Segregation and Diversity in Swedish Cities by Institute for Analytical Sociology

The issue of segregation of immigrants has generated a lot of interest in many Western countries, not least in Sweden in the run up to the 2018 elections. In the midst of many alarmist stories about life in Sweden, it is understandable that many wonder how segregated and diverse Swedish cities are?

Researchers tend to measure segregation by indices such as dissimilarity index, but their interpretation may be difficult to grasp for someone new to them. To help visualise residential segregation of foreign-born residents, I created a tool that allows exploring changes in neighbourhoods between 1990-2010. We see that patterns and scale of segregation are slightly different for each city.

Contrary to popular belief, Swedish cities are quite integrated, especially when compared to the United States. Yet, for some neighbourhoods we can see a pattern where they are increasingly inhabited by foreign-born residents, in particular those born in non-Western countries.