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I asked Finnish colleagues what they thought of the situation in Sweden - and not just the latest events, but how the country has turned evermore violent and dangerous for the past 20 years. They told me quite unapologetically: "Well, the Swedes opened their borders wide to all kinds of people from wildly different cultural backgrounds coming from really troubled countries and the Finns haven't. Now they have the problems those people brought with them and we don't."
I'm starting to think there's some truth to this. But as a foreigner, whenever I go to Finland, the reverse - the lack of cultural diversity, the sea of whiteness and the absolute lack of non-Finnish-sounding names - is equally unsettling, rather stifling and feels genuinely bizarre sometimes.
I guess you can't have the best of both worlds...
While I personally believe that immigration is both humane and necessary for the aging western economies, I think it's safe to say that the purely optimistic, citizenship first and questions later mentality has proven a failure.
Without rules and a culture that demands assimilation instead of parallel existence in a separate microcosm, the new citizens have difficulties identifying with the new social order they are moving into, and naturally little respect for it either. Not to mention that by corralling immigrants into ghettos the formation of parallel structures is encouraged and the native population alienated.
Oh, wow. Instead of solving the problem where people don't consider it plausible to have at least 2 children, let's bring in more people from poorer countries.
Yeah, see, it's fine to have separate microcosms for any sane society. Just some are toxic.
It's simply about education and, yes, not letting in people you don't want.
Where did I say bring in the poors to clean our toilets? Obviously I would prefer a not capitalist system where people can afford to have kids, and immigration can mean a lot of things. I also said the current approach to immigration is failing. As for parallel societies, no, those shouldn't exist and the fact that they do is the result of failed assimilation.
Every town ideally is a parallel society.
Also either you have one social space for everyone accepting of all ideas and views, or you have cultural wars marginalizing and suppressing people unpleasant for you (like racists or religious nuts or whoever), in which case they will have their own space because they don't really have to accept your domination.
I think we are arguing semantics here, subcultures are fine and normal. Parallel societies, like those that form around ghettos full of immigrants, with their own unofficial set of laws and rules certainly are not.
That's more a failure of the integration policies of the host country though.
Well, I think there's Christiania in Copenhagen?.. A different kind of that.
Except you can, but it requires to let go of any ideas related to cultural purity or isolationism, while simultaneously not getting cold feet when it comes to turning back people who clearly can't possibly integrate.
Which is kind of hilarious since Finland has a much higher murder rate than Sweden.
"Much" higher is stretching it. According to Wikipedia, Sweden has a homicide rate of 1.1 per 100,000 in vs 1.2 for Finland.
Meaning it would just take a couple of drunken Swedes with a fruit knife to put Sweden ahead.
Sweden has 1.1 and Finland 1.2
Yeah, the other way round 🙂 Fixed. Thanks!
...not for long if things keep going at this rate. In just a few years we've skyrocketed from having amongst the least violent crime in Europe to being up there with the Balkan countries - and it just keeps getting worse for every year.
"Much higher"
Notably, the murder rate in Sweeden and Finland is a full third below the lowest state in the US. And the US average is about 5 per 100k.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_intentional_homicide_rate
Sweden also is a sea of whiteness, beyond a small number of BAME immigrants often concentrated in banlieue-like outer suburbs and the adoption of kebab-meat pizza as a comfort food. Even in Stockholm, it’s a lot less diverse than, say, Paris or Berlin.
LOL. It's unsettling for you that people's names and faces don't entertain your weird fetish?
Go to Kenia and compare, I think it'll be even less diverse.
China hella Chinese
As a Swede, I sometimes wonder if I would feel more at home moving to one of the other Scandinavian countries - because I don't really feel at home here anymore.
Maybe a compromise
So then don't go to Finland, then you won't be unsettled. Follow me for more common sense tips.
Of course you can, you just have to not maintain an exclusive society, because an exclusive society depends on excluding others, and when the "others" can't be excluded anymore, that's when the full blown racism kicks in. Knowing that people see racism as some inevitability rather than a deliberate system of oppression created and imposed by individuals who benefit from its existence (if to varying degrees) is pretty fucking terrifying.
The idea that there was no crime before immigration, or that the Finns (or Nordic people in general, who all maintain a similar society and are facing similar issues with racism now that they can't maintain their white supremacist exclusivity anymore) are innocent little lambs who have never committed a crime before the brown people arrived is not only absurd, it's pretty racist and disgusting in its own right.
They love to laud themselves as the best most developed most progressive countries, but the reality is they're just a couple of decades, if not a century behind the rest of Europe when it comes to integration (this does not equal equity or equality, just integration), and are following exactly the same route as the other countries have - capitalist government and the media that supports it need a scapegoat (who they've rigged the system against so they'd have to struggle by default, living in poverty, feeling excluded, attacked for their race) to shift blame and attention to, while they continue to exploit the people of their country (the fact that there are Nordic billionaires easily contradicts any claim to socialism they might raise, and you don't need to look far to thoroughly debunk it altogether).
The fact that you're an immigrant and are seriously considering there's some truth in this racism is pretty fucking sad and scary, but mostly goes to show just how powerful the propaganda is (and how similar it is in all countries, which is probably why it hits a nerve with you even though you don't live there).