Jacob Christensen

With a little luck, this could be the shouting match of the year: Yesterday, the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance – which is a Council of Europe, not an EU agency – published its third round of reports on racism, xenophobia, antisemitism and intolerance in a number of European countries including Denmark.

To make a long story short, the ECRI wasn’t happy about the state of Denmark. Here are some quotes from the report’s executive summary:

The Nationality Act, the Integration Act and the Aliens’ Act have been further modified in a manner which disproportionately restricts the ability of members of minority groups to acquire Danish citizenship, to benefit from spousal and family reunification and to have access to social protection on par with the rest of society. The general climate has continued to deteriorate in Denmark, with some politicians and parts of the media constantly projecting a negative image of minority groups in general and Muslims in particular.

And:

There is still no clear and coherent policy for ensuring that minority groups have equal access to employment, housing and education. The Danish Government has also reduced or withdrawn funding from many NGOs, thus making it more difficult for minority groups to have issues of particular concern to them being addressed and brought to the public forum.

It is perhaps not surprising that the Danish government which has used a tough stance in immigration and integration policy as an important part of its image since taking office in late 2001, was less than satisfied with the report.

Here is my translation of some sections from the press statement made by the Minister for Integration, Rikke Hvilshøj, in response to the report:

In many aspects the conclusions reached by the ECRI build on incomplete or outright false informations which are neither supported by facts nor in legal interpretation. The government has at several occasions handed ECRI factual informations about Denmark that have not been taken into account in the report.

The ECRI hasn’t done its homework properly and only uses a limited number of sources. This definitively weakens the credibility of the ECRI.

And:

In other reports on individual countries the ECRI has criticised that the tone in the public debate and in the political arena for being hostile towards foreigners. The tone must never be hostile in any way but it is neccessary to discuss the challenges all European countries face with regard to the integration of immigrants.

Just to round off the rejection of the ECRI’s report, the Ministry for Integration published a 13-page note outlining errors and defects in the report.

And in case anybody should still have any doubts about the attitude of the Danish government, Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen during his weekly press conference declared that the report was only fit to throw into a garbage can.

Two short notes from our own world: That of academic contemplation.

The Unanticipated Consequences of Political Action?

For a number of years, Danish politicians have been complaining about students in higher education being too slow to begin and especially finish their studies. (It’s not a particularly Danish problem: The Germans know one or two things about that as well)

What can be done about it?

The solution proposed by the Danish government is to introduce a number of economic disincentives – or punishments, if you like – for those who enter higher education late.

In an interview with Danmarks Radio broadcast on April 7, the leader of the Student Office at Copenhagen University, Jakob Lange, suggested that the punitive measures eagerly envisaged by administrators and politicians could in fact turn out to be counterproductive and discourage people from taking a higher education alltogether.

And as Lange pointed out: Students face one important factor discouraging speedy studies: Danish employers – including the public sector – traditionally expect that candidates have a fair amount of job experience accumulated during their time at university. Old habits die hard.

The interview can be heard through this link. (Microsoft Media-format. The file may very well be buggy if you happen to use a Mac or a Linux-based computer)

My word of advice to students: Don’t listen to what the politicians say. Do what the employers do.

He Who Pays the Music Calls the Tune

This Sunday, Sveriges Radio made a stunning discovery: Universities are not centres for independent research any more.

If you suspect a touch of irony here – yes: No-one who has worked at a Swedish university during the past decade will be the least surprised.

The fundamental problem is that Swedish universities these days basically do not have any funds for research: Not for Ph.D.-students’ work, not for post-docs’ work and especially not for professors’ work.

The popular image of a professor may still be a slightly absent-minded character predominanty occupied with reading – and writing – strange books or performing odd chemical experiments.

Professors in the real world will have a hard time recognising themselves in those images. In fact, a professor these days spends most of his or her time chasing research funding so that his or her department may have the money to employ Ph.D.-students. It is perhaps not surprising when professors leave academia to become bureaucrats.

And as we all know – he who pays the music, calls the tune. Commercial interests often clash with scientific interests, political funding in real world depends on researchers accomodating political interests – the depressing tale about the research programmes concerning Danish security policy during the 1970s and 1980s may serve as a reminder of what happens when political goals set the research agenda – and as a consequence the ideal of independent research becomes more and more of an ironic description of actual academic work.

I’ll risk a prediction: Despite all talk about elite universites, a “Danish MIT” and what not, European universities have their best time behind them.

In the future, universities will become purely educational institutions whose task is to award as many degrees as possible as fast as possible while research – and competent researchers – will emigrate to foundations organised and financed outside of the public sector and the avalanche of regulations and control mechanisms that have hit universities during later years.

And yes: Most of these foundations and the top researchers will be in the U.S.

