Integration - ”All offentlig makt i Sverige utgår från folket”. Invandrares inflytande i den svenska demokratin

This thesis is about whether Swedish immigrants are to be considered politically empowered or not. The term politically empowered refers to a state where individuals have the capabilities and possibilities to effectively change their situation via the established democratic system. My conclusion is that political empowerment is not yet a reality within ethnic minority groups. In decision making arenas the immigrants are underrepresented and their participation in elections is lower than the ethnic Swedes. The ethnic minority groups are however very homogenous in character and many differences exists both within and between ethnic minority groups. I see the main causes for lack of political empowerment to be the general integration politics, the local introductory courses and discrimination. In the case of Sweden the general politics is focused with measuring the results of the integration politics. Therefore they focus primarily on providing jobs for the immigrant and by doing that they neglect other concerns. The main concern I found was the unstructured nature of the information about the Swedish society. Discrimination is seen as the main opposition against the individual strives to get politically empowered. It is the main reason to why social capital between the ethnic- majority and minority is not fully realized