7 ms·

> And then, once again, Europe blames the groups it refuses to accept. Can you explain in what way did this manifest in Sweden for instance? Or have any data/e

by wwtrv 2y ago

> And then, once again, Europe blames the groups it refuses to accept. Can you explain in what way did this manifest in Sweden for instance? Or have any data/evidence besides some semi-vague claims about antisemitism and some immutable characteristics of European societies (which are hardly monolithic to begin with). It's not that I even necessarily disagree with what you're saying but unfortunately your comment is 80% demagoguery and 20% substance. > Why is it that economic migrants do, after a few generations, become successfully integrated in America, while they tend not to in Europe? Possible different population samples that don't overlap as much? By and large (unless you're crossing the Mexican border I guess...) immigrating to the US has been significantly harder than to the EU even if you're educated/relatively high skilled. The US can afford to be much more picky. > One might ask: Was that the Jews' fault? Or the host society's fault? There are 2x more Jews in France than before WW2? Guess from where most of the threats/attacks towards them are coming? (hint: not the host society).

init 2y ago
> Can you explain in what way did this manifest in Sweden for instance? Or have any data/evidence besides some semi-vague claims about antisemitism and some immutable characteristics of European societies (which are hardly monolithic to begin with). If you live in Sweden then you will also know that the state puts refugees in the same areas (Rinkeby, Vivalla, Tensta, etc ...). These areas are then labeled as unsafe because of a slightly elevated crime rate and because they're labeled unsafe, swedes start moving out and quality of services and house prices drop and the downward spiral continues until the area becomes a ghetto even though they're usually not that bad. Although SFI exists to teach Swedish to immigrants, the quality of the teaching is not great in most schools. That's where the integration effort stops. Even professionals who move to Sweden for work have a hard time integrating in Swedish society. That's how you end up with people living in upscale parts of Stockholm for 10+ years and can barely form a sentence in Sweden.
- Ma8ee 2y ago
  It’s not the state that put the immigrants there, but outside those areas it’s almost impossible to find something to rent, and as an immigrant without a steady income it’s kind of impossible to buy anything.
  - onlyperson 2y ago
    [dead]
- RubberbandSoul 2y ago
  > state puts refugees in the same areas (Rinkeby, Vivalla, Tensta, etc ...). No it doesn't. Refugees are placed in municipalities all over Sweden but most choose to move to the big cities as soon as they can and end up in these districts because they are the cheapest. > slightly elevated crime rate. Citation needed. Compared to what? Casual crime is very high compared to traditional Swedish society. Also a lot of crime goes unreported because the locals don't trust the police to be able to do anything. > That's where the integration effort stops. Simply not true. There are oodles of integration efforts all over Sweden at many levels; public projects, local initiatives and on top of that immigration heavy areas gets more public funding than average for schools, after-school activities, park/street cleanings, etc. > Even professionals who move to Sweden for work have a hard time integrating in Swedish society. That's because Swedish is a small language and most professionals don't plan on staying. Most Swedish professionals speak English on a native speaker level and most large Swedish companies has English as the official corporate language. In my experience most non-English speakers that comes to Sweden spend their efforts on becoming fully proficient in English while the English speakers are delighted to find that they can use English everywhere in society. Learning Swedish has a very low priority and after a couple of years most expats grows tired of the cold, darkness, taxes, low salaries, etc.
  - EGreg 2y ago
    In my opinion, refugees should be spread out and placed among neighbors who are willing to interact positively with them and invite them to stuff so they can integrate, and NOT allowed to relocate their residence for 5-10 years. That will be better for the country. Beggars can’t be choosers, they’re happy to get asylum. How to enforce that: fine whoever sells/rents to them outside where they are supposed to live. And threaten to deport them if they move without the years passing or showing they’ve integrated / learned the language / culture etc. Obviously, exceptions can be made for reasons of safety or being closer to a job they got, but then the same procedure should be followed (spread out and surrounded by neighbors willing to help integrate them). They should also have access to resource to accelerate the cultural integration, like meetups and schools etc.
    - 2y ago
Ma8ee 2y ago