On May 14, it is 75 years since a demonstration in Lunde near Kramfors in Ångermanland ended in tragedy after military opened fire on the demonstrators, killing four participants and one bystander. The demonstration was the culmination of a prolonged and embittered industrial conflict affecting several factories in the area.

The deaths had a significant impact on Swedish society at the time and raised the question of what role the state and especially the military should have in industrial conflicts. Today’s received wisdom is that the conflict was between workers and industrialists and that the state interfered by allowing strikebreakers to perform the work affected by the conflict. In contemporary Social Democratic mythology, Ådalen is the symbol of righteous Social Democratic struggle against the market economy and the bourgeous state.

A more careful inspection of the happenings suggests a more complicated picture. The labour movement in Sweden experienced deep conflicts between Social Democrats and Communists during this period and the political affiliation of the striking workers was far from obvious. In the investigation following the events, the representatives for the labour movement (including the later Foreign Minister Östen Undén) also took a cautious stance in the criticism of the civilian and military officials involved in the process leading up to the killings.

And as a recent report noted: The ban on the domestic deployment of military only came into force in the early 1970s. During the 1950s and 1960s, the Social Democratic government considered Communist riots a sufficient threat to allow the possible deployment of military forces against civilians.

All of which leads us to the celebrations of the 75 years since Ådalen 1931. In 2001, the leader of the Left Party participated in the jubilee as a speaker but earlier this year the local branch of the Social Democratic Party announced that the event would be reserved for Social Democrats and TUC representatives.

Commentators suspect that the Social Democrats on the national level fear that Lars Ohly would bring controversy into the celebrations by criticising a recent proposal from the Justice Minister, allowing the deployment of military forces in the event of civil unrest or terrorist attacks.

If the Prime Minister had his way, everybody would have forgotten about the Tsunami disaster and especially the Swedish government’s fumbling and delayed reactions to the disaster by now.

Unfortunately, the tabloid Aftonbladet has decided to continue the coverage of the whereabouts of Persson’s right hand Lars Danielsson whose role during the early stages of the resonse still is completely unclear.

Aftonbladet has unearthed other interesting informations about Danielsson who apparently lives in an appartment reserved for the Foreign Office and has been travelling in an official plane instead of taking a regular flight to meetings in Brussels. (For international readers: This is Sweden, m’kay? Public officials are expected to travel on economy class)

The coverage eventuelly became too much for the Prime Minister – or some people in his entourage – and Persson’s press secretary called the editor of Aftonbladet to complain about the coverage. Needless to say, that became the subject of another article in the paper, implying that the government was trying to silence the paper.

The politically interesting aspect of the coverage is that Aftonbladet today is the only national newspaper which has some affiliation with the Social Democrats. Svenska Dagbladet and especially Dagens Nyheter – to the degree that they deserve the label “national newspapers” – are fervently bourgeois as is the other national tabloid Expressen.

Loosing Aftonbladet’s support in a tight electoral campaign may turn out to be a problem for the Social Democrats.

The general election here in Sweden is four months down the road and the media – especially television – are starting the campaign with no holds barred.

I’m afraid that I haven’t done my best to follow the avalanche of programmes about the Swedish parties but here is an attempt to round up what I have missed:

Do the Social Democrats Cooperate with Islamists?

“Uppdrag granskning” (“Assignment investigaton”) on SvT1 screened a two-part programme on Islamists and integration in Sweden.

In general, this is a contentious subject which most parties don’t want too near the top of the political agenda.

The really controversial part of the programme, though, was the allegation that the Christian Union within the Social Democratic Party deliberately cooperated with conservative and Islamist elements in the Muslim community in order to gain votes from Muslims. The problem is that conservative forces within the Muslim community want to establish group rights with special legislation covering Muslims regarding subjects such as marriage and divorce.

Not only is the question of group rights contentious, traditional and Islamist interpretations of women’s rights also clash head-on with the official policy of gender equality promoted by the Social Democrats.

The Christian Union’s own take on the relationship can be found here.

No More Mr. Nice Guy

“Dokument Inifrån” (“Domestic Dossier”) on SvT2 is screening a series covering all major parties and their internal development during the last 10-15 years.

The latest programme in the series covered the transformation of the Liberal Party from a social-liberal party under former party leader Bengt Westerberg to a party promoting law-and-order policies and a tough stance on immigration.

One hypothesis being investigated is that the Liberals deliberately chose to shed their social-liberal skin and adopt the same strategy as the Danish Liberal Party by appealing to voters with a socially conservative standpoint.

The programmes in the series can be downloaded as a video-cast. (Link opens in a new window).

Persson vs. Reinfeldt. Round 117

If you have nothing better to do Thursday evening, SvT will treat you to another round in the bouts between Prime Minister Göran Persson and the leader of the Conservative Party.

Sweden: Opinion Polls Sep 2002 – May 2005

Originally uploaded by jacobchristensen.

