The Rinkeby Experience: Building Partnerships in Sweden's Largest Multicultural Borough

Jan Johannson

Rinkeby is a multicultural borough in Stockholm, Sweden, with about 15,000 inhabitants, including many labour immigrants and refugees. Nearly 100 languages are spoken. A third of the population are not in employment, and half receive a benefit at least once during the year. Factors exacerbating this situation include low levels of education and qualifications, an employer bias towards Swedish-speaking applicants, and the negligible difference in standard of living between working and receiving a benefit.

This paper examines the question of how society and its institutions should work in this type of situation. The City of Stockholm aims to cut the “open” unemployment by half by the year 2000 through a welfare to workfare programme.

The paper looks at examples of some of the projects being run, including a business centre to help people set up their own businesses, a multimedia centre, and a project for socially isolated Turkish women.

The paper concludes that the Rinkeby initiatives have shown that it is possible to develop programmes, in co-operation with the community, to assist hard-to-employ people back into various forms of work activity, although many of these will be put into “non-typical” forms of work and may involve some element of ongoing financial assistance.