As a Swede, we have always been very bad letting foreigners in. Most, even otherwise liberal and well educated, have been low key racist. One part has been that anyone not speaking perfect Swedish has been seen as bit stupid. Having a foreign sounding name has made it much harder to get to an interview. Imagine growing up with hard working parents with engineering or medical degrees working as cleaners because no one wants to employ them because of their names or the way they speak. Would you be motivated to study or work hard? The only places where you feel welcome are in the mosques or in a gang. What gives me a bit of hope is that this seem to be quite rapidly changing, at least in part of society. I have been working at a company in central Stockholm where none! of about 100 employees had even immigrated parents. I’m working in a large company right now where some departments still are 100% native Swedes, but other, that see what a waste it is to not use all this talent, employ 50% or more first or second generation of immigrants.
- weweweoo 2y ago
  To be honest, it's also the quality of migrants that Sweden receives. The migrants joining gangs or getting radicalized in Sweden are primarily ones who arrived as asylum seekers, usually without much language and marketable job market skills, and with conservative cultural background that can be a burden. This is a big contract to the United States, which doesn't receive anywhere near as many refugees (adjusted to its size), and is generally more picky about migrants. The welfare system doesn't work well with integration either. If all that is available to you are bad jobs due to your lack of job market / language skills, why work if welfare pays almost the same? I think Sweden does a decent job integrating those migrants who arrive with sufficient skills for the job market. It's the rest that are problematic, and they would probably do better in the US with its lack of welfare state.
  - deleted 2y ago
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  - twixfel 2y ago
    >I think Sweden does a decent job integrating those migrants who arrive with sufficient skills for the job market. It's the rest that are problematic, and they would probably do better in the US with its lack of welfare state. Tbh I doubt it. If it's anything like German society, which is incredibly insular, just being non-German is enough to make you unwelcome.
noduerme 2y ago
I should be clear... I'm not talking about Nordic countries regarding Jews. Swedes, Norwegians and Danes are considered heroes in this regard, and the historical analogies to the rest of Western Europe don't hold. There was no history of ghettoization or discrimination there. I am not applying my criticism there. It should be said that the pre-WW2 Jewish population of Sweden was miniscule, but that Swedes took great personal risks to save these refugees from a culture they did not know. The rise in antisemitic attacks in France, conducted entirely by Muslim immigrants, is a feature of the weakness of the French pluralist/secularist and legal state which again appears to be failing to integrate new arrivals into its Enlightenment ideals. One hopes Sweden doesn't fall into the same trap. But my gripe is about integration, and historically Sweden has not had to deal with anything on the scale of what is happening now.
- achenet 2y ago
  French Jew here. I agree that our social, educational and cultural institutions are doing an absolutely atrocious job of integrating immigrant populations. Despite that, I find that most people I know from the Maghreb are actually quite well integrated, mostly because as an educated, well-to-do person I hang around with other educated, well-to-do people and they tend to be quite nice to get along with. I grew up in Houston (arrived age 6, left just before my 18th birthday), and honestly I find the way 'native'/anglo Texans treat Mexicans (more properly, Hispanics, but over there everyone calls them Mexicans) to be probably slightly worse on average than the way French people treat people of African descent. However, the French welfare state + my god our educational system is so fucked it's not even funny mean that it's possible to get certain pathological cases where an immigrant will move to France, live off the welfare state while railing against everything French (post-colonial hatred) and then use that sweet welfare money to plan and execute terrorist attacks. I don't blame that one the innate character of French people though, just on badly designed social institutions. Our current welfare state was modified by well-meaning leftists who were aiming to make something more egalitarian, but instead made everything worse, and then modified by well-meaning neoliberals who were aiming to make something more efficient, but instead made everything worse, and now it's starting to look like a big ugly pile of legacy code written in Perl.
twixfel 2y ago
I am a British immigrant in Germany and I can vouch for how impossible it is to integrate into these northern European societies, if the rest are anything like Germany. I tick all the boxes of what German boomers would want in a "Good Immigrant" (white, educated, from western Europe, speaks German, good job), but it doesn't help. I think overall Germans, deep down, don't really want us here. We are here to pay for the pension bill—that's literally it. But since we are here, they want us to completely assimilate and give up everything about yourself that came from our homelands. There is no respect nor appreciation for any external culture, so your "differences" have negative value, because you have to Be German. I dated a third generation Turkish German for 2 years whilst I lived here and she faced fairly casual racism from white Germans with a regularity that would be unthinkable in the UK. She was often getting complimented on how good her German (it's her mother tongue) was or asked about what country she came from (she was born and raised in Germany). It's a racist country. Don't believe the PR about how liberal Germany is—it's liberal if you're white and German. And I say all this as a white Western European. It's going to be so much harder for the average Syrian or Afghan.
