One has often refused to pretend that, in recent decades, immigration to Sweden has brought a revolution without precedent in our history. Immigration has as long a history as the Swedish Empire, and that commonly known as ‘Swedish culture’ is something that has been shaped and changed in the encounters between Swedish and foreign; today’s conflicts are by no means new, and so on and so forth. Such reasoning is deeply misleading. Maybe it is partly the very notion of immigrants that leads to error and gets scientists and others to believe that immigration is always the same thing; whether it be the German merchants of Gustav Vasa’s time, the legendary Walloons during the Swedish Empire era, Baltic immigration after World War II or, as in recent decades, the massive immigration that in a short time has changed the population structure in Sweden.

It is this last immigration that deserves to be called a revolution. It has led to a demographic, economic, political and, not least, an intellectual revolution. It has made the very idea of Sweden and Swedish culture so problematic that one now only dare to speak of ‘Swedish culture’ in quotation marks. That such is the case is hardly due to the immigrants, who probably in general have a rather strong image of Swedish culture, whether they like it or not. It is due rather to those Swedish groups that have used immigration to promote their own political and intellectual agendas. The interaction between the massive real immigration, and the way this immigration has been used for various political or intellectual agendas, has resulted in the ‘intellectual revolution’ about which I now want to say something.

One way to trace an intellectual revolution is through the use of encyclopaedias. Encyclopaedias reflect reality. But they also reflect, to the same degree, the notions of reality that are present in a given country at any given time. They are generally less about individual perspectives than a kind of collective consensus. They reflect to a large extent how a certain phenomenon was regarded at the time the encyclopaedia was made, just as entries are intended to. Surprisingly often, the encyclopaedia has also a ‘national’ character, often highlighted in the name of the volumes in question.

Let us therefore see what’s being said about immigration and related subjects (integration and multiculturalism) in some of the time’s leading Swedish encyclopaedias – Nordic Family Book (Owl Edition), Swedish Encyclopaedia (Second Edition) and The National Encyclopaedia. In the Nordic Family Book’s so-called Owl Editions from about 1910, we do not find the word immigration but rather the words immigrate, immigrant and immigrationObviously you can’t say immigration here, because the article says it cannot be found in the encyclopaedia, but that’s the way it translates.Obviously you can’t say immigration here, because the article says it cannot be found in the encyclopaedia, but that’s the way it translates.. Looking up some words informs me that to immigrate means to immigrate, immigrant means immigrant, and immigration means immigrationSame problem here. There seems to be a difference in the mode of expression in Swedish, but this doesn’t translate into English.Same problem here. There seems to be a difference in the mode of expression in Swedish, but this doesn’t translate into English.. This is all that Nordic Family Book, with its forty well-filled volumes, considers relevant to say about the matter in 1910. Words like integration (in other than the mathematical sense) or multiculturalism do not appear, in the latter’s case for the very good reason that the term had not yet been invented.

After a swift movement of almost a half a century forward in time, we arrive at the Second Edition of the Swedish Encyclopaedia (circa 1955). Now you can find a fairly comprehensive article on ”immigration”. It informs you that immigration to Sweden has been relatively insignificant and regularly lower than emigration. Of the approximately 62,000 immigrants to Sweden, about half came from other European countries (mostly Nordic). The others came ”almost exclusively from the USA and Canada” and were generally a sort of return of migrants ”of Swedish nationality.”

The encyclopaedia points out, however, that the Second World War resulted in a partly new situation, since the War led to a large number of ”displaced persons”, some of which have come to Sweden. The number of foreigners in Sweden in 1948-49 is estimated at about 167,000 people, of which half were of Scandinavian nationality and about 25,000 from the Baltic states. ‘Integration’ in connection with immigration and ‘multiculturalism’ is not a recognised concept in the encyclopaedia.

Another leap in time for us to the 1990s, and The National Encyclopaedia. Now, the intellectual revolution has already begun. The National Encyclopaedia’s author is essentially now fully aware. Under the word immigrant it is emphasised that this concept does not exist in the Aliens Act:

In the late 1960s, the term immigrants was consciously used as a substitute for the negatively charged word alien. Former alien investigations were replaced in 1968 by an immigration investigation, which would reshape alien policy into a future immigration policy. The State Immigration Commission was replaced in 1969 by the National Immigration Board (Immigration Service).

These lines describe a Swedish revolution that had a far more profound importance – socially and intellectually – than the already outdated talk of ‘the working class’, as those years were called the best from the pulpits, magazine columns and television screens. Sweden was preparing for perhaps its biggest social transformation of the 1900s.

