As population diversifies, Swedish firms start to as well
They hope it will help them tap into the rising buying power of immigrants, who now spend $30 billion a year on goods and services.
from the May 2, 2007 edition
Page 2 of 3
Skilled migrants have it tough, too
Employers' growing interest in hiring immigrants is good news for residents like Hassan Sabik.
Fluent in Arabic, French, and Swedish, and with a teacher's certificate to boot, Mr. Sabik should be a hot commodity in a job market desperate for foreign-language teachers and Arabic translators.
Instead, Sabik is selling furniture in Rinkeby, a Stockholm suburb with high unemployment and small ethnic shops rarely visited by native Swedes.
"It's just hard to integrate into this society if you're an immigrant and speak with an accent," says Sabik, a Moroccan who's lived here for nine years. "The first thing I heard when I came here was that all immigrants get stuck cleaning offices or doing other menial jobs. So I decided to work for myself instead."
The Somali men sipping coffee at a local Rinkeby cafe echo that. Asked why so many of them can't find work, they describe an invisible wall that still separates many immigrants from Swedes.
With 17 percent of the country's 9.1 million residents now classified as having an immigrant background, Sweden has become one Europe's most diverse societies. Last year, a record 96,800 people immigrated to Sweden, just over half of whom came from outside Europe.
Sweden prides itself of its relatively generous immigration laws. Last year, 30,000 asylum seekers who were in limbo while appealing their deportation order – including 8,000 people in hiding – were given blanket amnesty.
But such benevolent government policies sometimes collide with a society that is still unwilling – or at least unprepared — to accommodate the newcomers, says Lena Nekby, an economist and immigration expert at Stockholm University.
She offers a laundry list of the obstacles that immigrants face in the Swedish job market.
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