THE IMMIGRANT TIMES
Solidarity Towns and Cities
in Sweden
Already published reviews: Sweden || Italy || Eastern Germany || Coming soon: France || Spain || The UK
In this article on Solidarity Towns and Cities in Europe, The Immigrant Times features communities in Sweden. (Photo: Apartment building in Malmö)
Introduction
September 2026: For decades, Sweden served as Europe’s moral role model for humanitarian reception, absorbing refugees and migrant workers at rates unmatched across the continent. Yet in recent years, the national narrative has shifted markedly. Amid acute housing shortages, school segregation, and rising gang violence in suburban housing estates, public debate has hardened, mirrored by the Sweden Democrats’ growing popularity.
Contemporary commentary often describes Swedish integration as a cautionary tale of institutional overload. Yet across Sweden’s diverse geographies, from sub-Arctic industrial outposts and isolated Baltic islands to long-standing manufacturing bastions and dense southern inner cities, ordinary residents, municipalities, and newcomers continue to forge practical, day-to-day pacts of mutual support.
Solidarity in these communities is rarely ideological or frictionless; it is forged through shared sporting ties, informal emergency housing, municipal innovations, and pragmatic civil alliances. By examining four distinct Swedish locations, The Immigrant Times explores how local communities sustain mutual respect, dignity, and social cohesion even as national political consensus recedes.
Södertälje
Stockholm County
City data
Straddling the canal linking Lake Mälaren to the Baltic Sea, Södertälje lies thirty kilometres southwest of Stockholm. With a population of roughly 105,000, the town has long been a powerhouse of Swedish heavy industry. Its economy and civic identity remain closely tied to the global commercial vehicle manufacturer Scania and the pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca, which together employ tens of thousands of local and regional workers.
Immigration
Södertälje has transformed over six decades from a homogeneous company town into one of Sweden’s most culturally distinct municipalities. More than 40 per cent of its inhabitants are foreign-born, rising to over 50 per cent when you include residents with two foreign-born parents.
Industrial recruitment in the 1960s first brought Finnish assembly-line workers. From the mid-1970s onwards, waves of Christian Assyrians and Syriacs arrived, fleeing persecution and instability in Turkey, Syria, and Lebanon. The town experienced an even larger demographic shift following the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the subsequent Syrian civil war, when Södertälje famously took in more Iraqi refugees than the United States and Canada combined.
Integration
The initial phases of integration were supported by a booming manufacturing sector that provided stable wages and union membership without requiring immediate proficiency in Swedish. The municipal government pioneered specialised Swedish for Immigrants (SFI) curricula linked directly to technical apprenticeships, while expanding primary school capacity to accommodate large numbers of non-native speakers.
Crucially, the established Assyrian and Syriac diaspora served as an informal absorption mechanism, providing newly arrived relatives with emergency shelter, employment in family-run businesses, and social orientation through extensive religious congregations and independent schools.
Solidarity in action
Solidarity in Södertälje is largely delivered through migrant-led institutions rather than conventional state benevolence. Community-funded sports clubs such as Assyriska FF and Syrianska FC evolved from minor ethnic associations into national football contenders, serving as engines of local pride, youth mentorship, and civic visibility.
When state reception centres buckled under peak humanitarian influxes, local families welcomed arrivals directly into their homes.
The diaspora mobilised its credit associations and commercial networks to finance new family enterprises, ranging from bakeries to transport firms. Cross-cultural solidarity also emerged through formal civic partnerships: the Church of Sweden, Syriac Orthodox churches, and local Muslim associations formed permanent consultative councils to coordinate emergency food distribution, establish joint anti-poverty initiatives, and organise public vigils during crises in the Middle East.
Friction and strain
The pace and scale of demographic change placed unprecedented pressure on public resources. Dense settlement patterns entrenched residential segregation in districts such as Ronna and Hovsjö, leading to stark educational divides, with some primary schools teaching almost no pupils who spoke Swedish as a first language. Overcrowding in housing estates fostered an exploitative shadow rental market, while municipal authorities faced persistent challenges in preventing illicit networks from gaming local welfare schemes and public procurement contracts. Frustration among local officials mounted, culminating in rare public appeals to the national government to halt the settlement of new asylum seekers, as local public services, water networks, and school budgets had reached their limits.
Sofielund
Malmö
District data
Sofielund is a densely populated inner-city district of Malmö, located immediately southeast of the vibrant Möllevången quarter. Home to approximately 25,000 residents across its wider catchment, the area comprises two starkly contrasting urban typologies: the quiet, low-rise residential houses of Gamla Sofielund and the industrial warehouses, tenements, and brick commercial premises of Norra Sofielund.
Once an archetype of post-industrial decline, the district has evolved into a key testing ground for progressive urban governance in Scandinavia's most international city.
