Multiculturalism, Immigration and Welfare State

A detailed Summary of Multiculturalism, Immigration and Welfare State

Multiculturalism, Immigration and their relationship with the Welfare State

Issues concerning immigration within the Swedish Welfare state require a certain amount of individual pioneering on Sweden's part. The policies that work for other countries cannot be applied in the same manner. Since Sweden did not have to take on any large number of immigrants (especially non-Scandinavian immigrants) until the time surrounding World War II it is still fairly new to developing its immigration laws. Many of the problems associated with immigration are more due to refugees in Sweden. Sweden grants asylum to a broad variety of individuals, consequently there are often certain groups in which many problems arise. A good example is that of a fairly recent incident involving Ethiopian refugees that came to Sweden. Now that Ethiopia has been deemed safe for their return the country will not take the refugees back, and these 400 or so people are stuck without a home, except in Sweden. Recently, especially with the creation of the EU, Swedish immigration policy has become more efficient and well orchestrated. This seems to also be the case over much of Europe. In fact Germany even presented Sweden with an award recognizing their excell

As the State continually changes to adapt for the purposes of immigration it is important to ask if the state is being weakened by these changes. To take full advantage of immigration would require drastic changes in many parts of the Swedish government. Such as privatizations of many government sectors, but to do this would compromise the goals of Swedish democracy.

With the way the system works though, the immigrants that make it into the nation are generously taken care of. Seemingly this should lead to higher immigrant satisfaction and ultimately more Swedish citizens. Instead the Welfare State tends to run into problem, because this "generosity" can be abused. For the native Swedes, abusing the welfare state would mean they are indirectly hurting themselves and those around them. Perhaps this is just something that many immigrants fail to see at their arrival into a socialist type government, or perhaps they have no intention of staying around long enough for their actions to affect them. The majority of all Swedish immigrants prefer to remain residents of their home countries despite Sweden's lax policies on attaining citizenship and its dual-citizenship laws.

It is evident that Sweden has made rapid, and successful change to their immigration policies over the past few decades. Problems do remain, but then there will always be problems with any immigration policy. Since there is no perfect model of immigration, it is only important that there be a working model, but it is still important to strive for that impossible perfection.

From an outside prospective it appears as if there are ample opportunities for the welfare state to be abused. From the Swedish prospective, to abuse the welfare state is to contribute to the detriment of yourself and your neighbor. The Swedish government has put a lot of emphasis on the conscious techniques of Swedish social engineering, or what has become known as "the Swedish model." The thought of social engineering can be kind of scary when first mentioned, but it is important to recognize that every nation does this in some way or another. The culture of a nation and the people that are the products of that nation must be raised somehow or another to promote the future success of that nation. A good example of this social engineering is, as mentioned earlier, the problems of Xenophobia. This problem was recognized and now the Swedish government has taken steps to combat these thoughts within the nation. From a brief on that policy (from 1995): "Xenophobia, racism, and anti-Semitism jeopardize respect for universal human equality and, ultimately, democratic society." The money, which will go towards this problem, will be "used for the more long-term conditioning of young peoples norm, attitudes and behavior." With this type of education reinforcing the welfare state, it is easy to see how segregated the thoughts of native Swedes and immigrants would be. As hinted at earlier, this appears to be one thing regarding immigration within the welfare state that cannot be fixed due to its conflicting nature.

A popular view associated with the Swedish welfare state involves the idea of "folkhem" or "peoples home." This basically means that the people will do what is best for their own home. So how does immigration fit into this policy? Immigration often puts a burd

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Approximate Word count = 2257
Approximate Pages = 9 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: Politics