Why are Swedes less happy and more gloomy than Danes? I think that has a lot have to do with the ways that Swedish media keep telling us Swedes that we are racist and that we have a lot to be ashamed of. And because we should be ashamed, we are not allowed to do a lot of flag-waving and celebrating of ourselves.
Sweden is probably the Western country that has accepted the largest number of immigrants and refugees, certainly in relation to its population. There are nine million Swedes. Well, the Iraq war generated huge numbers of Iraqi refugees, as millions fled from war and violence. Sweden accepted about 200,000 of those Iraqi refugees. That's a lot. As far as I know, the United States has accepted about a thousand Iraqis. Finland, one of our neighbouring countries in Scandinavia, has accepted about 500. I don't know how many have been allowed to come to Denmark, but I'm not entirely sure that Denmark has accepted any Iraqis at all.
Is Sweden going to send back many or most of those 200,000 Iraqis now that the war there is almost over? No. Refugees who come to Sweden are routinely granted Swedish citizenship after a few years, provided they have not committed any serious crimes here. And as soon as they have been granted citizenship, they can't be sent back.
Many immigrants who come to Sweden do rather badly. They don't learn Swedish and they don't get jobs. Many become criminals. Swedish media tells us that our immigrants are doing so badly in our country because we are so racist and treat them so badly. It is taboo to say that it might be the immigrants' own fault, so it must be our fault. No wonder we have reason to be ashamed.
This is a typical Swedish newspaper article telling us how racist we are. The article describes the difficulties that Arab and African immigrants encounter in Sweden. The author, Maciej Zaremba, himself an immigrant, starts off by telling us that he is ashamed of being Swedish. As you can see the article is rather long, and it is just the first part of a whole series of articles on the same theme by Maciej Zaremba. The articles are published in Sweden's biggest and most influential daily newspaper, Dagens Nyheter.
I guess that is why Swedes are gloomy.
Ann
