Gothenburg to Map "Anti-Muslim Racism" Among City Staff

GOTHENBURG - One city employee says being Muslim has cost them both pay and promotion. Another says a picture published by their own department destroyed their trust in the employer.

Now Gothenburg's city executive board has ordered a survey of anti-Muslim racism across the city's workplaces.

The report behind the decision gives few concrete examples and leaves the big questions open: how widespread is the problem, and where does racism end and criticism of Islam begin?

When the board handled the report "Living as a Muslim in Gothenburg" on 16 September, city officials proposed that politicians simply take note of it without taking a position. The Left Party, the Social Democrats and the Greens wanted to go further. Their amendment passed after the item had been postponed eight times.

The city's central administration must now investigate "to what extent employees of the City of Gothenburg have been affected by anti-Muslim racism", and propose routines to counter it in the workplace.

The assignment covers the city as an employer. The study in front of the politicians asked a different question - how Muslim residents experience life in the city and their dealings with schools, social services and elderly care.

"Colleagues earn more"

In one of the report's most concrete testimonies about the city as an employer, an employee describes colleagues with less experience and lower education earning more. The person links the lack of career opportunities to their faith.

The study contains no comparison of salaries, positions or hiring decisions. The reader is simply given the employee's own explanation.

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Another example comes from the social services department in north-east Gothenburg. A treatment booklet called "Angry Monkeys" showed a girl in a headscarf drawn as a monkey in a room full of people.

One employee said the picture shook their faith that the employer would stand up for staff facing racism. The department later withdrew the material.

In a focus group, a woman in a headscarf working in a preschool or school said parents sometimes asked to speak to someone else instead. That experience concerned parents, not the employer.

Racism or criticism?

The line-drawing problem shows up already in the report's background section. The authors define anti-Muslim racism as racism aimed at people who are, or are perceived to be, Muslims.

Under the same heading they cite a Swedish survey in which 57 percent had a negative view of Islam and eight percent a positive one. That question was about the religion. It says nothing about how respondents would treat a Muslim job applicant or colleague.

The difference matters in practice. Several participants ask for more hours when municipal swimming pools are open to women only.

The report presents this as a wish. Whether publicly funded pools should be reserved for one sex is a political question, where both religious freedom and equality between the sexes are part of the debate. Objecting to sex-segregated swimming says nothing in itself about how the objector treats Muslim women.

Four in ten - but not a random sample

The survey also asked directly religion-related questions. Close to four in ten of those who answered said someone had said nasty things to them over the past year with reference to their being Muslim.

The free-text answers also include harder-to-judge situations, such as a suspicious look or being passed over without any reason given. At the same time, 82 percent of the 634 who answered the safety question fully or partly agreed that Gothenburg is a safe city.

The survey was aimed at Muslim residents aged 16 and over. Of 963 people who answered at least part of it, 617 completed it. Participants were not randomly selected, and the 13 focus group members were recruited partly through Muslim associations.

The authors themselves stress that the answers cannot be generalised to all Muslims in Gothenburg. No share of affected city employees is reported.

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Taxpayer-funded material for schools

Alongside the staff survey, three city departments run the project "Young and Muslim in Gothenburg" together with Save the Children and the association Navet, funded through the city's Living History programme.

On 12 November the project's exhibition opened at the City Library, where it runs until 3 January. Primary schools are also offered discussion material, including a film in which young people describe their experiences.

For the city's administration, the harder task remains. If politicians are to learn "to what extent" staff have been affected, the survey must show which incidents count and how many employees they concern.

The board's decision sets out neither the criteria to be used nor how the scale is to be measured.