The traditional political seminars in Swedish Almedalen produced an interesting discussion on integration, with panelists Martin Ådahl, Sakine Madon, and well known journalist Maciej Zaremba. The latter has produced the until now best journalistic effort on the quite problematic Swedish immigrant introduction system (the series is available in Swedish only here).
The discussion is the first instance in Swedish public space where people of reknown pay attention to the contributions that civil society actors could provide that I am aware of. The suggestion was made by Ådahl who recommended that the State channel money to civil society actors that can provide introduction services. This is quite welcome, and one can only hope that the Swedish integration debate might be widened to include a discussion beyond the traditional state centred remedies. The question is of course what civil society actors Ådahl has in mind. The big Swedish government oriented associations are already involved to some extent without making much of a difference in terms of empowerment and agency.
Madon's counter-argument, that grants to associations are not working and therefore should not be developed is at best ill informed, as far as I am concerned, at least as far as immigrant associations are concerned. In my experience, it is true that those systems are not particularly impressive, but the problem lies mainly in the system, not with the associations themselves. Or more precisely, many associations do have problems that obstruct their capacity as competent providers of social services, including lack of administrativce experience and even some opportunistic individuals. But the way the system is structured, it dissuades serious actors, who are never given sufficient funds to work on a long term basis, focusing instead on micro grants for short term projects, which to some extent encourages those opportunists.
It will be interesting to see if this discussion made any impact over longer term.
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