An update to an earlier post reviewing Swedish opinion polls. Individual observations are connected via the dotted lines while the solid lines give a sliding average of the five previous polls. (Click on the picture for a higher-resolution version).

In general, the governing de facto-coalition has closed in on the centre-right alliance but poll results vary quite a bit and there are many undecided voters.

The figure is based on TEMO’s electoral barometer which presents data from all major polling organisations.

The former Danish Foreign Minister and chairman of the Liberal Party Uffe Ellemann-Jensen spoke about the future development of the EU on the annual meeting of the Danish European Movement. The text was also published in Berlingske Tidende.

The Prime Minister and present chairman of the Liberal Party Anders Fogh Rasmussen addressed the same subject in a recent speech made at Copenhagen University.

Observers noted that Fogh Rasmussen was much more reserved than Ellemann-Jensen with regard to the question of further enlargements of the union. The mantra of Mr. Fogh Rasmussen’s speech was “A Europe of Results” while Mr. Ellemann-Jensen spoke of dynamics.

The discussions about the impact of immigration on the labour markets of particular countries are often fascinating.It is safe to say that in the political discourse, immigration is seen as a problem for one of two reasons:

1. Immigrants work
2. Immigrants don’t work

With regard to alternative 2, the allegation usually is that people from poorer countries tend to migrate into countries with extensive social protection and reap the benefits otherwise intended for the natives of the receiving country.The arguments presented against opening the Swedish labour market to East European workers following the enlargement in 2004 by the Swedish Prime Minister Göran Persson can serve as a case in point: In November 2003 Persson made a surprising u-turn on the issue, started to warn about the risk for “social tourism” and suggested that Sweden followed the example set by countries such as Germany and France by restricting access to the national labour markets.Later Persson tried to justify his statements by declaring that mass immigration of labour would lead to increased support for xenophobic movements. Many observers in Sweden suggested that Persson might be playing the trade unions’ tune in this issue under the guise of anti-xenophobia and this leads us across the Atlantic to alternative 1.In the U.S. the problem has been stated in the opposite way compared to Western Europe: Complaints have concentrated on the role immigrants have in pressing wages, especially for low-skill work in agriculture and the service sector. In this case immigrants may work but at the expense of native low-skilled workers. This has formed the background for a recent political campaign to enact legislation that would limit immigration, especially from Central America. For an overview, see Slate from April 9 and May 8.How about the statistics, then?Well, in mid-April the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics released a report which concluded that immigrants in the U.S. work (actually, unemployment for this group is slightly lower than for native U.S. residents), that immigrants of the first generation earn relatively less than their “American” counterparts and that immigrants of the first generation are more likely to work in agriculture and service.Actually, this conforms to the current knowledge but it serves to show that an economy can have immigration without sizeable negative effects. That inequality in the U.S. has increased during the last decades is also a fact but statisticians haven’t been able to link this to immigration. Slate’s Daniel Gross has this review of the report.What is interesting to note is that despite the differences in labour markets and party systems, the discussion about immigration tend to lead to fairly similar political noises: Immigration is bad, it undermines national institutions, immigrants are lazy, immigrants work too hard.In short: If only we had a closed shop, everything would be fine.By default Sweden happened not to implement barriers to workers from Easter Europe – a number of different proposals presented to the Swedish parliament canceled out each other in the most bizarre fashion. It didn’t lead to an influx of gold-diggers from the East and today the issue is almost forgotten in Swedish politics.In Denmark, the government negotiated an agreement this April with the Social Democrats, the Social Liberals and the Socialist Party – but without the Danish People’s Party – easing the barriers for Eastern workers. Maybe this report from the European Commission helped the consensus-building efforts.Oh, and by the way: This is not Göran Persson speaking. It’s the Danish Minister of Employment discussing the Eastern Enlargement in early 2004.

There is nothing quite like conspiracy theories and real-life conspiracies are much more fun than invented ones. So here goes: Did George W. Bush fire Jack Straw? The Independent suspects so and a former aide of Robin Cook says so.It may not be even close to the truth about Straw’s dismissal but the fact that these stories are published in “Labour-friendly” newspapers speaks volumes about the state of the Labor Party.

These days European politicians complain a lot about the low birth rates and the looming demographic crisis.

The UK daily The Independent has an interesting solution to one part of the problem – that professionals rarely have the time to meet one another: Museums.

That’s right: According to a report in Saturday’s paper, museums and art galleries are true hotbeds of passion where many a sweet liasion has been made. In fact, museums easily beat pubs and sports arenas as meeting places.

So, today’s politicians and bureaucrats who know the price of everything and the value of nothing will in fact be wise to consider free admissions to museums and even build new ones. On the other hand: Germany and Italy are full of art galleries and museums and that hasn’t helped one bit.

Perhaps you should consider women’s career opportunities as well. This isn’t the 1950s, after all.

Declaration of interest: Museums haven’t worked for me. Yet.