Swedes are on the move. Problems in many municipalities are prompting Swedes to leave for other areas with fewer socioeconomic problems. The issue has recently gained the attention of the Swedish mainstream media.
Take the small, picturesque town of Filipstad (population 10,000), for example. Swedish television recently made a documentary about the town, which finds itself in both a financial and an existential crisis.
"We are experiencing a population exchange. You can think of that what you want... But it is simply a statement of fact that this is actually what we are going through and we have to deal with it", Jim Frölander, integration manager in the Filipstad municipality, says in the documentary.
Between 2012 and 2018, 640 native Swedes left the town, and 963 foreign-born people moved into the town. Those leaving are people of working age (20-64), which means that the municipality's tax revenues are shrinking, exacerbating town's financial crisis.
The largest influx of immigrants came during the migration crisis in 2015. Filipstad, according to the documentary, was one of the municipalities that received the highest number of immigrants as a percentage of its population. Claes Hultgren, head of the municipality, wrote in Filipstad's latest financial report:
"In Filipstad, there are around 750 adults from Syria, Somalia, Eritrea, Afghanistan and Iraq.... In this group, unemployment and dependency are very high, while education levels are very low.This group runs the risk of ending in an eternal exclusion that is already heavily burdening the municipal economy."
Hultgren explained that many of the newcomers do not have the qualifications to enter the labor market:
"[They] are maybe too old and illiterate, or have a very low educational level. We must accept that there will be some people who will need the support of society for their livelihood."
According to the documentary, unemployment is at 80% among the non-Western foreign-born residents of the town, even while the town is suffering a severe lack of teachers and nurses. In ten years, Filipstad's expenditures on social welfare have increased 200% -- from 10 million kroner ($1 million) in 2009 to almost 30 million ($3.1 million) in 2018. The projection for 2019 is 31 million Swedish kroner ($3.2 million). This year, Filipstad simply does not have the 30 million kroner in its budget.
Filipstad is far from the only Swedish municipality to experience these problems . . . . .
