics that I'm glad I have an opportunity today to write about Swedish politics, lest you all be denied a view of the super capitalist side of me and start thinking I'm a lefty pinko.

Here's a short article that was on today's DN.se: Refugees Integrate Quicker if Allowed to Choose Own Residence.

I'm currently taking a C# course with work, and we're about to start, so I'll leave you to debate amongst yourselves while I learn about Monitoring Applications by Using Instrumentation.