Integration That Time Cannot Solve – Researcher’s Figures Paint a Dark Picture

One in five migrants who have lived in Sweden for more than 20 years report that they have never had gainful employment, relying only on benefits. In disadvantaged areas, it is nearly one in three who have been dependents, never contributors. According to researcher Bi Puranen, behind these figures lies a much deeper integration problem than merely a lack of jobs, such as language barriers, segregation, low trust, and values that can persist for decades. Her research points toward an uncomfortable conclusion – Sweden has underestimated how long and demanding the journey from migration to actual integration is for large groups from distant countries and cultures.

For several decades, Sweden has experienced significant immigration, not least from countries that are socially, economically, and in terms of values, far removed from Swedish society. Policy has largely rested on the assumption that integration will follow with time – language will be learned, people will enter employment, and the next generation will grow up within Swedish society. Bi Puranen’s results give reason to question how true this assumption is.

Puranen is secretary general and research director for the World Values Survey and works at the Institute for Futures Studies. In extensive surveys of non-European migrants, she has studied work, language, social contacts, and values. The results do not show that integration fails for everyone, but rather that exclusion is both extensive and remarkably long-lasting for very large groups.

Two Decades in Sweden – But Never a Job

Perhaps the most striking figure is this: 20 percent of migrants who have lived in Sweden for more than 20 years state that they have never been gainfully employed, having only lived on benefits paid by taxpayers. In disadvantaged areas, the situation is even more alarming. There, it applies to nearly one in three migrants.

As a comparison, only 7 percent of the Swedish-born majority population report never having had gainful employment, including those who cannot work due to disability or severe illness. Among newly arrived migrants attending SFI (Swedish for Immigrants), the corresponding figure is a staggering 43 percent.

The differences diminish over the years for some, but rarely reach the average level for Swedes. Yet a significant group still stands without any work experience after more than two decades, something hard to describe as anything other than a serious integration problem. According to Puranen, it also means the assumption that integration is mainly a question of time does not hold up.

When Puranen and her colleagues take into account language, employment, social networks, and contacts with Swedish-born residents, the significance of time spent in Sweden itself diminishes. The decisive factor does not appear to be the number of calendar years spent in Sweden, but rather what kind of society the individual has actually lived in during those years.

Exclusion Can Persist Within Sweden

This leads to one of Puranen’s more troubling observations. A person can live in Sweden for a very long time without their daily life significantly intersecting with the majority society’s.

The workplace, school, and residential area are, according to Puranen, crucial arenas for integration. If these points of contact are missing, segregation risks becoming self-reproducing.

Even migrants express concern about this in in-depth interviews. A parent in a marginalized area sums up the situation: “My children live in a bubble.”

This is not just about geography. Children can grow up in Sweden but be mainly surrounded by other families with the same or similar migration backgrounds. At the same time, parents may have limited Swedish skills and difficulty helping their children with schoolwork and language.

Puranen describes, in previous research, how many migrants live in diaspora environments where people from their parental countries of origin and their children make up a large part of the social surroundings. Consequently, there is a risk that the next generation will have weaker roots in the majority society than what the birthplace Sweden might suggest.

Language Is a Bottleneck

Language repeatedly comes up as a key factor. Among migrants who do not speak Swedish, about half lack experience with gainful employment. Educational level also plays a major role – 52 percent of the low-educated have any work experience, compared to 67 percent in the midskilled group and 81 percent among the highly educated.

Having “work experience” is not quite the same as having been employed in any generally accepted sense. A few hours of work here and there over a couple of decades can be enough to qualify.

The problem, according to Puranen, is also more complicated than people simply feeling they need to learn better Swedish. In one of her studies, 74 percent believed that their Swedish was sufficient for a job. In-depth interviews, however, indicated that many significantly overestimated their actual language ability.

The consequences risk being transmitted between generations. Parents who themselves do not master Swedish well enough have fewer opportunities to support their children’s language development and schooling.

Key Values Do Not Change Despite Decades in Sweden

The integration problem becomes even harder to handle when Puranen moves away from the labor market and examines values. Internationally, Sweden is one of the most secular and individualistic societies.

Meanwhile, a significant part of migration has come from societies where family, religion, and the collective hold a much stronger position and where views on, for example, gender roles, sexuality, and children’s autonomy differ greatly from Swedish norms.

In Puranen’s data, 19 percent of newly arrived SFI participants believe it’s natural for family or relatives to decide young people’s life choices. In disadvantaged areas, the figure is 30 percent. The real numbers may be higher, as many have learned what norms are expected in Sweden and may be unwilling to answer honestly.

According to Puranen, this relates to a broader pattern of values regarding family, sexuality, and individual autonomy. And here, time helps far more slowly than with, for example, workplace norms. The same applies to lingering loyalties to former home countries that may override those to Sweden.

Rioters in the suburb build burning barricades. Image: Police.

It takes about ten years before researchers can discern a clear shift in these values. For many, change takes more than 20 years. The explanation is that these norms are shaped early and are closely intertwined with family, religion, and upbringing.

