On Thursday I set out to blog a panel discussion at the Swedish Institute of International Affairs on a topic dear to my heart: “Is integration still possible?“. It was sponsored by The Economist, and one of their writers, Joel Budd, was on the panel. The government’s representative was Lise Bergh, the number two in charge of “democracy an integration issues” under minister Mona Sahlin. A further two panelists were late replacements: Mahin Alipour, an immigrant from Iran, a left-leaning (even for Sweden) activist for women’s rights; and Mauricio Rojas, once a far-left political refugee from Chile in 1973, now a professor in economic history at Lund University and a solidly liberal member of parliament, in league with the FolkPartiet.

What, if anything, new did I take away from the proceedings? By far the strongest impression made on me was by RojasIn researching Rojas I came across this interesting read: A paper by him entitled The Historical Roots of the Swedish Socialist Experiment [PDF]. Definitely worth it if you have a spare 20 minutes — it answers, to a large extent, some questions I posed here.. I had quite simply no idea that there are in fact Swedish politicians who can be strident and articulate and even combative in a debate, and it was an absolute pleasure to watch. It helps that he was stating basic economic truths, some of which I’ve harped on before: If immigrants in Sweden are not allowed to compete on price, they are not going to find official employment. As a result, the unemployment rate for immigrants is far higher than that for native Swedes, which produces an underclass of immigrants excluded from formal participation in the economy. These immigrants do work, of course, on the black market; but they also become long-term recipients of social allowances, which irritates native Swedes. According to Rojas, we have racism through exclusion, but with this exclusion being a direct result of political choices made by the government.

Joel Budd added, for good measure, that it would be a “foolish source of national pride that everybody who is working legally is making a lot of money.” Budd also underlined some other observations made recently in The Economist and elsewhere: In ethnically diverse societies, people stop supporting welfare, because one is less inclined to give neighbors social security if they are from a different backgroundThis is not a reason to stop welfare preëmptively, of course. That would be committing a naturalistic fallacy. Nor should it be a reason to stop immigration.. And welfare states don’t just have a hard time adapting to immigration, they have a hard time adapting to all kinds of social, economic and technological change.

By the time they were done, the question being debated was no longer “Is integration still possible?” but “Is the welfare state still possible?” Is cultural homogeneity a precondition for the welfare state? Will Sweden have to choose between immigration and a generous safety net? Bergh looked somewhat taken aback at the notion there might have to be a choice; she could have answered — or at least, I would have answered — that crucial elements of the welfare state could be salvaged if only Sweden were to make wages more flexible and loosen labor laws. A vibrant job-creating economy would depend less on welfare to help citizens and recent immigrants get by; welfare would become just a means to a more useful placement in the job market, and hence would take up fewer resources.

But she didn’t say this. If I heard her correctly, she actually said that wage flexibility was not necessary, and that other resources (which ones?) would be put to work to prevent this choice — immigration or welfare — from becoming pressing. She could also have told Rojas that Sweden’s liberals were looking a bit too gleeful at the prospect of this choice, given their objective to dismantle welfareAren’t there better reasons to dismantle the welfare state?; could Sweden not perhaps buck the trend where immigration leads to less social solidarity, and hence a diminishing of support for welfare? The country is among the most welcoming of any immigrant nation, together with the US and UK, and especially when compared with Denmark, the Netherlands and France. Tension surrounding immigrants in Belgium stems from prejudices that were in place in the native population from the very first day that gastarbeiders arrived in the 60s. This does not strike me as having been the case in Sweden; Sweden began its immigrant experience with a positive attitude, and as a result many have thrived, integrated, and given back to the community that took them in — look at Rojas. Also to Sweden’s credit, there is no anti-immigrant Vlaams Blok here — there simply is no popular support for it.

One question which did not come up in the discussion was restrictions to access to welfare for immigrants from the new EU countries. I asked Rojas about it after the debate, and his answer was a little curious: He thought that while of course it was an important political matter, in the long run the issue was not so important, and in any case, on Friday the government would submit its proposal for dealing with this so we should wait and see. It sounded a little like there was some kind of compromise in the air.