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The Welcoming City? Immigrant Integration in Urban Sweden, 1860-1925
| This paper seeks to examine the lives of late nineteenth and early twentieth century immigrants in the Swedish capital of Stockholm and the cities of Linköping, Sundsvall and Haparanda. These urban areas were of different sizes, geographical locations and socio-economic structures. One important question revolves around how these characteristics interacted with immigrant integration in the local societies. The relevance of the hypothesis suggesting that immigration differs with the size of the receiving community is discussed: it is generally assumed that larger cities offer immigrants better development possibilities and more opportunities to participate in societal life than smaller towns do. Another purpose is to study whether, and in what way, integration differed with the immigrants’ origin, gender, age as well as social and marital status when arriving. The cultural proximity in general and the linguistic in particular, ought to have facilitated the integration process for Finland-Swedes, Norwegians, and Danes in comparison with other immigrant groups.
The study is based on computerised source material from the Demographic Database at Umeå University and the Stockholm Historical Database, the latter provided by the Stockholm City Archives. The databases are complemented with Swedish parish records. Taking the point of departure in persons moving directly from abroad to the four urban areas between 1860 and 1915, the immigrants are followed as long as they remain in the areas. Integration is measured through different variables: permanent settlement, naturalisation, marriages and occupational changes. The “degree” of integration is interpreted as increasing if an immigrant settled “for good”, accepted Swedish citizenship and experienced upward social mobility. If an unmarried immigrant married a native, it is also viewed as positively correlated with integration.
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