“WELCOME HOUSE” IN STOCKHOLM ‐ RECEIVING REFUGEES IN A BIG CITY
| Date | 01 December 1991 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2435.1991.tb01043.x |
| Published date | 01 December 1991 |
Current Trends and Developments
“WELCOME HOUSE’
IN
STOCKHOLM
-
RECEIVING REFUGEES
IN
A
BIG CITY
Stockholm has been receiving refugees since the First World War. Up until the early
1980s, Stockholm’s reception of refugees was characterised by its help for those
arriving there as a result of extreme crisis or inhuman oppression. Most of the refugees
coming
to
Stockholm were Europeans up until the beginning of the 1970s but since then,
more and more have come from outside Europe and these now form the majority of the
influx of refugees.
A wave of refugees arrived in Stockholm after the fall of the Tsar and the civil war
in Finland in 191
8.
Between the wars, many Jews came
to
Stockholm to escape Hitler’s
inhuman oppression of non-Aryans in Germany.
The Second World War saw Stockholm become a place of refuge for almost two
hundred thousand refugees from Denmark, Norway and Finland. Around 70,000
children were evacuated from Finland to Sweden, many of whom ended up in
Stockholm. This was the largest number of children evacuated in history. The Soviet
Union’s occupation of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania led
to
30-40,000
people fleeing
across the Baltic Sea to Sweden.
A
number of these Baits continued on
to,
for instance,
Canada and the U.S.A., but most
of
them stayed
in
Sweden, many in Stockholm.
At
the
end of the Second World War tens of thousands of Jews came to Sweden from
the concentration camps, as part of the work by Folke Bernadotte, the Swedish peace-
campaigner who was murdered in Jerusalem while on a
UN
mission. After the war
ended, Stockholm became, for many, the first, for a large number, the last stop on their
journey from the horrors of war or state oppression. First camc the Hungarians, then the
Czechs after
the
Soviet invasion, the Poles, the Greeks after
the
military junta, the
Assyrians/Syrians, the Chileans and other groups. The pattern
of
immigration steered
by the development of world events has, for Stockholm, been the same
in
many ways
as
that of numerous other towns
in
Sweden and certain other countries
in
Europe.
The acceptance of refugees used
to
be conditioned by acute events in the world. This
applied
to
the local authorities as well as the organisations. The needs were dealt with
as they arose. There was no coordinated organisational and administrative system for
dealing with long-term integration needs. The important thing was to meet the
immediate needs by providing the individual with work, a home, and their daily food
for the initial period.
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