Migration, Family and the Welfare State

Integrating Migrants and Refugees in Scandinavia

Karen Fog Olwig, Birgitte Romme Larsen, Mikkel Rytter

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781135704391
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Ciencias sociales
• Subtopic: Sociología

Migration, Family and the Welfare State explores understandings and practices of integration in the Scandinavian welfare societies of Denmark, Norway and Sweden through a comprehensive range of detailed ethnographic studies. Chapters examine discourses, policies and programs of integration in the three receiving societies, studying how these are experienced by migrant and refugee families as they seek to realize the hopes and ambitions for a better life that led them to leave their country of origin. The three Scandinavian countries have had parallel histories as welfare societies receiving increasing numbers of migrants and refugees after World War II, and yet they have reacted in dissimilar ways to the presence of foreigners, with Denmark developing tough immigration policies and nationalist integration requirements, Sweden asserting itself as a relatively open country with an official multicultural policy, and Norway taking a middle position. The book analyses the impact of these differences and similarities on immigrants, refugees and their descendants across three intersecting themes: integration as a welfare state project; integration as political discourse and practice; and integration as immigrants' and refugees' quest for improvement and belonging.

This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies.

‘Integration’: Migrants and Refugees between Scandinavian Welfare Societies and Family Relations

Karen Fog Olwig

After a long history dominated by out-migration, Denmark, Norway and Sweden have, in the past 50 years, become immigration societies. This introduction compares how these Scandinavian welfare societies have sought to incorporate immigrants and refugees into their national communities. It suggests that, while the countries have adopted disparate policies and ideologies, differences in the actual treatment of and attitudes towards immigrants and refugees in everyday life are less clear, due to parallel integration programmes based on strong similarities in the welfare systems and in cultural notions of equality in the three societies. Finally, it shows that family relations play a central role in immigrants’ and refugees’ establishment of a new life in the receiving societies, even though the welfare society takes on many of the social and economic functions of the family.

Introduction

This volume examines understandings, practices and experiences of immigration and social incorporation in the three Scandinavian countries of Denmark, Norway and Sweden. It focuses, in particular, on the ways in which migrants and refugees seek to establish a meaningful life betwixt and between, on the one hand, expectations of ‘proper integration’, as expressed in public debate and implemented through various government initiatives and, on the other, the ambitions and desires for a better life for themselves and their families that have led them to opt for migration or flight to another country.

Denmark, Norway and Sweden provide an interesting and fruitful framework of comparison. They share a parallel history of migration, being dominated by out-migration until the 1960s and 1970s, when they experienced a great increase in unskilled foreign labour migrants needed in industry. After this brief period of relatively liberal immigration policy, the countries have increasingly instituted restrictions so that immigration has virtually only become possible through family reunification or the conferral of refugee status.¹ Furthermore, Denmark, Norway and Sweden are all welfare states developed to a great extent by strong Social Democratic governments. They are based on the universalist ‘Nordic model’, where welfare services are provided through national agencies, closely integrated into the public sector and funded by general taxation (Andersen 1984). The right to the services of the welfare state is therefore based on citizenship or residency, not on previous employment, income or contribution to the welfare system. The Scandinavian welfare systems, particularly through their extensive social services and national health programmes, have thus assumed many of the responsibilities that, in other countries, are undertaken by the family, private organisations or businesses, albeit with the help of state support. The main exception is support to the unemployed, administered through the unions and based on individual contributions and state funding. Through these welfare programmes the Scandinavian states intervene directly in people’s private lives, and this is widely accepted by their populations, which have a generally positive attitude toward the state and public authorities (Jöhncke 2011; see also Schmidt; Larsen this volume). The Nordic welfare model has therefore worked because the national populations have been willing to pay high income taxes in exchange for access to a range of welfare services.

The welfare system has provided an important framework for the incorporation of immigrants and refugees into Scandinavia. At a specific level, many newcomers learn about Scandinavian society primarily through health clinics, social service centres, integration programmes and ‐ in the case of refugees ‐ asylum centres; their personal encounters with the local population involve mainly staff on these various welfare programmes. At a general level, immigrants and refugees have been expected to actively take part, as workers and taxpayers, in the reciprocal social and economic relations between the state and the local population fundamental to the Nordic model. Since the 1980s they have been subjected to ideologies and policies of integration tied to Scandinavian notions of equality that have had an important impact on immigrants’ and refugees’ opportunities to settle and develop a sense of belonging in the receiving society. The Scandinavian case studies thus clearly demonstrate that integration is not just an analytic term measuring levels of social incorporation according to pre-defined parameters of achievement within, for example, employment, housing and education. It has become an emic term denoting the ability to conform to social norms and cultural values defined in dominant discourse as basic to proper citizenship. ‘Integration’ therefore has become a powerful notion, designating who belongs ‐ and by implication who does not belong ‐ in society (cf. Olwig and Pærregaard 2011).

