AFP |
A poor country of emigrants more than a century ago, Sweden is now a land of immigrants, home to hundreds of thousands of economic migrants, political dissidents and persecuted peoples.
As the country gears up for a legislative election on Sunday that could see a surge by far-right candidates, here is a look at how that change occurred.
From Emigration to Immigration
Some 1.5 million Swedes fled famine and misery between 1850 and 1920, settling primarily in North America. Sweden remained neutral during World War II, escaping largely unscathed and enabling its industries to flourish.
Finns, Italians, Greeks, Spaniards and Yugoslavs then came to Sweden during the “golden years” (1950-1980) to work in mines, steel mills and textile industry.
The Swedish Migration Agency registered some 400,000 asylum requests, almost a third of which were from Syrians. More than 226,000 cases were approved during the same period.
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Jewish Passports in 1938
Prior to that, with the arrival of growing numbers of Austrian and German Jews fleeing the Nazis, Swedish authorities in 1938 had taken measures to stem the flow, while making it easier for those deemed “Aryan” to enter the country.
Sweden’s foreign ministry asked Berlin to differentiate Jews’ passports and on October 5 Germany decided all Jews would have a red “J” stamped on their passport. As World War II erupted, Sweden took in just 3,000 Jews, of the 300,000 who had fled Germany since 1933.
Birth of Humanitarian Superpower
In the post-war period, Sweden aspired to become an actor on the international scene by mediating in conflicts and humanitarian crises. Stockholm prided itself on putting peacekeeping soldiers on the ground and defending human rights.
Raoul Wallenberg, a diplomat stationed in Budapest, saved thousands of Jews by giving them Swedish passports before his arrest by the Soviets. Wallenberg is believed to have died in a Moscow prison in the late 1940s, but his death has never been confirmed.
Sweden’s Dag Hammarskjold served as UN secretary-general from 1953 until his death in 1961 in a mysterious plane crash near Ndola, in Northern Rhodesia, now Zambia.
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Safe Haven
From the 1970s, Sweden became a safe haven for refugees fleeing Vietnam and South American dictatorships, as well as Christian minorities from the Middle East. Olof Palme, the Social Democratic prime minister in the 1970s and 1980s, championed a range of liberation movements, from Vietnam to South Africa, Cambodia and the Palestinian territories.
A poor country of emigrants more than a century ago, Sweden is now a land of immigrants, home to hundreds of thousands of economic migrants, political dissidents and persecuted peoples.
In the 1980s, Sweden welcomed Iranians, Lebanese, Poles and Kurds. It nevertheless remained a largely homogenous country and the arrival of foreigners did not spark much debate. But that changed after the arrival of 125,000 refugees from the former Yugoslavia between 1991 and 1995.
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Open Hearts
In August 2014, then centre-right prime minister Fredrik Reinfeldt urged Swedes to “open their hearts” to asylum seekers from Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq. A year later, his successor, Stefan Lofven of the Social Democrats, echoed the idea. “My Europe doesn’t build walls, my Europe takes in refugees,” he said in September 2015.
That year, Sweden welcomed more than 160,000 asylum seekers, the highest number per capita among European countries. Between 2012 and 2017, the Swedish Migration Agency registered some 400,000 asylum requests, almost a third of which were from Syrians. More than 226,000 cases were approved during the same period.
In 2017, Sweden, a country of 10 million, had 1.9 million inhabitants born in a foreign country, or 18.5 percent. Sources: AFP, Swedish Migration Agency, The Living History Forum, Swedish Foreign Ministry
© Agence France-Presse