May Sweden remain a moral superpower.âKing Zog I of Albania, at a state visit to Sweden in 1939
The Swedish word for challenge is utmaning. Both words have long historic roots and roughly carry the same connotations in the two languages. The Swedish Academy Glossary defines the word as an âact that entails a call to struggle or competitionâ (Swedish Academy 2009), whereas Wiktionaryâs online dictionary states âsomething that requires substantial effort, but still attracts,â and provides the example âIt is a challenge to climb the Mount Everest.â In the English language, the Oxford Dictionary (2010) similarly traces the word as far back as summons to a trial or contest in the middle ages.
In both languages, the word challenge has increasingly come to be used by politicians as a euphemism for tough social problems, in order to pretend they are in fact positive and rewarding trials in which we benefit to partake. Few would, however, sincerely argue that it is an âattractive effortâ that fire trucks must have a police escort to enter certain neighborhoods. An editorial by Per Gudmundson in Swedish daily Svenska Dagbladet (2016), entitled âIncreased Gross Domestic Challenge,â discusses the inflated use of the term:
While GDP has slowed and GDP per capita has been virtually stagnant for a decade, the amount of social problemsâor challenges, as theyâre called when there are no solutionsâhas increased. Integration is a challenge, school is a challenge, long-term unemployment in vulnerable groups is a challenge, the demographic trend of an aging population is a challenge, the torching of cars in the social exclusion areas is a challenge, municipal finances are a challenge, police shortage is a challenge, burnout among social workers is a challenge, and so on. Citizens feel it, although thatâs not possible to include in the governmentâs forecast. Perhaps GDP estimates should be supplemented, as economist Tino Sanandaji recently expressed facetiously, with a measure of gross domestic challenge (GDC). In such case, one way to measure it would be to count how many times the term âchallengeâ occurs in parliamentary proceedings. During the 1970s, the average GDC was 17.6. The most recent parliamentary year showed a gross domestic challenge of 124âan increase of 14.8 percent from the prior year. The challenge economy is strong, I would say.
The concept is widely used in the media and by public agencies. The word challenge is found, for example, 215 times in the National Board of Health and Welfareâs report âHealthcare and Dentalcare for Asylum Seekers and New Arrivalsâ (2016)âincluding nine times on the first page alone.
It seems that challenge is used for intractable social problems, where one cannot come up with suggestions for concrete measures, or even an effective spin to deflect the issue. Many have acted as if a shift in the discourse from problem to challenge is a magic wand, with which problems can be conjured away. However, magic tricks are only about illusions; they do not change the underlying realityâmerely distracting the audience for a moment. Over time, the concept of challenge therefore morphed into a tired clichĂ©. The word was gradually worn out when it was used to play down problems like social exclusion, segregation, inequality, homelessness, child poverty, unemployment, vandalism, riots, gang killings, extremism, child marriage, honor-based violence, car-torching, rock-throwing, and assaults with fireworks.
The truth is that what Sweden is facing are not challenges; Sweden is facing problems. A country long known as one of the worldâs most prosperous and idyllic is about to turn into an ethnic class society, where parts of the population feel like second-class citizens, and where assaults against firefighters are only reported in brief unless they lead to fatalities. The number of neighborhoods that are defined as social exclusion areas has increased from three in 1990 to 186 in 2012, while gang crime, bitterness, alienation, and multi-generational poverty have taken root in a short time. Sweden must deal with social problems that are not in the least inspiring, which are hard to paraphrase into something uplifting, and where there are not even any definite solutions. It is hard to have to face all this, but it is necessary; few social problems have been solved by being swept under the rug.
It is painful to admit the link between social problems and immigration. Most Swedes have great goodwill and tolerance toward immigrants, and wish that immigration would have been more successful. Swedenâs experiment with large-scale immigration from the Third World to a welfare state has been unique in its scope, but is in many respects a failure. Today, Swedenâs social problems are increasingly concentrated to the portion of the population with immigrant background. Foreign-born people account for about 19% of the population, and second-generation immigrants an additional 6%. Despite this, foreign-born represent 53% of individuals with long prison sentences, 58% of the unemployed, and receive 65% of social welfare expenditures; 77% of Swedenâs child poverty is present in households with a foreign background, while 90% of suspects in public shootings have immigrant backgrounds.
The increase in social problems is also driven in large part by immigration. Since the early 1990s, those with immigrant background have accounted for half of the increase in the proportion of low-income earners; more than half of the reduction in high school eligibility of students leaving primary school; about two-thirds of the increase in social welfare expenditure; and more than 100% of the increase in unemploymentâwhich, consequently, has dropped among Swedish-born. Problems such as rioting and unrest are also highly concentrated in immigrant areas. We must develop concrete actions that give all immigrants Sweden has received a place in Swedish society. This, in turn, requires a frank and evidence-driven analysis of how Sweden ended up here and, more importantly, can move on.
Now, when the debate on âmass immigrationâ is over, Sweden must understand and address the, in many ways, more complex problemsâincluding mass unemployment, mass riots, mass vandalism, and mass vehicle-burning. If problems are to be referred to as challenges, we must conclude that the combined issues Sweden is facing cannot be characterized as anything else but a mass challenge. For the benefit of those who prefer the term challenge instead of problem, I have thusly chosen the title Mass Challenge.
A Policy Perspective
Let us begin with a few words about myself, as well as about the structure of the book. I am of Kurdish origin and was born in 1980 in Iran. My family moved to Sweden in 1989, althoughâlike many migrantsâwe were not refugees fleeing our lives, but rather left a safe life in Iran in order not to live under the oppression of the Islamic Republic. Like many immigrantsâagainâwe were hardly poor, instead belonging to the affluent and secular layers of society. My father studied as a young man in California. He and my mother were among the many Iranians who prefer Western enlightenment values to the authoritarian theocracy established by Ayatollah Khomeini, which to this day imprisons the people of Iran in a grim, if ever-weakening, grip.
Ironically, I lived in Teheran during the eight-year IranâIraq war, and experienced many nights with aerial bombingsâincluding one that shattered the windows of our homeâbut only left Iran one year after the war was over. We left Iran for ideological reasons, not due to any objective threat to our lives or material needs. Once Ayatollah Khomeini passed away, without the Islamic Republic falling, my father gave up hope and decided to move to Europe, in order for my mother not having to be forced to cover herself in a veil, as well as not being exposed to daily propaganda. At the time, he worked withâand later forâa Swedish forestry company involved in building a pulp plant in the forested areas around the Caspian Sea, which gave him a visa to Sweden.
My brother and I did not experience any cultural shock, as we were already reared in Iranâs significant Western bubble. In general, Iranian immigrants to the West have a lower cultural distance compared to those of many other Middle Eastern countries, since the Iranian middle and upper classes for generations have been comparably Westernized. After taking my economics degree from the Stockholm School of Economics in 2004, I lived eight happy, brutally cold, and intellectually stimulating years in the Windy Cityâobtaining my Ph.D. in Public Policy from the University of Chicago as well as doing my postdoc.
I returned to Sweden in 2012 and have since then worked as a resear...