The Swedish political right and left have entered into polemics on the debate site Newsmill. Nisha Besara is concerned about the direction the political right seems to be taking, noting that making demands on immigrants to adjust (i.e. assimilate) is becoming increasing acceptable in this camp. Her main concern is that the politics of integration will become a battering ram for dismantling the Swedish welfare state.
This causes Markus Uvell, of the right-wing think tank Timbro, to retort that the political left is more concern with maintaing outdated welfare systems than finding real solutions to integration issues.
Both make some interesting points. Beshara points out that the notion that the majority is always right (and thus immigrants, always in the minority, has to assimilate without any quibbles) is hardly a very liberal stance. This is a good point, but then the political right also consists of many conservatives, for whom this kind of collectivism is hardly incosistent with core ideological commitments.
Uvell's points that the entrenched last-employed-first-laid-off rule does have significance for the exclusion of new arrivals on the labour market (i.e. newcoming immigrants) also has some potency.
Both sides also have one fundamental weakness to their argument, as well. Both discuss immigrants as objects for the, albeit well-meaning, attention of primarily Swedish public actors. In neither the right wing or the left wing discourse are the immigrants entrusted agency or competence of their own.
Indeed, the only policy solution that might address this is the one proposed by then-integration Minister Nyamko Sabuni (replaced after the election by Erik Ullenhag) by in late 2009, where the civil society will get an increased role during the introduction to the labour market. Its outcome will, of course, depend greatly on how it's actually implemented but it is noteworthy that its potential have been quite overlooked in the Swedish public debate, which remains quite state-centred.
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