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.