How is Sweden managing to integrate young people from immigrant backgrounds, who make up as much as a quarter of the country’s young population? Answers were provided in a LIfBi Lecture by Professor Carina Mood of the Swedish Institute for Social Research (SOFI) in mid-December 2024. The sociologist presented findings from a large-scale longitudinal study of young people and painted a heterogeneous picture of the Swedish society’s integration performance.
For a few decades, Sweden has been a high-immigration country. Integration is a fundamental issue for Sweden’s future, but the discussion – like in Germany – is too often characterized by political controversies and ideological deadlock. Analyzing integration as a multidimensional phenomenon, Mood arrives at heterogeneous results for the different dimensions of integration.
Based on the extensive data of the CILS4EU comparative study of 5,000 young people born in 1996 in Sweden it is clear that structural integration through school and employment is working very well. Children from immigrant backgrounds face little discrimination in school, receive more support, and are often able to realize their high aspirations for their future careers. This tends to continue into their working lives and professional success, although there are some individual groups experiencing discrimination in working life. Accordingly, the young people are well integrated in terms of well-being: they are satisfied, feel healthy and are optimistic about the future.
However, the multidimensional view clearly shows that successful integration in education does not automatically lead to integration in other dimensions: In terms of social integration, especially when it comes to choosing a partner and starting a family, the different ethnic groups largely keep to themselves. This also applies to cultural integration. It is shown that the different cultural values of people with and without a migrant background do not tend to converge over time.
Following Moods’ lecture, further research potentials that can be realized with the data of the National Educational Panel Study (NEPS) was discussed. In addition to the CILS4EU data used by Mood, the harmonised and pooled dataset „CILS4NEPS“ has been made available by the LIfBi Research Data Centre for over a year now. The dataset can be used for comparisons of information from the NEPS Starting Cohort 4 with the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Sweden. During Mood’s guest stay, LIfBi employees took the opportunity to exchange scientific ideas. Meetings were held on topics relating to inequality and migration research, inclusion and segregation.
The lecture concluded this year's series of LIfBi Lectures. The program for the coming summer semester 2025 can be found here.
Website Carina Mood
Scientific-Use-File CILS4NEPS
