Sweden

This chapter presents a historical and current picture of Sweden as a country of migration. Sweden has for a long time had cultural encounters with neighboring countries but it is only in the post war period that the stream of migrants became large and justified the statement that Sweden is a multicultural society in a descriptive sense. The chapter contains an account of the main tenets in Swedish nationalism, and how Swedish national identity is constructed today. It also contains a description of Sweden’s modern immigration history, from the World War II and onwards,with a focus on the two last decades, and how the migrant legislation has changed during that period. We also give a short account of four minority groups in present day Sweden; Sámi, Roma, Muslims and sub-Saharan Africans, whose claims for acceptance, tolerance and recognition sometimes is met with indecision, opposition or – at least at the informal level of everyday life – with outright aversion. In the section preceding the conclusions, we discuss how questions of tolerance, acceptance and recognition has been articulated and formulated in migration- and minority policy during the last decades, with a focus on the ten previous years.