STOCKHOLM: Sweden plans to survey immigrants’ values in a bid to improve their integration into the country’s progressive and liberal society, Sweden’s new integration minister said on Sunday.
Sweden’s right-wing government came to power in 2022 backed by the far-right Sweden Democrats, vowing to crack down on immigration and improve the integration of immigrants, among other things.
Integration Minister Simona Mohamsson, who was appointed in a cabinet reshuffle a week ago, said Sweden’s secular, unpatriarchal society can pose challenges for immigrants from more traditional, conservative countries.
“We are an extreme country, in a good way. For people who join our society, it can be a little difficult to navigate,“ she told Sweden’s paper of reference Dagens Nyheter in an interview.
Previous surveys conducted by the World Values Survey research group have shown that some newly-arrived immigrants to Sweden have diverging views from native Swedes on issues such as divorce, sex before marriage, abortion and homosexuality.
After 10 years in Sweden, their values had evolved and were more in line with those of native Swedes, according to the World Values Survey.
“Ten years is far too long. That’s a whole generation of girls who don’t get to choose who they want to love or boys who can’t come out of the closet,“ Mohamsson said.
Some 3,000 people will be surveyed this autumn about their “values”, half of them of Swedish background and the other half “non-Western”, she explained.
“The result will guide integration efforts going forward.”
She said the plan was “not about changing opinions”, but rather “about upholding the values we have in Sweden.”
Those who choose to come to Sweden have a responsibility to try to be a part of society, she insisted.
“It is not a human right to live in Sweden.”
The Scandinavian country has taken in large numbers of refugees since the 1990s, many fleeing from countries like Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Somalia, Syria and the former Yugoslavia.
But following a large influx in 2015, successive Swedish governments from both the left- and right-wing have tightened asylum rules.
In 2024, around 20 percent of Sweden’s inhabitants were born in another country, compared to around 11 percent in 2000, according to Statistics Sweden. – AFP
