What do you think is the driving factor behind it in Scandinavian countries?
That's no easy question, to say the least. I think a myriad of different perspectives are needed to compose something even close to a complete picture. Since you ask, I'll try to offer some of my own, though. It's gonna be a behemoth post, and probably to be taken with a shipload of salt.
On some level, these things might just take time. Norway, for instance, didn't see much immigration in modern times, until an influx of mainly Pakistani migration in the 70's. At this time, Norway needed the work force, but I guess a lot of native Norwegians still felt uncomfortable around persons with a different skin tone, culture and language than themselves. I'm sure this feeling of strangeness that many experience(d) will fade to a certain extent. Looking at my own kids, who are growing up in a socalled "multicultural" part of Berlin, they don't see anything weird about the fact that some adults has a hijab or a big old patriarch's beard, or that not all their friends at kindergarten are blond and wearing Lederhosen. However, I see a big problem with cultural segregation (here in Germany as well as in the Scandinavian countries). This goes both ways, as many natives are not keen on making the effort to understand the situation and mindsets of immigrants, and many immigrants also tend to the relative security of socializing with other expatriots from the same region/country as themselves. Official policies do little to help people mix, so in cities like Oslo, we've ended up some parts of the city being "ghettoized" (I don't like that term myself, but it's commonly used). A bad circle starts to form, where ethnic Norwegians stay away from areas with a high immigrant population, which leads to further ostracizing the immigrants. This is especially true for people with kids, I think. For instance, it becomes somehow a self fulfilling prophesy that schools with many immigrant children are badly integrated, with more violent/uneasy kids and a lower academic level than schools in whiter, posher areas. To break this pattern, it would obviously be necessary introduce more native kids in immigrant-heavy schools and vice versa, but instead we see the opposite happen (native Norwegian parents send their kids to the whiter schools, serving to solidify the divide even more).
I personally believe that most of the responsibility when it comes to successfully integrating Non-western immigrants does lie with the natives and the government. Of course, coming to a strange country you'll have to adapt, and a lot of people who arrive in the Nordic countries should be better at this. Still, there's the question of who is sitting on the resources here. Since decades back, the only Non-western immigrants allowed into Norway are refugees, in other words people who come from a really bad situation. Very few Scandinavians seem to grasp the significance of this. For instance, in the late 90's we had an influx of Yugoslavian refugees, fleeing one of the most atrocious wars in the history of mankind. To most Norwegians, these people were just considered a problematic group. They've been perceived as prone to acts of crime, their children disbehaving and doing badly at school, etc. An easy analysis is that they're simply bad people with an inferior culture (hey, it's summed up in a single sentence; problem solved). Not much effort is being made to try and understand how being the victim of unthinkable crimes makes it difficult to handle quotidian life afterwards. The comfy view of many Norwegians goes something like: "Well, it's not as if we asked them to come. They just showed up out of the blue, so it's their job to adapt." On the other hand, I think most people wouldn't make a lot of demands before helping someone who was bleeding to death on the street. And they fail to realize that the situation can be just as dire for refugees. Even if you're not arriving directly from the war zone, it shouldn't surprise anyone that it can be a trial to come to Norway from a Somali refugee camp, for instance, especially when you're met with general scepticism and racism on an institutional as well as a general level. However, that perspective is not often brought to the discussion.
So many factors come into play here. It's interesting to note that in the US, Somalis are generally considered hardworking good folks. In Norway, they have a bad reputation as khat chewing, wife beating criminals. How this has come to be, is frankly beyond me, but people with more knowledge could provide a better answer.
At the far end of the power spectrum, there is a real tendency for a lot of the political parties (on the left as well as the right) to use people's fears and insecurities to gain voters' support. Populism, of course, is one of the oldest tricks in politics, but it's not easy to fight. People who are against racism have not been good enough at refuting racist rhetorics, instead trying to offer alternative analyses just as simplistic. The xenophobes keep claiming that most muslims are out to impose Sharia law in Norway and that roma/gypsies are "parasites" on the welfare system, while a bunch of the antiracists hold there are no problems with immigration whatsoever. Of course, really understanding the problems demand a lot of thought, so it's much more convenient to buy into one of the black-white versions. The mainstream media mostly makes the problem even worse, as by the same token, thorough analysis doesn't sell papers as well as bombastic headlines. For instance, many Norwegian newspaper have lately been reporting on an alleged "wave of robberies" in Oslo, where the majority of perpetrators are presumed to be immigrants. In reality, statisticians have been refuting this, pointing to how the numbers actually show a generally stable amount of robberies in Oslo over the last years (the "crime wave" shows if you only take into account the numbers for the last few months). But for every page ten scientific article refuting the premises of the crime wave, there are half a dozen first page stories about people who have been robbed by "a man of foreign origin".
This is still just the tip of one of many icebergs, but this post is already long enough. In conclusion, there are of course real problems and challenges presented by immigration, but there's not much willingness to take them on in a proper fashion. The situation feels pretty locked in Scandinavia, and almost hopeless in Europe as a whole, with most people just closing their eyes to the very real fascism on the rise again in countries like Greece and Hungary. In Norway, most people aren't so much racists (not even the populist party scoring most points on xenophobic rhetorics, FRP), but they're pretty conservative – I'd say somehow comparable to hobbits – as in thinking: "Why should I jeopardize my comfort in helping my neighbor?" Still, we want the cheap fruits and electronics produced by exploited people all over the world, but just don't want to see the connection between that and the responsibility to help your fellow human beings (a responsibility I'd have thought self evident, no matter "who is to blame" for this or that). So it goes, the current government wants to accept fewer refugees on the grounds that "we should help them where they are", while still cutting development aids, and continuing to make money off of weapons export. So … go figure, I guess …
As always,
Minotauros
