A Swedish professor of sociology at Uppsala University has written a report detailing some of the negative effects experienced by the country as a direct result of its liberal immigration policies.
The paper, entitled ‘Multiculturalism in Flames’ discusses figures from the Swedish government’s crime statistics agency, BRÅ ,which showed that in 2023 Sweden experienced nine times as many deadly shootings as its neighbours, Finland, Denmark, and Norway combined.
Prof. Goran Adamson says that although “everybody understands that mass migration has an enormous impact on society”, attempting to discuss these issues critically is “enough to get you dismissed as a racist”.
Impacts on life in Sweden: Crime
Formally one of the safest countries in Europe, since the influx of large numbers of migrants – which Goran says started in the 1990 but became a flood in the wake of the 2015 ‘migrant crisis’ – Sweden has been experiencing over 300 shootings a year since 2017.
Goran says that because of the impact caused by crimes attributable to the migrant influx “the social consensus that has underpinned Swedish society for decades has been ruptured.”
A table of figures from 2013 -2017 shows that roughly three out of every four cases of murder, manslaughter, and attempted murder was committed by a migrant or the children of migrants.
“Migration”, says Goran, “is not an automatic evil. But neither is it an automatic good.”
Goran says that the impact of migration in Sweden “has been most marked in relation to crime” elaborating that Swedish newspapers “now regularly report explosions and shootings – something that would have been scarcely believable a few decades ago.”
He says that the “transformation of the city of Malmö by criminal gangs has become a news story around the world.”
Sweden’s third most populated city, Malmö once had a booming shipping industry along with a prospering working class, however In 2019, Malmö received some 5.5 billion SEK (over 470,000,000 euro) in financial transfers from Stockholm in particular, which Goran says was more than double the amount of transfers given to any other city.
He says that this shift in the city’s fortunes was not only caused by migration, but by “a large influx of unemployed, and often unemployable, migrants”.
So much has the profile of Sweden’s former ‘pride of the south’ shifted, that ‘Bombs are a part of life in Malmo’, was a headline by Deutsche Welle.
29 bombs had already “rattled” the city between January and October 2019 – with 50 shootings along the way. In the same year the number of Jews in Malmö was 800, but is projected to “die out” entirely.
Despite what Gorean calls “attempts by the Swedish authorities to blame “poverty” and “social
exclusion” for the over representation of migrants and those with a migrant background in serious crime statistic the Swedish Crime Prevention Council in 2023 demonstrated that:
“Foreign-born individuals are 2.5 times more likely to be registered as suspected of a crime compared to those born in Sweden with both parents also born in Sweden. For people born in Sweden with two foreign-born parents, the likelihood is over three times higher than for those with Swedish-born parents.”
Impacts on life in Sweden: Freedom of expression.
Goran argues that freedom of expression is also under threat in Sweden due to the less tolerant attitudes held among many of its migrant population saying that, “threats of violence from migrants and the concerns of elites about ‘inflaming’ tensions or ‘offending’ minorities, freedom of expression is now under serious threat in Sweden.”
The paper outlines how individuals who criticised Islam, such as Lars Vilks, have been forced to live with 24hr security due to threats to their lives., in Vilks’ case before his untimely death.
Goran says that freedom of expression in Sweden is “under relentless pressure from certain migrant groups trying to have it dismantled for the benefit of multicultural ‘tolerance’.”
He argued that, from a classic left-wing perspective, this is reminiscent of religious submission, which may explain why traditional left-wing ideas have been abandoned by today’s multicultural left-wingers.”
He said that amid the Vilks controversy a news-anchor, instead of defending freedom of speech had “grabbed the opportunity, saying Vilks was merely referring to ‘freedom of speech … in order to humiliate Muslims’,” and that the Church of Sweden had announced its intention to“to distance ourselves from Vilks’s blasphemies”.
Impacts on life in Sweden: Politics
Goran also argues that mass migration has had “a profound political impact on Swedish society” saying that the “different values of migrants, especially Muslim migrants” has created tension between Sweden’s official policies of multiculturalism and its adherence to progressive ideals around gender issues such as equality or the restricted role of religion in public life.
He argues that underpinning these problems are “two dangerous political trends”, the first of which he calls an “official state policy of multiculturalism.”
He said that images of Muslim children who were being removed from homes by Child Protection Services were used online to stoke hatred of the Swedish state as anti-Muslim and to deepen the division among Swedish society.
Goran says this “goes beyond tolerance for racial, cultural or religious differences and instead imposes a positive duty to preserve and entrench these differences.”
He says that this attitude has encouraged immigrants not to want to adopt Swedish values with left wing influences arguing that it would be inappropriate to do so.