- mharig 2y ago
  Continental Europeans have very bad experiences with British tourists. I really like Brits, but just if they stay on their Islands. And I am quite sure I get support from around a 100 Million dead guys from India. Turks are a very big community (I guess more than 20 Million counting all generations) in Germany with a lot of not well adapted folk. In my 2500 souls german home village live people from more than 40 nations. I never heard negative comments about them from one of the natives. But the shithole you live in of course may vary.
  - twixfel 2y ago
    Aren't you just proving my point, though? Your post is objectively xenophobic. > Continental Europeans have very bad experiences with British tourists Funnily enough I've never been anywhere where our trashy British tourists go (why would I?). So actually I don't know what they're like, but I've heard very bad things. I've also heard even worse things about the Dutch, though. > And I am quite sure I get support from around a 100 Million dead guys Well whoever they are that you're talking about, they are dead, so I am not sure they're in a position to support you at all. Having said that, I wonder what the all the dead Europeans and Jews murdered by Germans would think of Germany. > But the shithole you live in of course may vary I live and work in Hamburg. >Turks are a very big community (I guess more than 20 Million counting all generations) in Germany with a lot of not well adapted folk. Yes, because of how the majority ethnic German population treated them and continues to treat them. It's a very racist country. That's what living and working in Germany and falling in love with a Turkish German taught me. Thank you for the cultural exchange.
iudqnolq 2y ago
When looking at how wealthy democracies integrate immigrants the English speaking countries are dramatically more successful across all the standard objective metrics like crime rates or income compared to the native population. So Sweden isn't relevant.
- qwytw 2y ago
  Is the UK that particularly better than all the countries on the continent? And comparing US/Australia/NZ with Europe in the regard isn't exactly fair (they are much better at controlling and picking who can or can't come). US specifically already has extremely high crimes rates (compared to most developed countries) which might overshadow any effect immigrants might have.
  - beaglesss 2y ago
    The US has very weak employment checks and it's trivial to illegally work ones life here without having to commit any other crimes. We also have weaker regulations that allow you to start a business with basically $20 and a pressure washer, and you can legalize it with a foreign passport. The English speaking countries generally have lowest barriers to start a business which is a good release valve when you can produce value but racists won't hire you (customers will at low enough price). I suspect illegals and foreigners in general don't cause so many problems here because its easier to survive helping us than hurting us.
  - iudqnolq 2y ago
    Yes the UK is. Check out these charts for example: https://www.ft.com/content/c6bb7307-484c-4076-a0f3-fc2aeb0b6112 https://www.ft.com/content/c6bb7307-484c-4076-a0f3-fc2aeb0b6... I agree there's near infinite confounding factors. But I think the correlation is striking enough that it's relevant to this conversation especially considering that the post I'm replying to cites only non-Anglosphere countries.
    - qwytw 2y ago
      > Yes the UK is This isn't adjusted by immigrant education/background though? e.g. in the UK a slightly higher proportion of foreign born residents have tertiary degrees, in France it's the opposite (especially if we look at Île-de-France). Australia especially is extremely picky (e.g. 60% (immigrants) vs 40%(native)) https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/docserver/a0fc61dd-en.pdf?expires=1721640824&id=id&accname=guest&checksum=C6401CEDAE7ED8FADA75B666C12CD245 https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/docserver/a0fc61dd-en.pdf?expi... And I assume there might be other significant cultural/class/etc. differences. e.g. in the US 53% of all Arab-Americans are Christian. I can't quickly find any statistics but I assume in Europe the ratio is very different. Not saying that this specific example necessarily has an impact but differences in other characteristics might. Generally English speaking countries tend to have and advantage at attracting highly educated/productive immigrants presumably both due to language and other cultural, economic and social factors. It's not at all surprising that their children do a better than average.
deleted 2y ago
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by wwtrv 2y ago