This presents an integration challenge of a different magnitude than can be solved simply with a labor market programme or a few semesters of Swedish classes. Sweden has welcomed people not only from other labor markets, but from societies whose fundamental social structures in many cases differ greatly from ours.

At 35, Many Already Consider Themselves Too Old

Puranen’s previous research also points to a cultural difference that is less visible but can have major economic and social consequences: people’s perspective on life span itself.

A migrant may come from a society where the average life expectancy is around 55 years, women on average bear six children, and only 3 percent of the population is over 65. In Sweden, average life expectancy is over 83 years, and more than a fifth of the population is older than 65.

According to Puranen, this difference affects how people plan their lives. In her data, 40 percent – especially women – reported that by the age of 35, they already considered themselves too old for language learning and education.

From a Swedish life perspective, being 35 means at least three more decades remain in the labor market. If a large group at that age judges investments in language and education as too late to begin, a fundamental integration problem arises.

Women Risk Becoming Furthest From the Labor Market

Conflicts between different societal models are particularly evident in women’s situations. Puranen describes family patterns where people marry young, have several children, and the woman bears the main responsibility for the home. Added to this can be care for elderly relatives.

In societies without functioning public eldercare, the family’s responsibility for the aged is a necessity. Yet this pattern can follow to Sweden even when publicly financed eldercare is available.

Photo: Swedish Public Employment Service

The result, according to Puranen, may be that women simultaneously take responsibility for children, household, and elderly relatives. This further limits opportunities to learn Swedish, obtain education, and enter the labor market.

At the same time, women encounter Swedish society’s expectation for just that – to learn the language, get an education, and participate in the workforce. The integration problem thus consists not only of lacking workplace contacts, but of a collision between two ways of organizing family life and provision.

When Welfare Systems Meet Completely Different Family Structures

Puranen also points to a question long considered politically sensitive – what happens when a welfare system designed for one type of society meets family patterns from a completely different one? She uses child allowance and multiple-child supplements as examples.

Families from societies where large families are the norm may, according to Puranen, interpret Swedish economic supports differently than the systems were originally intended. She argues that this can contribute to lock-in effects for migrant women, as many children combined with traditional gender roles make education and gainful work even more difficult.

Here, a bigger question becomes clear. The Swedish welfare system is not just an economic construction. It is also built on unspoken assumptions of high employment, female labor force participation, relatively small families, and a public sector that shoulders major responsibility for children and the elderly.

When people socialized in completely different systems move in, these differences do not disappear at the border.

Low Trust Makes the Journey Longer

Added to this is trust. Sweden has, internationally, long been distinguished by high interpersonal and institutional trust. Puranen’s research finds much lower general trust among several migrant groups, particularly among the low-educated.

This matters because trust is a kind of invisible social infrastructure. It makes it easier to cooperate with people outside one’s own family, build contacts, trust institutions, and establish oneself in the labor market.

Someone coming from a society where the state functions poorly and family or clan forms the main social safety net does not automatically internalize the logic of a Nordic high-trust society’s institutions.

This is another reminder of the complexities of integration policy. It is about much more than providing housing and offering a language course.

The Second Generation May Face a Harsher Reality

A paradox in Puranen’s research is that the first generation is often very positive toward generous Sweden. Many feel at home and experience being welcomed and cared for kindly.

But there is a potential problem as the next generation grows up. The first generation often compares their life to the situation in their country of origin. Their children, on the other hand, compare themselves to other Swedes.

If they grow up segregated, receive insufficient support in school, and have weaker language and social skills, the gap between their expectations and their actual opportunities risks becoming much more noticeable to them than to their parents.

Puranen links this changed frame of reference to the problematic situation in major segregated city areas. What the parental generation can regard as a great improvement in living conditions, the children may perceive as relative exclusion in the only country they themselves consider home.

Sweden May Have Underestimated the Scale of the Task

Taken as a whole, Puranen’s research paints a picture of integration that is far slower, deeper, and more complicated than what public debate has often assumed.

This is about people who, after more than 20 years, have never worked. About residential areas where nearly one in three migrants lack work experience. About 35-year-olds who already consider themselves too old for education. About women whose family responsibilities keep them away from the labor market. About poor Swedish skills that risk affecting even the children’s schooling. And about values around the family’s power over the individual that in some cases only begin to change after several decades.

Taken together, the results are hard to dismiss. They indicate that during a period of extensive migration, Sweden may have been far too optimistic about the host society’s ability to quickly bridge very large differences in education, language, social structures, and values. The ambition to be an open and humanitarian role model has not always been matched by a sober assessment of what integration actually requires upon arrival.

This may be the most important warning signal in Puranen’s research. Time alone does not solve integration. If work, language, social contacts, and meetings with the majority society fail to materialize, exclusion can persist for decades. And when segregation becomes deep enough, parts of the problem risk being carried over to the next generation.

The integration issue, then, is less about how Sweden receives people – and more about the much tougher question of how people, once arrived, actually become a part of Sweden.