INTEGRATION
Integration has been and is still a challenging issue in Sweden as a whole. Successive governments both at the national and local levels have failed to adhere to promising practices to gain diverse perspectives from the ground to unpack some of the challenges of immigrant attraction and retention in communities all over Sweden. The failure is based on a lack of diversity and inclusivity in the design and implementation of integration projects in Sweden.
Although integration strategies have been in effect for well over decades with an array of immigration supports available at the national and local levels, most integration projects in recent years have been privatised by the right-wing government, shifting from an established history of inclusion to one heavily focused on exclusion. Today, in Sweden there is a relatively increased in immigrant natural population growth that will be seen in several generations to come. In the context of today’s critical need to spur economic growth, municipalities without a recent history of welcoming and integrating immigrants will find themselves under pressure to design the community blueprint for their immigrant future.
Our experience as immigrants who work hard every day amid numerous challenges has taught us that it is in the capacity of our local municipality to be welcoming and contribute to immigrant success by creating the conditions for inclusion. So, the question is how can we make it work in municipalities controlled by the social democratic party? What contributes to successful settlement and integration? Or a failure to attract and retain?
Diversity and inclusion, a multi-stakeholder community planning framework where immigrants are included in the whole process should be developed by municipalities to help develop strategies for more effective immigrant attraction and retention.
This framework is the adoption of a whole community approach to the design of inclusive communities. A whole community approach requires strong leadership and multistakeholder engagement across a wide field of action. It takes the community at large to engage in a planning process that is open, inclusive, and speaks to the long-term health and well-being of every resident.
This framework will identify immigrant integration as a critical social, cultural, economic, and political development strategy for the social democrats-led government in all municipalities.
This is the only way forward to attract Affro-Swedes to become active members of the social democratic party.