IMMIGRATION HAS TRANSFORMED SWEDISH SOCIETY AND politics over the past two decades. The scale of demographic change has had societal and political consequences that were not anticipated by politicians and commentators who advocated relaxed controls.
A few notable figures allow us to get an idea of the upheaval in question. Today one in five Swedes — two million people out of a population of around ten million — was born abroad. Almost one in four Swedes was born abroad or has two foreign parents. And if we count those with at least one parent born abroad, that is a third of all Swedes. The numbers rise even higher in the large cities and among people of childbearing age.
In around 20 years, Sweden’s demographic mix has evolved so that it’s now close to that of former colonial powers, such as France and Great Britain, or to countries built by immigration such as the USA. And yet, even America has never had so large a share of its population born abroad as Sweden does today.
But what sets Sweden apart from comparable countries is the fact that immigration has reached such a high level in so short a period of time. In 1970, 16 per cent of children born in Sweden had at least one parent born abroad. In 2018, the figure was 38 per cent.
At the same time, the composition of immigration has changed