Immigration
Malmö’s demographic character is reflected in Sofielund, where more than half of the population is either foreign-born or has two foreign-born parents. The initial waves of postwar migration brought factory workers from Yugoslavia, Greece, and Turkey to staff the city's textile and automotive sectors.
Over the past three decades, these communities were joined by political refugees and humanitarian arrivals from Iraq, Somalia, Syria, and Afghanistan. More recently, the district’s relatively affordable commercial units have attracted creative professionals, students, and international tech workers, transforming Sofielund into a mosaic of working-class migrant households and young urbanites.
Integration
Integration in Sofielund was long hampered by an unregulated private rental market that fostered severe overcrowding and exploitative tenancies. In response, local stakeholders pioneered the 'BID Malmö' model, adapting the international Business Improvement District concept into Boende, Integration och Dialog (Housing, Integration, and Dialogue).
This municipal partnership brought together property owners, registered social landlords, tenant unions, and the city administration. The coalition intervened directly in neglected tenement blocks, enforcing housing maintenance standards, shutting down illegal subletting rings, and ensuring that immigrant tenants received legitimate leases, reliable municipal refuse services, and stable access to neighbourhood primary schools.
Solidarity in action
Grassroots civic solidarity underpins the daily mechanics of Sofielund. The district's industrial zone hosts some of Malmö’s most resilient cross-cultural spaces, notably the cultural hub Kontrapunkt and the community centre Flamman Ungdomarnas Hus.
These organisations run volunteer-led homework clubs, legal-support workshops for asylum applicants, and late-night safe spaces managed by local youth to prevent gang recruitment. Rather than displacing immigrant businesses, the BID partnership helped immigrant-owned greengrocers, bakeries, and automotive workshops navigate municipal zoning regulations and safety codes.
When winter heating failed across private tenements, informal neighbourhood networks and tenant activists mobilised emergency space heaters and legal advocacy to hold absent landlords to account.
Friction and strain
The district remains caught between urban regeneration and gentrification. As creative industries and renovated housing units move into the old industrial perimeter, long-term immigrant residents voice legitimate fears of rent increases and displacement.
Sofielund has also grappled with serious gang violence and street-level narcotics distribution, which occasionally leads to heightened police activity that strains relations between young migrant residents and authorities. While the BID model succeeded in curbing rogue landlords, underlying socio-economic disparities persist, with local schools still facing elevated dropout rates and many immigrant households experiencing chronic underemployment.
Gotland
Gotland Province
Regional data
Sweden’s largest island, Gotland, sits isolated in the Baltic Sea, roughly ninety kilometres off the mainland coast. Its municipal and regional administration governs a permanent population of roughly 61,000, centred on the medieval port town of Visby.
Beyond the seasonal tourism that floods the island in summer, Gotland’s economy depends on agriculture, limestone quarrying, food processing, and a large public healthcare and administrative sector. For decades, the island has contended with acute demographic ageing, youth emigration, and the threatened closure of rural public infrastructure.
Immigration
Historically, Gotland’s exposure to immigration was limited to seasonal workers and Baltic refugees fleeing Soviet occupation in the 1940s. That profile shifted dramatically during the 2015 European humanitarian crisis and the subsequent war in Ukraine.
The Swedish Migration Agency relocated hundreds of asylum seekers from Syria, Afghanistan, Eritrea, and Ukraine to Gotland, dispersing families not only across Visby but also into sparsely populated rural parishes such as Fårösund, Hemse, and Slite. This represented a profound demographic jolt for isolated agrarian communities that had seen very little ethnic diversity for generations.
Integration
The island’s geographical isolation rendered conventional urban integration policies obsolete. As the national Migration Agency provided limited transport assistance, rural parishes had to improvise basic services. Parish councils and municipal officers coordinated mobile language training, dispatching Swedish instructors to remote coastal villages.
The regional authority fast-tracked recognition of medical qualifications for foreign-trained healthcare professionals, funnelled newly arrived doctors and nurses directly into the chronically understaffed Visby Hospital and rural clinics, while local farmers provided hands-on apprenticeships in agricultural machinery maintenance and dairy farming.
Solidarity in action
Civil society across Gotland mobilised with remarkable speed. In villages where public transport was infrequent, local residents set up the "Cykelfrämjandet" bicycle collection schemes, repairing and distributing hundreds of donated bicycles so newcomers could travel between rural hamlets and vocational classes.
The Church of Sweden and village community associations (byalag) established weekly communal dinners, bringing together elderly islanders and newcomer families to cook together and ease the acute loneliness both groups felt.
When national funding cuts threatened rural schools with low enrolments, local Swedish parents campaigned alongside immigrant families to keep village classrooms open, successfully integrating newcomer children and sustaining rural education throughout the island.
