Understanding Swedish Multiculturalism

Abstract

Sweden is often portrayed as one of the most prominent representatives of an officially declared multicultural policy. Indeed, the Swedish case has been celebrated, alongside Canada and Australia, as the model for positive multicultural immigrant integration (Castles and Miller 1993). Sweden was also often mentioned — together with the UK and the Netherlands — as one of the European countries that in the postwar period most markedly adopted a multicultural policy (Koopmans et al. 2005; Freeman 2004; Castles and Miller 1993). The policy processes that followed after the terror attacks in 2001 profoundly changed this standard story, and now it is commonplace to characterize UK and Dutch multiculturalism as being in retreat (e.g. Joppke 2004; Entzinger 2003). However, when it comes to describing the current condition of multiculturalism in Sweden, commentators usually either give a rather uncertain or vague picture, or hold that the country constitutes something of an exception to the common European trend of backing down from previous multicultural policies (Koopmans et al. 2005; Joppke 2004). Hence, there is a widespread idea first that Sweden represents one of the clearest examples of immigrant multiculturalism in Europe, and second that this policy approach in Sweden, in contrast with other countries, remains rather unaffected by the ‘multiculturalism crisis’ that has been witnessed throughout the Western world since the turn of the millennium.