Questions/Answers

Åre Municipality is a sparsely populated community – 11 000 inhabitants – where trade and industry is based on a dynamic tourism. The population has been on the decline for a lengthy period of time with an extensive exodus of young, well-educated people moving to the cities/towns of south Sweden. In 2011 our municipal politicians decided to invest in attracting refugees to Åre to stop the negative population and growth curves. Starting 2012 we have developed integration in cooperation with the private and non-profit sectors partly to attract new arrivals, partly to encourage them to stay here with us in Åre. We need the social/economic growth these people can provide. The contribution to the competition describes our model for integration of resettlement programme refugees, asylum seekers with permission to stay in Sweden and consequent family immigrants. Our current integration model shows that Åre has among the best integration results in Sweden. We have 24 months to integrate a new arrival into a self-sufficient, independent Swedish citizen. This means a job with contractual salary, a social life, language skills, access to education, community/health services, i.e. the same opportunities as any other Swede. We have received a total of 777 refugees since 2011, of which roughly 85% have gained long term self-sufficiency since 2014 and live a good life here. Subsequently population and social/economic growth now point upwards. Our model is built on voluntary engagement, cooperation with others, equality, individual solutions - firstly focusing on security before self-sufficiency/employment. New arrivals each receive an individual development plan and holistic based support, i.e. a satisfactory life perspective. Apart from the figures above we have also had approximately 1000 asylum seekers living in Åre during 2014-2016 awaiting either a permanent residence permit or deportation.

1. To turn refugee reception into a positive factor for social/economic growth in the community. For Sweden this is a new, innovative way of looking at refugees and integration work as the majority of Sweden’s municipalities see refugees as a costly burden. Here in Åre we have introduced an integration model showing the exact opposite – refugees can be a positive resource generating social/economic growth and diversity in our community. 2. To integrate at least 100 refugees; approved asylum seekers, resettlement programme refugees and family immigrants to becoming self- sufficient and permanent citizens of Åre. 3. Currently, due to the decreasing stream of refugees arriving in Sweden we are concentrating our efforts on attracting refugees living in other parts of Sweden to move to Åre.

Compared with other Swedish municipalities Åre receives a proportionately high number of resettlement refugees. Together with other asylum seekers allowed to remain in Sweden they represent a highly vulnerable group – people fleeing their homelands – often due to war, poverty, illness with no prospects of being able to live a sustainable, decent life. As soon as they make the decision to flee their homeland they must leave everything behind, subsequently they find themselves in a highly precarious situation with great risk for their lives. Our integration model is tailor-made to meet the needs of these vulnerable people and help them make a good life here in our community, according to Swedish standard. Everyone receives an individually adapted development plan, which includes learning the language, receiving education/training, help in gaining employment and a satisfactory social life in our community. We also help and support them to conform to our traditions/culture and spread information regarding equality and gender relations – and much more related to common human rights. We are there for them during their integration process as long as they feel they need us – for some this entails a couple of years while for others up to three or four years.

Our work model signifies that we contribute to counteracting poverty, famine and poor health by promoting a better quality of life for a highly susceptible group. Here they acquire excellent accommodation, access to public health/community services, which are regarded as among the best in the world. Access to education/training and lifelong learning – irrespective of gender or disabilities – are available. The requirements of the various individuals help us to continually develop and improve our integration model. The excellent results we have achieved over the past few years have been recognized both nationally and internationally, which has helped us spread our work model to others. This way we help improve integration work for all those interested in learning from us. We have presented our model for the EU-Commission, other EU-countries and many Swedish authorities at national, regional and local levels.

Our initiative is directed at the target group refugees and their reception in Sweden. This is an issue which has been high on the Swedish political agenda for more than two years now. We have noted numerous integration models established in Sweden during the past 2 – 3 years and as Åre municipality’s model has shown first-class results in a long-term perspective other are eager to learn from us. This promotes an improvement of public services for refugees in the country.

We in Åre municipality are of the opinion that refugee reception is a survival issue as well as a factor for social/economic growth in the community. Therefore our approach has been to recognize individuals instead of different national groups of refugees because we have noted the “pay-back” in social/economic growth! Our performance figures also show that the target group benefits more from our integration model when compared with other municipalities in Sweden. Please note the answer under 3a!

The unique and innovative aspects of our integration model is: 1) the fact that we assume that refugee reception is an asset, providing new opportunities for us to create social/economic growth in our community, 2) the fact that we are extremely carefully about having early focus on activities that promote safety and security because we have learned that this will prevent problems later on in the integration process. We recognize refugees as a positive contribution that firstly generates diversity in the community, secondly helps cater for the demand for manpower both in the public and private sectors, and thirdly helps increase our declining population, which has remained static or seen to be steadily decreasing during a lengthy period of time. We also note that the average age is now much lower in our community due to the fact that many children and young adults as well as – last but not least – a large number of people of working age are now living here. These are all factors necessary for generating social/economic growth and prosperity in a community. We chose a different approach and are now harvesting the fruits of applying a positive perspective as well as daring to go our own way according to the individual needs we could identify among the refugees themselves.

Our integration model has been developed by us in, for us, a natural way. We understood and recognized early on in the procedure that the feeling of being safe and secure must be prioritized before anyone can concentrate on studies/training, or employment. Basic needs must be met first. It may be noted that our model has its roots in “Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs”. We have successively developed our model according to our new citizen’s requirements. This has resulted in an extensive cooperation with public and private employers in order to match individuals to available jobs and with organisations in the non-profit sector for help with integration into a social life in the community.

