I live in Sweden and the issues of lack of integration are eerily similar to those that affect the UK (where I was born and raised 80s-10s); pockets of extremely isolated cultures living in essentially parallel societies.
First, migration is too inclusive and too exclusive of a term. For example it would exclude a second generation individual- and if we are suggesting that religion is an issue, those tend to be more radical than their migrant parents.
It would also include people who already have a job and then move to Sweden.
In the UK, second generation migrants are often more spoiled and act worse than their comparatively entrepreneurial and industrious parents.
Then, to conflate matters even further there’s the issue that these parallel societies typically are poorer than the middle-class areas of the host country; and a correlation between wealth and crime is really strong.
So, it’s too reductive to claim anything relating to migration here. It’s an impossible conversation, and filled with conflicting personas in data and it is therefore difficult to contextualise with statistics.
No, it's not too reductive to claim that immigration has lead to problems. It's quite plainly obvious at this point.
The only reason why ones mind will struggle to grasp this is because you understand that there are severe consequences for openly criticizing immigration. Your mind will conjure "nuances" to allow you to avoid confronting the idea that something has to change, and allow you to remain socially, financially, even legally safe. As you live here in Sweden you will be aware of the number of people sentenced to prison for criticizing immigration, due to the hate speech legislation here.
It's too reductive to claim that immigration didn't cause problems, and it's too reductive to claim that immigration is the source of most of the problems.
The cause is a single genetically and socially society allowing mass immigration but not changing society to match the newcomers and/or not selecting newcomers based on culture similarities and/or not bridging the divide.
When you make a mass immigration commitment you need to follow it up with tons of work/money/education/discussion. That's why it fails in Europe but succeeds elsewhere. Then they make it impossible to succeed by limiting discussion and calling it hate speech.
North America has two different approaches. Leave who you are behind and become an American. Keep who you are and become Something/Canadian. Sweden wants it both ways.. leave who you are behind but never become Swedish.
Integration is a two-way street. I've known many people born in England, France, Germany who feel excluded from education opportunities, workplace opportunities, healthcare and general civil society because of their family origin, cultural background and pure skin colour. Probably also how they speak in the UK. This issue is much less in new world countries (US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand).
Let people into society and they will be part of it. Exclude them and they will form their own societies which you will have far greater issue with.
Edit - some examples - Several in the UK grew up in areas with poor schooling because of where they were born (places cheap enough for immigrants to move to). One who for similar reasons (poor local health service as a child) believes they have avoidable ongoing health issues. Black man im the UK cant flag a cab because they just wont stop for him despite being well dressed in a suit. Turkish-parent German feels pushed into 'workplace training school' (sorry I don't know the term) rather than university because of his background - had to do an extra 2 years of study "just because my parents are from Turkey". French woman of notth african ancestry felt she had to leave the country because she is constantly asked "where are you from" and they won't take "France" as an answer. Common thread is none of these people (all well spoken, well dressed, educated, well mannered) feel they had a chance at being part of mainstream society in their country of birth.
Integration of randomly arrived (as opposed to selectively chosen and well-educated) Muslims has proved nigh impossible everywhere in the world of "unbelievers".
As far as the UK goes, Hindus and Sikhs, who look every bit as exotic and dark-skinned as Pakistanis, are on average richer than white Britons and also societally very successful.
If there is some kind of "pure skin colour"-based racism at work, it somehow didn't stop them from reaching the upper class within generation.
The problem of this conversation is that "immigration" is treated as one single, amorphous thing.
What kind of immigrants are we talking about? What was their income, their skills, their ability to speak the local language, what jobs could they get once they arrived in the country? Answer all those questions, and depending on your answers we may find a completely integrated, successful migrant or someone who lives generally excluded from society. Skin color and religion may play a role sometimes, but they are typically far from being determinant.
For that matter, I am a dark skinned immigrant in the country I live in. I also speak the language fluently, am highly educated, and make around 3x the median local income. Of course, I never experienced racism. Change some of those social attributes, and I bet the outcome would be different.
Canada is cracking down on immigration but they tend to attract higher education immigrants which even if they have a religion, they are more likely to be more secular in their day-to-day.
Muslims make up 10% of 2016 and later arrivals followed by 14.04% of their Non-permanent residents. Christianity, Secular and No Religion beat those numbers.
From what I understand, Sweden numbers are in 80% of immigrants are Muslim but this is all news articles and such, I'm unable to locate hard numbers.
Comparing Canada to Sweden I think is false comparison.
I wasn't trying to compare Sweden to Canada, just refute the argument it's impossible to integrate large numbers of Muslim immigrants into a Western population.
But since you brought it up, 14% of 1 million immigrants into a country with a 40M population is somewhat comparable to 80% of 100,000 immigrants to a 10M population country. And it's not 80%, the majority of Swedish immigrants are repatriating Swedes.
Maybe Sweden needs to start eating more Shawarma. It's super popular here in my part of Canada. Helps employ Arabs and acclimatizes Canadians to them.
Canada doesn't accept refugees, they accept highly educated immigrants. That is very different. A very large fraction of immigrants to Sweden can't even read in any language, it is very hard to employ such people or educate them as you have to start with the basics for adults, but it is hard to learn such fundamental things that late in life.
That is not a refutation, though. Canada is fairly selective when it comes to immigrants. Europe receives whomever the people smugglers can get across the water, and the demographic difference in parameters such as literacy or sympathy to radical versions of Islam is absolutely vast.
I don't think any Swede wanted conditions in Syria to get so bad that mass numbers of people felt they needed to leave their homes, friends, and livelihood in order to survive, so no, I don't think Swedes wanted this mass immigration.
But it happened. So what next, kill them all? Starve them in concentration camps? Isolate them on islands with no hope at all of integration or work?
If only there were some way to unite the nations to set up a better system that could prevent decades of internal war and conflict, or set up a treaty for how to handle refugees.
Perhaps even just some sort of union of all the European countries to jointly and equally share the load when refugees come.
I'm not apportioning blame just saying that what's happening now is feeding a future of separate societies that probably everyone would rather avoid.
I don't believe the average Swede wanted mass immigration but there were immigration policies in place that were put in place by Sweden's leaders on behalf of its people that weren't questioned until later. You are where you are now - you can't unring a bell. You have to deal with the issues of the future now not the issues of the past
Is it the fault of the native population for not wanting to mix?
A weird fact about Sweden is that if a popular vote was ever held on immigration alone, we would never have had this situation. The polls on the issue have always been in majority "against" mass immigration. So for some reason democracy doesn't work over here. Maybe you've had better luck where you're at.
I live in Sweden and the issues of lack of integration are eerily similar to those that affect the UK (where I was born and raised 80s-10s); pockets of extremely isolated cultures living in essentially parallel societies.
First, migration is too inclusive and too exclusive of a term. For example it would exclude a second generation individual- and if we are suggesting that religion is an issue, those tend to be more radical than their migrant parents.
It would also include people who already have a job and then move to Sweden.
In the UK, second generation migrants are often more spoiled and act worse than their comparatively entrepreneurial and industrious parents.
Then, to conflate matters even further there’s the issue that these parallel societies typically are poorer than the middle-class areas of the host country; and a correlation between wealth and crime is really strong.
So, it’s too reductive to claim anything relating to migration here. It’s an impossible conversation, and filled with conflicting personas in data and it is therefore difficult to contextualise with statistics.