The way in which integration becomes defined as a societal concept designating social inclusion and exclusion is closely related to the overall policy and general attitudes towards immigrants and refugees prevalent in society. Here the three countries display clear differences, as they have reacted, as nation-states, to the presence of foreigners in very dissimilar ways. Denmark, a small country that has dwindled in size through decolonisation and military defeat and developed as a modern state largely through cooperative movements based in traditionally rural, agricultural society, seems to have become an increasingly closed, nationalistic society with restrictive immigration policies. Sweden, on the other hand, a country with a more centralist nation-state and a long history of heavy industry drawing on skilled foreign labour, has asserted itself as a progressive country with an official multicultural policy, celebrating cultural diversity and a more liberal policy of family reunification and refugee admittance. Norway, traditionally based on a maritime as well as a rural economy, has opted for a middle course, but with a tendency to move toward the more restrictive policies of Denmark. While these differences have had a significant bearing on how immigrants and refugees have been perceived in public debate and treated in terms of legislation in the three countries, the case studies in this volume show that, at the level of everyday life, the three countries display many of the same problems. To some extent, these shared problems can be ascribed to the nature of the bureaucratic systems that administer the official policies of the countries within local contexts of life.

On the basis of a comparative analysis of European bureaucratic structures, Jordan et al. (2003a, 2003b) show that bureaucrats in general have a great deal of discretionary power when applying immigration policy at the level of individuals or families, because the ‘individual situations’ of the particular cases are usually ‘too complicated to fit into the standard formats of policy provisions’ (2003a: 213). For this reason the treatment of newcomers may be influenced by a host of external factors such as the wish of individual administrators to protect particular social and economic interests, their desire to assert their position of power vis-à-vis their clients or their belief in various cultural and racial stereotypes (Jordan et al. 2003a, 2003b). Thus, while a specific country’s laws and policies clearly have a great impact on immigrants and refugees, the ways in which bureaucrats use their discretionary powers in the administration of these official regulations will strongly influence how newcomers will experience life in the receiving society.

Several studies have pointed to the factors which may play a role in the administering of policies in relation to immigrants and refugees within the context of Scandinavian welfare societies. Nannestad et al. (2008) argue in a Danish study that there is a general tendency to distrust strong ethnic communities ‐ called ‘parallel societies’ -because they are seen to be in conflict with the principle of generalised social loyalty and economic exchange associated with welfare societies based on the universalist model. There will, therefore, be a strong desire to ‘integrate’ these ‘parallel societies’ into the wider society and, as will be seen, Scandinavian welfare societies have instituted a large number of integrative measures during the past decades. Engebrigtsen, however, suggests in her study of integration processes in Norway that the welfare society in and of itself involves a ‘state regime of discipline [that] takes a special turn towards migrants in the shape of an elaborate and compulsory system of ‘resocialisation’ (2007: 733). She found that this ‘resocialisation’ was based on commonsense cultural assumptions concerning ‘proper’ social relations that were difficult to reconcile with official policies of multiculturalism. There is therefore a gap between declared policies of multiculturalism and the administrative practices taking place. A similar conclusion is reached by Pitkänen and Kouki (2002) in their analysis of Finnish administrators’ attitudes towards immigrants. They conclude that the administrators found cultural diversity confusing and displayed strong assimilationist tendencies.

By exploring the complex encounters between welfare systems and immigrants and refugees through the lens of newcomers, the authors in this volume analyse and compare notions and practices of integration in relation to particular groups of immigrants and refugees in the three Scandinavian societies. These groups represent different periods and conditions of migration into Scandinavia. The Cape Verdeans, Pakistanis and Vlachs arrived during the period from the 1950s to the 1970s when labour migrants were regarded as a welcome addition to the labour force. The Bosnian, Tamil and other refugees ‐ and the reunified family members of the original labour migrants ‐ who came after 1980, met a society where there was little need for labour and outsiders tended to be viewed as a burden to the welfare system. The analyses show that an important aspect of this development is the ‘cultural anxiety’ (Grillo 2003) or ‘cultural fundamentalism’ (Stolcke 1995) that has emerged throughout Europe, in part as a response to the increasing immigration that has taken place in recent decades. As the authors demonstrate, this ‘cultural anxiety’ is not innocent but highly racialised, being directed primarily at people who are viewed as belonging elsewhere because their physical appearance is perceived as different.