The encyclopaedia gives a long series of concepts that reflect the depth and extent of this transformation, which is at once both conceptual and real: ”immigration bureau”, ”immigrant student”, ”Immigrants & Minorities” (journal founded in 1974), ”immigration research”, ”immigration status”, ”The Immigrant Institute” (multicultural knowledge centre in Fittja formed in 1987), ”immigrant culture”, ”immigrant churches”, ”immigrant literature”, ”immigrant teachers”, ”immigration minister”, ”Immigrants’ Cultural Centre” (founded 1970), ”immigration committee”, ”immigrant organisations, ” ”The Immigrant Organisations’ Cooperation Body” (founded in 1972), ”immigration policy”, ”immigration programme”, ”The Immigrant Council” (established in 1975), ”immigration counsel”, ”The Immigrant Magazine” (founded in 1967), ”immigrant journal”, ”immigrant education”, ”The Immigration Board” (established in 1969), ”immigration measures”, ”immigration policy”, and ”immigration control”.

The article ”Immigration” points out the changes that have taken place since the 1980s – immigration from overseas countries (Middle East, Asia, Africa, Latin America) rather than from Europe, refugee migration rather than labour. It is obvious that these changes are associated with a new conceptualisation of immigration.

The three concepts that had perhaps the greatest resonance in the debate on immigration are integration, multiculturalism and refugee. The debate about this new immigration is largely dominated by the concept of ‘integration’. Those immigrants (or ‘refugees’) who came to Sweden, now often from very distant countries and cultures, would be ‘integrated’ into Swedish society. The National Encyclopaedia gives certain information about what was meant by this under the word integration. It refers to the migration studies in which the term integration was used especially “to describe the social processes through which minorities such as immigrant ethnic groups, are brought into and become participants in the new society to which they have moved.” It goes on:

”Associated concepts are acculturation, adaptation, assimilation (which usually indicates that the initial differences are erased more or less completely) and incorporation.”

Integration was thus about immigrants adapting to Sweden. The basic idea was to make Swedes of the immigrants. They would learn Swedish (”immigrant education”), they should adapt to Swedish laws and moral beliefs with regard to the age of marriage, forced marriage, women’s status and more. Friction-free, they would blend into Swedish society.

The idea of integration was met later by the essentially opposing view of ‘multiculturalism’. As the debate on immigration was rather confused and had as its main goal the sweeping of problems under the carpet, rather than investigating them, the clear contradiction was by no means clear to all. The terms integration and multiculturalism continued to be used interchangeably, as if they meant the same thing, or were at least not logically inconsistent. The fact that they pointed in opposite directions, however, is easy to see. Integration meant that immigrants should adapt to Sweden. Multiculturalism meant that Sweden would adapt to immigration.

In The National Encyclopaedia’s formulations, one can observe some caution in the use of the term multicultural. The entry for the word multicultural is: ”marked by many lifestyles, languages and experiences”, and it gives examples of immigrant neighbourhoods such as the Stockholm suburb of Rinkeby. The multicultural society, then, would be a localised phenomenon, existing primarily in certain residential areas. The large article on immigration, however, uses the word in a slightly different way. It says:

Sweden has become a multicultural society, where a hundred languages are spoken and taught in schools but where, at the same time, Swedish language and Swedish culture tends to gain the upper hand within one or two generations.

Multiculturalism first, then integration, according to The National Encyclopaedia’s interpretation. Since it was written, however, the requirements of multiculturalism have, in some places, intensified and become a vision of Sweden as a home for all cultures to the same extent (except possibly the Swedish culture, which is believed not to exist). Such multiculturalist extremism has certainly not dominated, but is treated urgently through an eclecticism, which basically brings quite incompatible perspectives together as if they were best friends. The diffuse use of the terms has come to hide the intellectual revolution that has in fact taken place.

In 1992, the renowned American historian and liberal commentator Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. published the book The Disuniting of America – Reflections on a Multicultural Society. The book became a national bestseller, reflecting not only the author’s reputation, but also the problematic affairs in the United States.

Schlesinger recalled the classic idea of the U.S. as a ‘melting pot’ of nationalities, races and cultures. He also recalled Israel Zangwills’s play The Melting Pot, which played in Washington in 1908. America, says the main character, is God’s melting pot, the great melting pot where all European races are melted down and transformed! … Here you stand in your fifty groups, with your fifty languages and your fifty vendettas … Never mind your battles and vendettas! Germans and Frenchmen, Irishmen and Englishmen, Jews and Russians – into the melting pot with all of you! God creates the American!

Is this a direct quotation? If so, use quotation marks as appropriate.Is this a direct quotation? If so, use quotation marks as appropriate.Schlesinger pointed out that this notion of a ‘melting pot’ was now being replaced by another, partially opposed notion. It is the idea of multiculturalism. A new orthodoxy had arisen – America was seen as a collection of interest groups, who were proud of their differences and who had abandoned the idea of assimilation. Schlesinger acknowledged that this new ethnic awareness has had some positive effects. But he also said that the cult of ethnicity came at a price of ”fragmentation, re-segregation and tribalisation of life in America”. What ‘multiculturalism’ was ultimately about was the United States’ future.

