Sweden’s Prime Minister demands an end to ethnic enclaves
LONDON
Sweden’s prime minister called for an end to “ethnic clusters” in the country’s big cities on Tuesday, saying there should be no Little Italy immigrant-style ghettos.
Swedish should be spoken in all parts of the country, says Magdalena Andersson to Dagens Nyheter and adds: “We don’t want Chinatowns in Sweden, we don’t want Somalitowns or Little Italys.”
The move follows criticism of a proposal by Migration Minister Anders Ygeman that Sweden should try to limit the concentration of people with an immigrant background in the cities’ most troubled areas.
Andersson expressed his support for neighboring Denmark’s policy of trying to limit immigrant concentrations, but stressed that this does not have to mean “forcing population displacement”, as happened in Denmark.
Andersson said that there are other ways to implement this, including building attractive condominiums.
“Then you get a mixed population,” she told the paper.
Leading Swedish experts in immigration and integration as well as many other political parties reacted strongly when Ygeman suggested that there should be a limit for non-Nordic residents in Swedish cities.
But Andersson stood by the proposal, saying there is nothing controversial about it, even though it should have been implemented much earlier to prevent segregation.
But immigration and integration experts expressed scepticism.
The effect of this policy would be to categorize people ethnically in terms of Nordic, “basically, white people or non-Nordic, which would include large numbers of immigrants coming from non-European countries, the Middle East, Africa, and so on,” says Charles Westin, sociologist at Stockholm University, to Anadolu Agency.
Westin said this is not the way to deal with integration, calling it “a racist approach.”
“What comes to mind is the (former) apartheid system in South Africa or other types of state racism,” he added.
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