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Notes -
Swedish elections, anyone?
I am far from an expert on this but I found it very interesting and wanted to do a quick post about it. Last Sunday, September 11th, Swedish General Elections were held to elect the 349 members of the Riksdag. There are 8 parties that seem like they were get seats, and it appears that they are broadly split into two coalitions - of course, today we naturally refer to them as the 'left coalition' (Social democrats, Greens, Left, Center), and the 'right coalition' (Moderates, Sweden Democrats, Liberals, Christian Democrats).
If you've followed any European elections in the last few years you won't be surprised that immigration appears to be a huge issue, and the rise of the right-wing, anti-immigration party (the Sweden Democrats, not to be confused with the Social Democrats) will of course mirror the rise in support for Le Pen, Lega Nord, etc.
But this time - it appears they won. Well, sort of. The elections are so tight that as of Monday night in Sweden, they're still counting the votes. But all the recent indications point to the right coalition winning the slimmest of majorities - 175 to 174 seats. Furthermore, while it was expected that the Moderate party (center-right) that would be the biggest in the right coalition, it appears that the Sweden Democrats (I think universally regarded as the farthest right) that will be the largest in the coalition, and the second largest overall, after the Social Democrats.
There's so much to say, though much of it has been said in discussions about France and Italy and so on and so forth. Seriously, I could rant about this shit for hours - about how immigration can be awesome, but not uncontrolled immigration of those who despise your way of life, about how the strategy of hiding data and gaslighting the public ultimately doesn't pay off, about the naivety and hubris of thinking that anyone that you let live near you will automatically adopt your values, and on and on and on. But most of it won't be new.
One thing that does feel... maybe kind of new(?) this time, is that the media reaction also seems somewhat more subdued, both before and during the election. Of course, most traditional / legacy media will still be tell you, or at least hint to you, that the results are a Bad thing[1] and that Bad people just got a lot of votes, but on balance it still feels... a bit more subdued and less histrionic? I wonder if 1) I'm just imagining it, and 2) if not, how much of this is due to Sweden being a much smaller country than France or Italy, and how much of it is due to an underlying sense of unease as having to portray the Swedes of all people as neo-nazis.
[1] To be fair, the Sweden Democrats do have a sketchy history, and a disproportionate number of their MPs do seem to get in unsavory controversies. Not my first choice... except they also seem to be the loudest at addressing the unfettered immigration fiasco [2]
[2] OK fine one small clarification rant. I like immigration. I do! I unironically think multicultural restaurants make an area nicer, and I unironically like meeting people of different backgrounds. But there have to be major caveats here. For one, they have to actually respect me and my society, and our values and how we live our lives. For another, it really helps if they either have valuable skills, or are otherwise productive in some other way. And I sure as fuck do not want violent criminals living anywhere near me.
Sweden isn't trying to import biophysicists or electrical engineers. They're letting in disproportionately young men from countries with poor traditions of women's rights, democracy, freedom of religion, and freedom of speech. Are all of them going to share the views of their motherlands? No. But how is it nonetheless not clear that this would be a fiasco?
The victories of the pro migrant parties are permanent and all the right wing parties can do is stem the tide. 25% of the country now has a migrant background so the homogeneous, peaceful society that your grandparents knew is gone. The Sweden Democrats might slow the demographic change while they're in power but they're not going to reverse it. Elections matter and the Swedes have permanently changed their country for the worse. Unfortunately it's a lot easier to wreck a country than it is to fix it.
The victories of pro-migrant parties are permanent insofar as they will have changed the ethnic composition of the population, but there are still things that anti-migrant parties can do to limit the speed of further demographic change and foster assimilation. One policy would be to explicitly target percentage of foreign born population as a measure for immigration policy, with automatic immigration restrictions kicking when it's passed. These restrictions could be selective, so as to specifically limit immigration from the developing world while leaving open immigration from e.g. the United States or Japan. One could combine these with pro-natal policies that won't disproportionately favour recent poorer immigrant groups (e.g., tax relief for parents earning above a certain threshold).
Given disparities in TFR between native and immigrant populations, this probably won't have a huge impact on the proportion of population from non-Swedish ethnic backgrounds, but it might successfully reduce the proportion of foreign-born citizens. Moreover, it may allow the percentage of successfully "assimilated" non-native citizens (for most values of "assimilated") to increase over time, and if we're interested in cultural assimilation (as per civic nationalism) rather than just ethnicity (as per ethnic nationalism) that might fix the problem in the long-run. This is true even if you think assimilation is hard; even among groups for whom it's more difficult (e.g., Somalian immigrants) it does happen to a subset of the population.
So unless we're concerned with ethnic change per se, then I think it's too early to sound a council of despair, especially since none of the big European migrant-destination countries have actually implemented heavy-duty policies to reduce percentage of foreign-born citizens. We have to be careful not to say "We've tried nothing and we're all out of options."
It's not a particularly big disparity. By 2021 statistics, foreign-born TFR is 1,8-1,9 (and falling), native-born 1,6-1,7.
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