No one can deny that multiculturalism and mass immigration are a reality in Sweden today. However, it hasn’t always been so. As late as 1965, the social democratic Prime Minister of Sweden Tage Erlander said: “We Swedes live in an infinitely luckier situation. Our country’s population is homogeneous, not only in terms of race, but also in many other respects.” The demographic transformation of Sweden did not just happen to happen. It was a direct result of political decisions, which in turn could be undertaken because of some actor’s conscious agenda and very active advocacy in the 1960s and 1970s. Earlier, Sweden had an approach towards immigrants and ethnic minorities that was based either on expulsion or assimilation. Immigrants who were ethnically and culturally closely related would assimilate while non-European immigrants, Gypsies and Sami would be excluded from the community. Now, however, suddenly a new approach prevailed: Sweden would become a pluralistic multicultural society and the multicultural paradigm would become the overall goal of Swedish culture, politics and society.

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