The problems in Europe and in Sweden are, of course, in many ways different than in the U.S., which has always been a country of immigrants. But Schlesinger’s book is a reminder of the discussion and implementation in the Western world. How does ‘the West’ relate to ‘the rest’? What is the relationship, more specifically, between the liberal West and people from other cultures, who are more or less desperately seeking to get there? Reasonably, they are looking to the West because they believe that conditions there are better. They vote with their feet for a civilisation other than their own. At the same time they bring with them a great deal of their own culture. Once they arrive, they have mixed feelings. They have made great sacrifices to find something better; while they must also in some ways find it degrading that this ‘better place’ is in fact better, and that they come from (and have abandoned) somewhere worse. Is it possible to resolve this conflict? When talking about matters such as food, clothing or weekends, the difficulties are not insurmountable. But what about in areas such as democracy, freedom, tolerance and secularism? Or when it comes to values of family, child rearing, or the status of women?

This is about more than just practical problems. This is a dilemma of the liberal conscience. Liberal culture is based on pluralism and tolerance. Pluralism must give leeway even for enemies of pluralism; tolerance tolerates even tolerance’s foes. But not to an unlimited extent.

The specific problem areas are well known. It has been about Jyllands-Posten’s Muhammad cartoons, about Lars Vilks’ roundabout, the headscarf ban in schools, honour killings, forced marriages, childcare. Those who have defended liberal and secular values have been accused of prejudice, Islamophobia and racism, even by those who themselves are liberals.

Popular

SD behövs för bråk

Sverigedemokraternas relevans har börjat ifrågasätts i och med att andra partier ska ha anammat en striktare invandringspolitik. Men SD:s roll i politiken är knappast förbi – snarare har den anledning att intensifieras.

Susanna Birgersson Krönika 2025 5

There are two interesting limits here: first, the boundary where liberal culture gives its critics so little space that it itself becomes intolerant, repressive and stagnant. Secondly, the point where it gives its critics so much space that it cancels itself out. The practical discussions have their counterparts on the intellectual and philosophical levels. An essential part of the debate on postmodernism and post-colonialism has been about this.

Postmodernism is partly about the art of sawing off the branch you are sitting on, that is to say, a criticism ‘from within’ rather than from ‘outside’, a criticism that lacks access to an ‘alternative’ and which therefore is content to undermine itself with a deconstruction. A simple sketch of this could be:

”All people have equal rights. But that means that all human cultures and ethical systems are of equal value. There are, in other words, no general or universal ethics. Thus, there can be no rights for all people. ”

From the liberal premises, you end up in a few quick steps with illiberal conclusions. There may be reasons to recall some philosophical debates of past decades.

In the 1980s, the West German philosopher, Jurgen Habermas, caused a stir when he attacked a series of lectures on French postmodernism and post-structuralism by Jacques Derrida and others. What Habermas did was mainly to make explicit the difference between two different positions. There was one side the kind of rationalism and ethical universalism, which he represented in the tradition of Kant. It defended the principles of a universal rationality and an ethics that would be valid for all people. Against this stood the postmodernism criticism (partly inspired by Nietzsche and Heidegger). It rejected the pretence of a general rationality or universal morality. It wanted to defend the particularistic and pluralistic against improper hegemonic interests. To defend itself against the charge of nihilism, it tried to find new bases for ethics. Referring to Levinas, one spoke extensively about ”the Other”. But who was this other person, who demanded our respect? Hitler? Khomeini? Osama bin Laden? No clear answer ever emerged.

An extensive universalism was formulated at the global level by the so-called ‘neoconservatives’ who primarily made their name during the George W. Bush presidency. These ‘neocons’ or, if you like, ‘neowilsonians’, argued that democratic values are universal and globally valid. Most controversial was when they asserted that democracy should be emulated by the Muslim world, where it had had little space.

The neoconservatives relied on a natural law tradition. Some of them had studied under Chicago professor Leo Strauss, who defended natural rights in his most influential book, Natural Right and History (1953). They undeniably exposed themselves to accusations from many different directions and with different motivations. Not the least interesting was the accusation of ”cultural imperialism”, which came both from critics who claimed to represent genuine conservatism, and the ‘postcolonial’ left. Enforcing democracy, ‘human’ rights and, above all, a liberal regime as a global standard would be to impose upon the world the standards developed in the West. Francis Fukuyama’s thesis about the ”end of history” (a kind of global triumph of democracy and the market) could, at least in these respects, be considered to be in line with neoconservative views and be included in the same category.

Liberals applaud empires’ decay. They applauded in Woodrow Wilson’s time, and when the Habsburg, Ottoman, and Romanov empires fell to pieces. They applauded in Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry Truman’s times, when the British and French empires fell apart. In the past, Liberals thought they knew what would come after the multiethnic and multicultural empires. It was the democratic nation-states (or in the U.S.’s case, at least, the ‘melting-pot’ nation). Today’s liberals are not so sure. Should the new world order that succeeds the Soviet empire, be based on liberal values (democracy, human rights, free trade), or on what? The huge migration flows that contribute to the problem are internal to each country in the Western world. The nation-state’s (and, as far as Sweden is concerned, the people’s home’s) idea is exposed to increasingly strong pressure. Hence the debate on ‘multikulti’.