Together, the contributions in this volume shed light on three important and closely interrelated themes of particular salience to integration as an issue of central concern in Scandinavian societies and, thereby, of central significance for the immigrants’ and refugees’ ability to pursue their goals. These themes are: Integration as Political Discourse and Practice; Integration as a Welfare Project; and Integration as a Quest for Improvement and Belonging.

Integration as Political Discourse and Practice

Compared with other European or North American countries, Denmark, Norway and Sweden have experienced relatively limited immigration. In the early 2000s, the foreign-born comprised approximately 6.5 per cent of the population in Denmark and Norway, and 12 per cent of the population in Sweden (Grønseth, this volume; Ministeriet for Flygtninge, Indvandrere og Integration 2007: 8; Statistiska Centralbyrån 2002: 25). Despite these rather small numbers, the integration of immigrants and refugees has become a growing concern in public debate, legislation and policymaking in the three countries.

Interestingly, there was little debate on integration when migrant labourers began to arrive in Scandinavia. They seem to have been regarded, and treated, as a much-needed source of labour, expected to manage more or less on their own and be grateful for whatever opportunities were offered (Schwartz 1990). As such they were subject to little public debate. In Sweden, Lisa Åkesson (this volume) notes, it was assumed that immigrant labourers would either assimilate or return to their country of origin after some years of employment in Swedish industry. In Denmark and Norway, there seems to have been a stronger expectation that they were only temporarily in the country as ‘guest labourers’ or ‘foreign workers.’ This benign view of the immigrants as a useful labour force was challenged after the 1973 oil crisis which resulted in an economic recession and largescale unemployment, especially in Denmark and Norway. This led the three countries to put a stop to further immigration. When the immigrant labourers decided to stay on in Scandinavia, taking advantage of their legal resident status, it became apparent that they were no longer temporary workers but more permanent immigrants. Their shift towards settlement in Scandinavia became even more apparent as the primarily male labour migrants began to establish their own families in Scandinavia, either by sending for spouses and children left behind or by marrying spouses from their country of origin (see Rytter, this volume).

The three countries reacted very differently to this change in the immigrant population. Sweden instituted an immigration policy in 1975 based on a multicultural ideology of ‘equality, freedom of choice and partnership’ (see both Åkesson and Eastmond, this volume). It emphasised the right to maintain cultural differences while enjoying the benefits of the welfare society on a par with the majority population. The policy was supported by the intellectual elite, a highly influential force in the Social Democratic welfare society, and regarded as the mark of a progressive, humanitarian Swedish society. While Sweden took the lead in the introduction of a multicultural policy in relation to immigrants and refugees, Norway adopted a more hesitant multicultural policy towards immigrants, a stance that has been characterised as ‘ambivalent multi-culturalism’ (see both Engebrigtsen and Grønseth, this volume). As Engebrigtsen notes, the positive aspects of living in a ‘colourful community’ with ‘cultural diversity’ and ‘multiculturalism’ are emphasised in official rhetoric, but the media debate has tended to stress the problems connected with immigrant populations. Denmark, by contrast, rejected multiculturalism and there has been little encouragement to celebrate its multicultural society. Rather, Garbi Schmidt (this volume) contends that, especially since the 1990s, there has been an increasing tendency in the media and public debate to portray immigrants as a threat against ‘Danishness’ because they are seen as disruptive elements in the imagined culturally homogeneous national community.

These differences in the perception of immigrants and refugees are perhaps the most apparent in national legislation concerning family reunification. Even though labour immigration was stopped in all three countries in the mid-1970s, the immigrant population continued to grow due to family reunification, much of it resulting from transnational, arranged marriages with spouses from the parents’ country of origin. As Schmidt shows, such marriages have become subject to increasing public debate in Denmark, where they are generally described as ‘destructive practices, both to individual freedom and to national identity and cohesion’ (Schmidt, this volume) and as an obstacle to the ‘proper’ integration of the immigrant population as good Danish citizens. Furthermore, since 1997, the Danish government has attempted to curb the high rate of transnational marriage by introducing increasingly strict regulations on family reunification, making it extremely difficult for immigrants and descendants of immigrants to marry spouses from their ancestral homeland. Sweden, however, has had a much more liberal policy towards transnational marriages and, as a result, a large number of young Danes with immigrant background have settled in southern Sweden with a spouse from their country of origin. In 2005, for example, almost 600 Danish citizens living in southern Sweden applied for family reunification with a spouse in Sweden (Rytter 2007: 77-8).² Since southern Sweden is only a half-hour train ride from central Copenhagen, Danish spouses can often continue to work or study in Denmark, while maintaining a home in Sweden.

