Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson has stated she supports a proposal to reduce segregation by banning areas where non-Scandinavians are the majority of residents.
Prime Minister Andersson, whose Social Democrat Party which has controlled Sweden for nearly a decade and has worked tirelessly to bring migrants into the country, said she was in favour of breaking up de-facto segregated neighbourhoods. The plan had been outlined by Integration Minister Anders Ygeman during a newspaper interview late last month and echoes efforts in neighbouring Denmark where such areas are now being actively broken up and even demolished.
“I think it’s bad to have areas where the majority are of non-Nordic origin,” Ygeman said, while Statistics Sweden notes that around 80 per cent of those living in so-called “vulnerable” areas — known to many colloquially as ‘no go zones’ — come from foreign backgrounds.
“We Social Democrats have always stood for the fact that it is good to have mixed residential areas. Of course, it is also important that in residential areas in Sweden it is Swedish that is the main language,” Prime Minister Andersson told the newspaper Aftonbladet.
Andersson added that fewer non-Scandinavian residents in areas “could help reduce segregation. And that everyone who lives in Sweden also feels that you are part of Sweden, sees their parents go to work. This is how we can also ensure that young people are not drawn into crime.”
Ygeman’s proposal is something that was proposed in Denmark last year, with the government wanting to break up so-called ghetto areas and reduce the number of non-western residents to no more than 30 per cent in Danish neighbourhoods.
“All this effort is about combating parallel societies and creating a positive development in residential areas, so as to make them attractive to a wide cross-section of the population,” former Danish Interior and Housing Minister Kaare Dybvad Bek said last year.
Swedish Prime Minister Andersson commented on the Danish proposal and the Danish approach of listing western and non-western migrants saying, “We don’t have such a division in Sweden. On the other hand, however, we Social Democrats have the ambition to have mixed areas, and we share that ambition with parties in other countries.”
“I think it’s bad to have areas where the majority are of non-Nordic origin,” while Statistics Sweden notes that around 80 per cent of those living in so-called “vulnerable” or no-go areas come from foreign backgrounds.