4/26/2006 08:43:00 a.m.|W|P|Susan|W|P|The last few weeks I've been running across lots of references to multicultural and integration issues.
A few weeks ago in Stockholm there was a conference about integration issues in Europe - the fact that there are so many immigrants and refugees now living in Europe who come from non-Western cultures, and the struggles that they have to integrate (or to even want to integrate) into their new culture.
One statement really made me think: Sweden is not a multicultural country. If you want to get a job in Sweden you have to speak Swedish, you have to have an understanding of how people interact socially. This would seem to hold true in every other European country as well. We are multicultural in that we have people from many different cultures living here, but there are some basics that everyone needs to grasp.
Last week I read a book about the way Sweden's immigration and asylum policy works. Everyone acknowledges that the current situation is a scandal, to whatever degree. When the UN smacks you down regularly for sending people back into the unsafe situations from which they fled, you know you're missing some things. And we have all been appalled at the footage of children being loaded onto airplanes in wheelchairs, being deported back to their home countries despite that fact that (a) the thought of going back to the place where they have experienced such trauma, and (b) the month in, month out uncertainty of whether they and their families would be allowed to stay in Sweden has left them profoundly, medically, dangerously apathetic.
I come from one culture. My husband comes from a different one, and we are currently living in his home culture. We are expecting a baby in September (happy happy news!) and I can't help but wonder what their wandering through this maze will look like - not just how Swedish culture will continue to change, but the fact that they will grow up in two cultures, and never quite be completely one or the other. I thought about this before I got pregnant, and before we got married. My hope is that this can be something that enriches their life, and that we can love them well enough to give them a foundation that can take the back and forth and occasional confusion of it all.|W|P|114603477927314744|W|P|How multi- is your -culture?|W|P|susan@carlens.se4/11/2006 04:33:00 p.m.|W|P|Susan|W|P|I am spending too much time on/with the internet these days.
I'm still not working much or regularly, and I value the virtual world as a way of keeping my world a bit bigger than my immediate surroundings. A few weeks ago I spent a morning reading blogs from the Arab world (in English, of course) and I received much food for thought in the different perspectives on the furor in the aftermath of the Mohammed cartoons, the everlasting tensions in the Middle East, and the sad disintegration of the situation in Iraq.
However. I have lots of e-mails that I would like to send to friends. The sun is shining today, and I have only been outside for about ten minutes. I have a stack of books that I have time to work my way through.
Maybe it's time to spend a little less time with strangers from strangers' links lists. Maybe it's time to stick my face in the sunshine and enjoy the beginnings of spring.
It's time to buy some daffodils.|W|P|114476634012237684|W|P|Step back from the blog, and move slowly away|W|P|susan@carlens.se4/12/2006 04:35:00 a.m.|W|P| |W|P|Hey Susan H (C),
I know what you mean about spending way to much time on the internet. For me thats been one of my main sources of finding work. Tomorrow I have an interview and I really hope that I have found the place I am supposed to be at!!
How are you doing?? Have you seen the newer pics on my LJ??
Been thinking about you and Anders and praying for you!!
Take care
Much Love
Susan H
|W|P|Hey Susan H (C),