Friction and strain
The sudden influx of asylum seekers exposed structural vulnerabilities in Gotland’s public infrastructure. The island faces an acute, permanent housing crisis, exacerbated by affluent mainlanders buying holiday homes, leaving many newcomer families stranded in substandard temporary accommodation that had to be vacated every summer.
Conservative local politicians and anti-immigration factions questioned the cost of providing social services across such a vast geography, citing long waiting lists for dental and mental health care. As national asylum legislation tightened, several integrated families received deportation orders, triggering bitter public disputes between local islanders who defended their new neighbours and state enforcement authorities.
Skellefteå
Västerbotten County
City data
Situated along the Skellefte River in the sub-Arctic province of Västerbotten, Skellefteå is home to about 77,000 residents across a vast area. Historically rooted in forestry, hydropower, and non-ferrous metal mining through Boliden AB, the municipality has spent decades managing a steady population decline and the migration of young people to southern university towns.
In the late 2010s, the city embarked on an aggressive industrial reinvention, positioning itself as the vanguard of Europe’s green industrial revolution.
Immigration
Until recently, Skellefteå remained one of Sweden's most ethnically homogeneous regions, with a small foreign-born population largely composed of settled refugees and Nordic neighbours.
The construction of the Northvolt Ett battery gigafactory in October 2019 transformed this dynamic overnight. Within four years, the municipality attracted thousands of technicians, engineers, and construction workers from more than 80 nationalities. The town suddenly became an international destination for skilled labour from India, the Philippines, the United Kingdom, and the United States, as well as migrant construction crews from southern and eastern Europe.
Integration
The municipality responded by abandoning standard bureaucratic timelines and establishing rapid-onboarding welcome offices that brought tax registration, school admissions, and housing assistance under one roof. Skellefteå forged direct links between regional adult education bodies and industrial contractors, delivering accelerated Swedish language courses alongside industrial safety certifications.
To anchor these transient workers permanently, the local council invested heavily in English-language primary school tracks and modern family infrastructure, betting that corporate recruits would put down long-term civic roots if their families felt supported.
Solidarity in action
Grassroots civic engagement emerged to counter the isolation faced by foreign workers enduring dark sub-Arctic winters and an unfamiliar culture. The Sara Kulturhus, the city’s landmark timber cultural centre, was deliberately used as a civic gathering place, hosting regular language cafés, communal cooking workshops, and intercultural networking nights organised jointly by long-term residents and newcomer associations.
Local civil society groups established 'buddy' networks pairing Swedish families with international engineers to share traditional pastimes such as cross-country skiing, foraging, and ice hockey. Volunteer sports clubs adapted their training sessions to accommodate shift work at the industrial plants, while neighbourhood associations organised winter clothing drives and international food markets to bridge cultural gaps between native Norrland residents and their new neighbours.
Friction and strain
The speed of the industrial transition created severe growing pains. Skellefteå’s rental market collapsed under the sudden surge in demand, driving rents up and forcing some local residents to compete with heavily subsidised international corporate workers.
Public infrastructure, particularly healthcare centres and preschool nurseries, experienced critical staffing shortages as municipal recruitment lagged behind population growth.
The profound financial turmoil and restructuring at Northvolt in 2024 sparked widespread anxiety, raising fears that municipal investments in roads and schools might become stranded assets and leaving hundreds of foreign workers facing sudden layoffs, visa instability, and the risk of deportation.
Key sources & documentation
Official data: Statistics Sweden (Statistiska centralbyrån – SCB), Swedish Migration Agency (Migrationsverket), Swedish Public Employment Service (Arbetsförmedlingen), and municipal demographic and integration registries from Södertälje kommun, Malmö stad, Region Gotland, and Skellefteå kommun.
Civic & NGO documentation: Case records, annual reviews, and integration reports from BID Sofielund, Kontrapunkt Malmö, Flamman Ungdomarnas Hus, Assyriska FF, Syrianska FC, Cykelfrämjandet, Svenska kyrkan (Church of Sweden parish archives in Gotland and Södertälje), and the Swedish Red Cross (Röda Korset).
National & regional reporting: Investigative reporting and regional coverage from Sveriges Television (SVT), Sveriges Radio (SR), Dagens Nyheter, Svenska Dagbladet, Sydsvenskan, Länstidningen Södertälje, Norran, and Helagotland.
About this series
Articles in the series 'Solidarity Towns and Cities' examine how immigration affects communities across Europe. We chose economically and culturally significant hubs, as well as towns and cities that receive little attention but have shown that, despite many obstacles, immigration has benefited and enriched their communities. Solidarity between locals and newcomers is key to success.
Readers are invited to suggest other European towns and cities that they feel The Immigrant Times should feature.
Already published reviews: Sweden || Italy || Eastern Germany || Coming soon: France || Spain || The UK ||
Further reading from The Immigrant Times: Teaching refugees in Sweden || Scandinavian attitudes to immigration || Housing asylum seekers in Sweden ||
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