The ‘flight’ from Denmark to Sweden ‐ caused by tough Danish policy ‐ and the welcome extended to ‘marriage refugees’ in Sweden, have consolidated the image of Sweden as a society with a progressive political stance on cultural diversity and the right to equality for all. Denmark, meanwhile, has attained an international image as a narrow-minded, xenophobic and discriminatory society. Norway has positioned itself somewhere between Sweden and Denmark. As Anne Grønseth notes (this volume), Norway seeks to maintain its image as a leader in international peace negotiations and supporter of human rights, yet this official rhetoric is quite different from the attitude of many Norwegians, who basically view foreigners with scepticism. Nor does it match the public debate where immigrants and refugees have been described as ruthlessly exploiting the welfare system (see e.g. the debate between Wikan 2002, 2008 and Gullestad 2002).

While there are major differences in the three countries’ policy and public debate on immigrants and refugees which have shaped these people’s lives in significant ways, the authors in this volume warn that it is important to distinguish between political discourse and practice. Despite the initial celebration of equality and diversity in Sweden, Marita Eastmond shows that there is a growing tendency there to view refugees as a social and economic burden on the welfare system and to question whether they are, in fact, genuine refugees. Furthermore Sweden, like Denmark and Norway, has instituted tighter restrictions on the admittance of refugees, just as there is increasing debate in all three countries on the need to protect their borders. On the other side of the coin, Denmark ‐ despite its xenophobic image ‐ has a long tradition of encouraging the population’s active involvement in a range of voluntary associations and educational pursuits, including the establishment of ‘free’ schools, by offering generous public support for such activities. This financial support has enabled a large number of ethnic organisations and Muslim schools to emerge in Denmark during recent decades. While this funding is hotly debated in Denmark, it has not been cancelled, because this would conflict with Danish law.

Integration as a Welfare Project

Scandinavian society has viewed the incorporation of immigrants and refugees into society as a responsibility of the welfare state. As refugees became an increasingly prominent part of the immigrant population, a number of welfare programmes were put in place, offering not only practical assistance with housing and the economic support necessary until the refugees become self-sustainable, but also helping refugees to incorporate into the receiving society. The central component in the three welfare societies’ approach to refugees is the extensive introduction programme that all newly admitted refugees are expected to complete. But the authors in this collection show that the Scandinavian welfare societies’ integration project is much more comprehensive and includes the spatial dispersal of refugee families (Larsen), the close monitoring of young refugees’ educational progress (Engebrigtsen) and treatment programmes for traumatised refugees (Eastmond). These efforts at turning refugees and immigrants into ‘good citizens’ can be seen as elements in the more general Scandinavian welfare project of providing the assistance necessary to enable all immigrants to become equal members of society. The analyses make clear, however, that, despite good intentions, this assistance is problematic, largely because it entails active intervention in the private lives of refugees and immigrants by professionals within the Scandinavian welfare system seeking to shape these population groups ‐ socially, culturally, physically and psychologically ‐ according to Scandinavian norms. This is particularly apparent in the integration programmes.

One basic problem with the integration schemes is that they tend to be designed primarily to fit the Scandinavian welfare system rather than the needs of refugees. It is assumed, for example, that refugees stay in place and have no social obligations that can make demands on their time and require travel elsewhere. Thus, when a young Somali refugee in Norway suddenly disappeared for an extensive period of time because ‐ as he later explained ‐ he had to go to Italy to assist an aunt who had been the victim of an accident, he lost his place in the welfare society, including his enrolment in an educational institution and his housing (Engebrigtsen, th...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Notes on contributors
• 1. ‘Integration’: Migrants and Refugees between Scandinavian Welfare Societies and Family Relations
• 2. Money or Education? Improvement Strategies Among Pakistani Families in Denmark
• 3. Multicultural Ideology and Transnational Family Ties among Descendants of Cape Verdeans in Sweden
• 4. From Danish Yugoslavs to Danish Serbs: National Affiliation Caught Between Visibility and Invisibility
• 5. Law and Identity: Transnational Arranged Marriages and the Boundaries of Danishness
• 6. Egalitarian Ambitions, Constructions of Difference: The Paradoxes of Refugee Integration in Sweden
• 7. Ali’s Disappearance: The Tension of Moving and Dwelling in the Norwegian Welfare Society
• 8. Tamil Refugees in Pain: Challenging Solidarity in the Norwegian Welfare State
• 9. Becoming Part of Welfare Scandinavia: Integration through the Spatial Dispersal of Newly Arrived Refugees in Denmark
• Index