Rapport Integration 2002

Checks on the health of various refugee groups show
that as many as one refugee in three found it hard to
take part in their introduction programmes due to
ill-health connected with their war experiences, with
their experiences as refugees or even with their situation
once they had arrived in Sweden.
A number of instructive examples in the 2002 Integration
Report show the importance of basing introductions
on the needs and wishes of the individual.
When such an approach is adopted, groups can be
reached that do not currently take part in introduction
programmes. In a number of the projects for
lowly educated women and illiterate persons described
in the report, the initiatives come from the participants
themselves, based in this case on the needs of
individual women, rather than from an outside project
manager with ideas about the special problems
faced by women. Many of the measures included in
introduction programmes are still decided on from
above and are less often based on the resources and
capabilities of the individual.
Children and young people miss out on
introductions
Introduction programmes often lack a perspective
on children and young people, despite explicit
declarations on the part of policymakers that refugee
children and young people must also be offered programme
measures tailored to their individual needs.
Studies show that neither children nor young people
are given individual plans of action. Their introductions
are confined to registration with a preschool
or school and the pupils in some cases are placed in
what are termed preparatory classes.
The fact that immigrants are over-represented
among pupils who leave compulsory school without
a full set of grades may partly be due to shortcomings
in introduction programmes, particularly in the case
of refugee children forced to interrupt their schooling
in their native country.
Many new arrivals get stuck in the educational
system
Many new immigrants move on from Swedish for
Immigrants courses to other adult education programmes.
In the 1999/2000 academic year, two thirds
of the students in Grundvux (adult education at
compulsory school level) were persons born abroad.
In other adult education programmes, the proportion
was less than 20 per cent. Research in this field
is limited, but there are signs that adult education is
used as a place to deposit people who are expected to
have difficulty finding employment.
242 RAPPORT INTEGRATION 2002