init 2y ago

> Can you explain in what way did this manifest in Sweden for instance? Or have any data/evidence besides some semi-vague claims about antisemitism and some immutable characteristics of European societies (which are hardly monolithic to begin with). If you live in Sweden then you will also know that the state puts refugees in the same areas (Rinkeby, Vivalla, Tensta, etc ...). These areas are then labeled as unsafe because of a slightly elevated crime rate and because they're labeled unsafe, swedes start moving out and quality of services and house prices drop and the downward spiral continues until the area becomes a ghetto even though they're usually not that bad. Although SFI exists to teach Swedish to immigrants, the quality of the teaching is not great in most schools. That's where the integration effort stops. Even professionals who move to Sweden for work have a hard time integrating in Swedish society. That's how you end up with people living in upscale parts of Stockholm for 10+ years and can barely form a sentence in Sweden.

Ma8ee 2y ago
It’s not the state that put the immigrants there, but outside those areas it’s almost impossible to find something to rent, and as an immigrant without a steady income it’s kind of impossible to buy anything.
- onlyperson 2y ago
  [dead]
RubberbandSoul 2y ago
> state puts refugees in the same areas (Rinkeby, Vivalla, Tensta, etc ...). No it doesn't. Refugees are placed in municipalities all over Sweden but most choose to move to the big cities as soon as they can and end up in these districts because they are the cheapest. > slightly elevated crime rate. Citation needed. Compared to what? Casual crime is very high compared to traditional Swedish society. Also a lot of crime goes unreported because the locals don't trust the police to be able to do anything. > That's where the integration effort stops. Simply not true. There are oodles of integration efforts all over Sweden at many levels; public projects, local initiatives and on top of that immigration heavy areas gets more public funding than average for schools, after-school activities, park/street cleanings, etc. > Even professionals who move to Sweden for work have a hard time integrating in Swedish society. That's because Swedish is a small language and most professionals don't plan on staying. Most Swedish professionals speak English on a native speaker level and most large Swedish companies has English as the official corporate language. In my experience most non-English speakers that comes to Sweden spend their efforts on becoming fully proficient in English while the English speakers are delighted to find that they can use English everywhere in society. Learning Swedish has a very low priority and after a couple of years most expats grows tired of the cold, darkness, taxes, low salaries, etc.
- EGreg 2y ago
  In my opinion, refugees should be spread out and placed among neighbors who are willing to interact positively with them and invite them to stuff so they can integrate, and NOT allowed to relocate their residence for 5-10 years. That will be better for the country. Beggars can’t be choosers, they’re happy to get asylum. How to enforce that: fine whoever sells/rents to them outside where they are supposed to live. And threaten to deport them if they move without the years passing or showing they’ve integrated / learned the language / culture etc. Obviously, exceptions can be made for reasons of safety or being closer to a job they got, but then the same procedure should be followed (spread out and surrounded by neighbors willing to help integrate them). They should also have access to resource to accelerate the cultural integration, like meetups and schools etc.
  - 2y ago

Ma8ee 2y ago

As a Swede, we have always been very bad letting foreigners in. Most, even otherwise liberal and well educated, have been low key racist. One part has been that anyone not speaking perfect Swedish has been seen as bit stupid. Having a foreign sounding name has made it much harder to get to an interview. Imagine growing up with hard working parents with engineering or medical degrees working as cleaners because no one wants to employ them because of their names or the way they speak. Would you be motivated to study or work hard? The only places where you feel welcome are in the mosques or in a gang. What gives me a bit of hope is that this seem to be quite rapidly changing, at least in part of society. I have been working at a company in central Stockholm where none! of about 100 employees had even immigrated parents. I’m working in a large company right now where some departments still are 100% native Swedes, but other, that see what a waste it is to not use all this talent, employ 50% or more first or second generation of immigrants.

