you are probably fine without learning Swedish in a meaningful manner, but if you are planning to become a citizen it is not unreasonable a requirement.
i had a rant all prepared for this comment, along the lines of ‘yeah but they’re not doing anything to make learning the language or integrating any easier; they’re just adding further alientation and precarity into their lives’… but i realise all those words would be wasted because that’s the point.
the rightwing government doesn’t want people to integrate. they want to give every migrant such an acute case of Ulysses syndrome that they burn out and fail.
i have heard from people there that they just completely broke down after receiving their citizenship. they spent the years on a residency permit in unfurnished apartments with no lasting or heavy investments in society. they didn’t get medical or psychological treatment when they needed it, and they didn’t participate politically and stayed in their lane, living in effective peonage to their employers and trying to be model migrants and manage their energy levels so as not to draw any attention to themselves. they were too afraid to make any longlasting commitments in case it would all just be taken away from them on three-month’s notice. such a weight lifted from their shoulders that all the stress came barreling out and they crashed hard. this news — that their citizenship can be taken away on vagueties of ‘national security’ (most of the people i know there are activists), or because of ‘crimes’ committed long ago in their home countries, or that the rules could apply retroäctively — have brought back their stress right when they were just recovering and finally felt safe digging into their new permanent life.
it doesn’t matter that these policies are ‘targeted’ at ‘terrorists’ and gangs. these changes affect everyone who migrates to Sweden for any reason. the government’s habit of wildly changing the rules every 6 months isn’t helping.
i’m not who you asked for, but i’ve worked a lot with people in Sweden.
first, let’s talk about options. you don’t really have any negotiating power unless you are a member of one of the big three unions, and even then: only if you’re in the union which your employer has a collective agreement with, and even then: you don’t have any say in negotiations.
there’s TCO, which is the Liberal’s Choice™ confederation of unions, ranging from cops, to office workers, to insurance scammers. within TCO is the largest: Unionen (lit. ‘The Union’), whose unofficial motto is ‘if the boss could pick’ (om chefen själv för välja). Unionen is the default character’s choice for anyone who’s ever touched a keyboard.
there’s LO, best known for their hit single IF Metall, and they’re right-wing blue-collar productivists.
there’s Saco, best known for uhhhh. and they primarily represent the elite, lawyers, quacks, and other priests (such as religious ones).
the main alternative is the Syndicalists. they’re anticapitalist, they have few agreements with anybody, and they’re a great way to get blacklisted and wiretapped. their ideology is outlined here: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/rasmus-hastbacka-swedish-syndicalism
the independent Dockworkers Union is a great example of a functioning union. but they’re only for one industry, and many of their members give off national syndicalism vibes.
it’s definitely a pacifier.
the unions primarily serve to maintain a minimum level of comfort for the middle class, while acting on behalf of employers to crush left-wing organising and militancy. they give leeway to the largest employers, while ignoring the plight of employees at small companies. they follow the party line of the socdems, which in recent years is ‘whatever the far-right is on about this week’. the general view toward salary negotiations is ‘the highest paid jobs should be paid even more, and the lowest paid jobs should be paid even less so we can pay the highest paid jobs even more’.
whenever there’s any criticism of the unions, the socdems, or the Swedish government/economy overall: you’ll get union leaders and politicians across the spectrum snapping back that ‘hEre in SweDeN, wE hAvE a ModEl’ and then passing/proposing laws to criminalise and punch down at criticisms of ‘the Swedish System’ as some kind of foreign threat. you can’t criticise or protest ‘elected’ leadership, because that’s ‘undemocratic’ and ‘strongarm’, and ‘you should just shut the fuck up and wait till the next vote’.
there’s two short English essays here (from a syndicalist perspective):