There is everything there to build a country. A language, a population, and even a souvenir stall where, behind the counter, grandmothers whose veils let out an icy look sell flags and t-shirts to the glory of Somaliland, a territory in the Horn of Africa which breaks ties with Mogadishu. Rinkeby (“the warrior’s village”, in old Swedish) embodies the Swedish partition to the point of caricature, a state within a state, like Somaliland, a district where you hear more Somali and Arabic than the language of the kingdom. All just fifteen minutes by metro from Gamla Stan, the old city center of Stockholm, ripoliné and with the scent of cinnamon.
For Sweden, long presented as the showcase of happy multiculturalism, the time has come for a return to reality. From June 6, the national holiday, the country will spectacularly tighten access to citizenship. On the menu: language tests, civic culture exams, resource conditions – you will now have to earn around 20,000 Swedish crowns per month, or 1,900 euros gross, and not have received social assistance over the last three years. Stockholm is turning the page on unconditional immigration. And extends a shift already initiated by the government. Sweden now expels those who have been refused asylum. And gives up to 34,000 euros to immigrants who agree to voluntarily leave the country. Scandinavian Trump without the spectacular arrests.
In Rinkeby, indignation is overplayed. “They fire the wrong people…And in particular moral figures from the mosque”deplore Abdi and Mousa, a Somali and a Gambian, sitting on the terrace of a café. It’s because we’re embarrassed at the neighborhood’s Islamic cultural center. Moreover, Hussein Farah, the imam, declines any interview on the subject ” For now “. From Valhalla to Allah, there was only one step: one of Farah’s predecessors was chief recruiter for Al-Shabab, a Somali terrorist group affiliated with Al-Qaeda.
The limits of the welfare state
The neighborhood seems to welcome the new measures with a somewhat feigned resignation. Swedish? “But why learn it? What does that change? » asks Jahar, a local market gardener, as he stacks crates of tomatoes. His assimilation seems to be a semi-success: he speaks Swedish, but we find him the next day relieving himself against a mural celebrating multiculturalism, as if he himself had never believed in this nonsense. The argument often comes back to Rinkeby: Swedish is only spoken by a few million people, while English is now sufficient everywhere, often mastered to perfection even among children. Love Sweden? Abdi wants to support the football team (“because there are people who look like us – like in the French team! ») but “not the hockey one”… Too white!
Sweden woke up in the middle of its dreams of living together with a historical hangover, as if the entire migration policy of the last twenty years had been designed under aquavit. Denial, disillusionment: the clues were so numerous… Like this Rinkeby police station, the construction of which was postponed for a long time because construction companies refused to send their workers there for security reasons. Today, the building exists, protected by bulletproof steel plates, and patrols sometimes escort police officers on their journeys to and from work.
For years, these questions were kept at a safe distance from citizens. Those who formulated them risked ostracization. “People have seen their lives destroyed for having said ten years ago what the traditional parties are saying today”summarizes Carl Eos, conservative intellectual linked to the Swedish think tank Oikos (“the house”, in Greek). He himself had lost his position within the Vision union after being identified by the far-left magazine Expo as the anonymous author of right-wing articles published under a pseudonym. Even the vocabulary then came under Newspeak: the expression “no-go zones” was proscribed. We had to talk about “socially vulnerable areas”he laughs.
According to Eos, this blindness was also explained by the particular history of the country. “We didn’t even need to talk about national identity. We were all more or less the same: Lutheran, white, Swedish-speaking and mostly social democrats. » In one of the most homogeneous societies in Europe, the question of identity seemed absurd. In one generation, Sweden has become one of the Western countries having experienced the most rapid demographic change: today, one in four inhabitants is either born abroad or comes from two parents born outside Sweden. In Rinkeby, this figure rises to 90%!
“The old parties had formed a sort of cartel of silence”
This landing in reality would not primarily be the result of cultural or security debates. “The tipping point happened when municipalities started calling Stockholm to say, ‘We’re out of money!’ » In short: long before becoming a civilizational subject, the migration crisis would have revealed the concrete limits of the welfare state. Left-wing generosity and open borders did not go well together in the land of consensus.
Traces of this social democratic paradise are still visible in Rinkeby. The “Folkets Hus” looks like a house of culture stranded in the middle of another world, with sewing classes and pro-diversity activism, all under permanent perfusion from the State. Or this poster of the Swedish army organizing summer camps with young veiled girls “to try to recreate a link”. As if assimilation were an Ikea furniture assembly plan: screw the hijabs onto the trellises and you will have integration.
For the Swedish economist of Iranian origin Tino Sanandaji, author of the bestseller Mass Challenge (“The migratory challenge”, translated into English), the arrival of non-European populations has above all revealed the limits of a system that the elites believed to be universal. “They thought that if the French or the Americans simply adopted the Swedish social model, they would no longer have problems”he told Tangwall Campagin. According to him, the kingdom has long refused to admit that its success was also based on a homogeneous culture. “As soon as Sweden started welcoming people from the Third World en masse, the system stopped working. » Even as the social democrats praised the GDP points that these newcomers would bring. Sanandaji cites the city of Malmö as a symbol of this failure: “It should be one of the richest cities in Scandinavia!” But it’s the opposite. Besides, no one has ever said: let’s tear down borders, let’s import poverty and social tensions, it will be great! »
A taboo remains
In this Sweden which has opened its eyes, a taboo remains. “When we ask criminologists why murders committed by gangs are almost all committed by foreigners, they have no answer”sighs Sanandaji, who regrets that Sweden is still at a point where “certain facts are considered racist by nature”.
This turning point no longer comes only from the margins. The Sweden Democrats (not to be confused with the Social Democrats), a populist party which supports the right-wing government coalition without participating in it, has imposed a large part of the country’s migration agenda. According to their spokesperson on these issues, Stockholm County MP Ludvig Aspling, “the old parties had formed a sort of cartel of silence around immigration. The left wanted voters; the right, cheap labor ». The old sanitary cordon around the Sweden Democrats has collapsed over shootings, attacks and the housing crisis. Above all, the Social Democrats no longer promise to reverse migration restrictions in the event of victory in the legislative elections in September. In Sweden, the consensus has changed sides.
Aspling rejects the idea of an extreme shift. “No rational mind can consider it normal to obtain citizenship of a country without speaking its language”slips into Tangwall Campagin this polyglot who masters Japanese and Mandarin. “Many people born here today grow up in their own parallel culture”estimates Aspling, who assumes “the objective of negative net migration from Africa, the Middle East and Central and South Asia”.
In Rinkeby, many have already found the solution: calling themselves nationals of Somaliland. You don’t easily deport someone to a country that the rest of the world refuses to recognize. They may never become Swedish. But in the neighborhood, Somaliland flag sellers should easily reach the level of income required by the new legislation.