weweweoo 2y ago
To be honest, it's also the quality of migrants that Sweden receives. The migrants joining gangs or getting radicalized in Sweden are primarily ones who arrived as asylum seekers, usually without much language and marketable job market skills, and with conservative cultural background that can be a burden. This is a big contract to the United States, which doesn't receive anywhere near as many refugees (adjusted to its size), and is generally more picky about migrants. The welfare system doesn't work well with integration either. If all that is available to you are bad jobs due to your lack of job market / language skills, why work if welfare pays almost the same? I think Sweden does a decent job integrating those migrants who arrive with sufficient skills for the job market. It's the rest that are problematic, and they would probably do better in the US with its lack of welfare state.
- deleted 2y ago
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- twixfel 2y ago
  >I think Sweden does a decent job integrating those migrants who arrive with sufficient skills for the job market. It's the rest that are problematic, and they would probably do better in the US with its lack of welfare state. Tbh I doubt it. If it's anything like German society, which is incredibly insular, just being non-German is enough to make you unwelcome.

noduerme 2y ago

I should be clear... I'm not talking about Nordic countries regarding Jews. Swedes, Norwegians and Danes are considered heroes in this regard, and the historical analogies to the rest of Western Europe don't hold. There was no history of ghettoization or discrimination there. I am not applying my criticism there. It should be said that the pre-WW2 Jewish population of Sweden was miniscule, but that Swedes took great personal risks to save these refugees from a culture they did not know. The rise in antisemitic attacks in France, conducted entirely by Muslim immigrants, is a feature of the weakness of the French pluralist/secularist and legal state which again appears to be failing to integrate new arrivals into its Enlightenment ideals. One hopes Sweden doesn't fall into the same trap. But my gripe is about integration, and historically Sweden has not had to deal with anything on the scale of what is happening now.

achenet 2y ago
French Jew here. I agree that our social, educational and cultural institutions are doing an absolutely atrocious job of integrating immigrant populations. Despite that, I find that most people I know from the Maghreb are actually quite well integrated, mostly because as an educated, well-to-do person I hang around with other educated, well-to-do people and they tend to be quite nice to get along with. I grew up in Houston (arrived age 6, left just before my 18th birthday), and honestly I find the way 'native'/anglo Texans treat Mexicans (more properly, Hispanics, but over there everyone calls them Mexicans) to be probably slightly worse on average than the way French people treat people of African descent. However, the French welfare state + my god our educational system is so fucked it's not even funny mean that it's possible to get certain pathological cases where an immigrant will move to France, live off the welfare state while railing against everything French (post-colonial hatred) and then use that sweet welfare money to plan and execute terrorist attacks. I don't blame that one the innate character of French people though, just on badly designed social institutions. Our current welfare state was modified by well-meaning leftists who were aiming to make something more egalitarian, but instead made everything worse, and then modified by well-meaning neoliberals who were aiming to make something more efficient, but instead made everything worse, and now it's starting to look like a big ugly pile of legacy code written in Perl.

twixfel 2y ago

I am a British immigrant in Germany and I can vouch for how impossible it is to integrate into these northern European societies, if the rest are anything like Germany. I tick all the boxes of what German boomers would want in a "Good Immigrant" (white, educated, from western Europe, speaks German, good job), but it doesn't help. I think overall Germans, deep down, don't really want us here. We are here to pay for the pension bill—that's literally it. But since we are here, they want us to completely assimilate and give up everything about yourself that came from our homelands. There is no respect nor appreciation for any external culture, so your "differences" have negative value, because you have to Be German. I dated a third generation Turkish German for 2 years whilst I lived here and she faced fairly casual racism from white Germans with a regularity that would be unthinkable in the UK. She was often getting complimented on how good her German (it's her mother tongue) was or asked about what country she came from (she was born and raised in Germany). It's a racist country. Don't believe the PR about how liberal Germany is—it's liberal if you're white and German. And I say all this as a white Western European. It's going to be so much harder for the average Syrian or Afghan.