When we began to develop our integration model in 2012 we comprised 3.35% full time positions. By 2017/2018 we had expanded to 15.40% full time positions. We have acquired the necessary personnel, adequate for our assignment. Currently we boast a broad range of supportive functions including; Head of Immigration Service, Supervisor, Integration official, Housing Coordinator, Language support, Early validation, Project Manager, and finally, Head of Language Support. We have had the advantage of having our own budget, subsequently allowing us to form our work model as seen fit.

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In November 2017 we attended a 2 day trans-national conference comprising participants from Sweden, Norway, Latvia and Finland where we presented our work. We have booked a day in March 2018 during which we will host members from a number of municipalities who are interested in a study visit. In March 2017 we presented our model, in Brussels, for the EU-Commission and several other EU-countries and were invited to a dissemination seminar. We are invited to Brussels 3rd – 4th March 2018 by EU’s Economic and Social Committee (ECOSOC), who along with the EU-Commission are interested in learning about effective examples currently available in Europe. We also visited Ireland (Dublin) in December 2016, Slovakia (Bratislava) in March 2017 and Finland (Helsingfors) in June 2017. We have broached a discussion with Ireland about applying for EU-funding to carry out a joint transnational project on integration work. Since 1st January 2018 we are involved, in cooperation with Inderöy municipality, Norway, in an EU-funded project in which they are hoping to learn more about our integration work.

It takes 2 years from the time a refugee comes to Sweden to become integrated and gain self-sufficiency/employment. This means that we have 24 months during which time the person in question receives a government grant and is able to concentrate on obtaining education/training/ employment, a social life and becoming established in the community. Due to the time perspective our support resources need to be completely focused on the target and follow each individual constantly and closely. We carry out an early validation of their previous education/training and experiences and ensure that they start to learn Swedish as soon as possible. We help them with accommodation, provide information regarding Swedish rules/ regulations and traditions as well as arranging meetings with social services, child-care etc. – everything necessary to create a sense of security in their new home. We then engage our various resources to help them on the way to gain self-sufficiency. We also involve our partners in both the non-profit and private sectors without whose cooperation our model wouldn’t work. We have assembled a mixture of different resources from all sectors of society with whom we share an extremely close cooperation, in order to be able to modify our work to suit the individual! We are still there to offer support even after the obligatory 2 years but the aim, which the majority achieve, is that they will be long-term self-sufficient in our community after 2 years.

Our work model derives from 2 starting points. 1) we adapt the integration process according to the individual – taking into consideration everyone’s specific needs and circumstances 2) we concentrate first of all on providing a sense of security here in Sweden and in our community then successively move on to focusing on self-sufficiency in the form of employment or studies/training. This work strategy is not dependent on the type of system/society one works in – it may be adapted to suit all countries. This means that our model is transferable for use in any other country and can be, without any difficulty, adapted to suit various changes over time. The model is adaptable to changing politics, economical fluctuations and social/environmental instabilities. It can always be adapted to suit the individual’s needs.

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Swedish municipalities all report their integration results on an ongoing basis to the National Employment Agency as well as to The Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions. In this way integration work is followed, compiled and evaluated continually in all Swedish municipalities.

Åre municipality has been “top of the class” in these evaluations since 2014. Åre’s result for 2017 shows that roughly 85% are self-sufficient in some form of studies/employment after the two years allowed for settling in. In one of our supporting documents we present some statistics from The Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions. If requested we can provide more statistics.

We use two indicators, the first of which is how many have become long term self-sufficient in the form of employment or studies, or perhaps had children. The most important thing is that people are occupied and not living on financial grants, but should instead be living a meaningful life with a guaranteed income. Secondly we use our own assessment of how many stay and become permanent residents in our community. Our ambition is to achieve 100% and in 2017 we had reached 91%! During the past two years we have also noted an increasing number of refugees who have chosen to move to Åre from other parts of Sweden. We see this as an indicator that the fact that this is an excellent community to make a new life in has spread to the national group of refugees.

We cooperate in partnership with local trade and industry where we have ongoing contacts with employers, partly to be able to acquire suitable work placements for trainees and partly to gain awareness regarding available jobs so that we can suitably match individual to job. We also have a close comprehensive cooperation in partnership with the Swedish Employment Agency to be able to obtain help at an early stage with various courses/training, which we consider essential and also to receive relevant information regarding available jobs. We cooperate in partnership with the non-profit sector where e.g. The Red Cross, various educational associations and The Church help us to organize leisure activities and make contacts in the community. We have excellent contacts within our own municipality regarding work placements for trainees, finding suitable staff for jobs available and also for receiving information at an early stage concerning jobs currently available in the organization. Åre has a dynamic tourism and we work in a specific partnership with hotel personnel and event organizers managers to give individuals the opportunity to participate at various short term events, partly to give them contacts in the community, partly to appraise how refugees themselves perform in this context. This can include anything from World Cup Competitions to smaller winter competitions and other specific leisure themes arranged for tourists.

When asked to define what we think our most successful factors are we always highlight the following 4: 1) We have successfully, at an early stage in the procedure, provided our refugees with a feeling of safety and security, allowing them to concentrate on employment/self-sufficiency. 2) We have employed people who have applied for a position with us – not those repositioned from other areas of local government. 3) We have our own budget and have been able to make our own decisions regarding financing. 4) We have always focused on solving problems as quickly as possible – in a way that was best for all concerned.