mharig 2y ago
Continental Europeans have very bad experiences with British tourists. I really like Brits, but just if they stay on their Islands. And I am quite sure I get support from around a 100 Million dead guys from India. Turks are a very big community (I guess more than 20 Million counting all generations) in Germany with a lot of not well adapted folk. In my 2500 souls german home village live people from more than 40 nations. I never heard negative comments about them from one of the natives. But the shithole you live in of course may vary.
- twixfel 2y ago
  Aren't you just proving my point, though? Your post is objectively xenophobic. > Continental Europeans have very bad experiences with British tourists Funnily enough I've never been anywhere where our trashy British tourists go (why would I?). So actually I don't know what they're like, but I've heard very bad things. I've also heard even worse things about the Dutch, though. > And I am quite sure I get support from around a 100 Million dead guys Well whoever they are that you're talking about, they are dead, so I am not sure they're in a position to support you at all. Having said that, I wonder what the all the dead Europeans and Jews murdered by Germans would think of Germany. > But the shithole you live in of course may vary I live and work in Hamburg. >Turks are a very big community (I guess more than 20 Million counting all generations) in Germany with a lot of not well adapted folk. Yes, because of how the majority ethnic German population treated them and continues to treat them. It's a very racist country. That's what living and working in Germany and falling in love with a Turkish German taught me. Thank you for the cultural exchange.

iudqnolq 2y ago

When looking at how wealthy democracies integrate immigrants the English speaking countries are dramatically more successful across all the standard objective metrics like crime rates or income compared to the native population. So Sweden isn't relevant.

qwytw 2y ago
Is the UK that particularly better than all the countries on the continent? And comparing US/Australia/NZ with Europe in the regard isn't exactly fair (they are much better at controlling and picking who can or can't come). US specifically already has extremely high crimes rates (compared to most developed countries) which might overshadow any effect immigrants might have.
- beaglesss 2y ago
  The US has very weak employment checks and it's trivial to illegally work ones life here without having to commit any other crimes. We also have weaker regulations that allow you to start a business with basically $20 and a pressure washer, and you can legalize it with a foreign passport. The English speaking countries generally have lowest barriers to start a business which is a good release valve when you can produce value but racists won't hire you (customers will at low enough price). I suspect illegals and foreigners in general don't cause so many problems here because its easier to survive helping us than hurting us.
- iudqnolq 2y ago
  Yes the UK is. Check out these charts for example: https://www.ft.com/content/c6bb7307-484c-4076-a0f3-fc2aeb0b6112 https://www.ft.com/content/c6bb7307-484c-4076-a0f3-fc2aeb0b6... I agree there's near infinite confounding factors. But I think the correlation is striking enough that it's relevant to this conversation especially considering that the post I'm replying to cites only non-Anglosphere countries.
  - qwytw 2y ago
    > Yes the UK is This isn't adjusted by immigrant education/background though? e.g. in the UK a slightly higher proportion of foreign born residents have tertiary degrees, in France it's the opposite (especially if we look at Île-de-France). Australia especially is extremely picky (e.g. 60% (immigrants) vs 40%(native)) https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/docserver/a0fc61dd-en.pdf?expires=1721640824&id=id&accname=guest&checksum=C6401CEDAE7ED8FADA75B666C12CD245 https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/docserver/a0fc61dd-en.pdf?expi... And I assume there might be other significant cultural/class/etc. differences. e.g. in the US 53% of all Arab-Americans are Christian. I can't quickly find any statistics but I assume in Europe the ratio is very different. Not saying that this specific example necessarily has an impact but differences in other characteristics might. Generally English speaking countries tend to have and advantage at attracting highly educated/productive immigrants presumably both due to language and other cultural, economic and social factors. It's not at all surprising that their children do a better than average.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]