Cold comfort: the Syrian refugees trying to make a new life in Sweden
My life in Syria was amazing, I had everything," says Salah Debas, 23, with a mix of nostalgia and desperation. Until two years ago, Debas worked for a radio station belonging to Maher Assad, the brother of the Syrian president Bashar al-Assad. As a DJ, he divided his time between radio studios and clubs all over the Middle East, from Cairo to Istanbul. The pay was good – at least $1,500 per event – and he lived life in the fast lane. The contrast with his existence now could not be starker.
Today, Debas lives in Strövelstorp, a small village lost in the Swedish countryside near the city of Helsingborg, where he shares a simple house with an Iranian refugee and another Syrian. "If I died here now, no one would know," he says, his eyes roaming around the barren wooden room. "I feel I am just throwing away another year of my life."
Here, on a farm-turned-residential-complex for asylum-seekers, Debas clearly struggles to adapt. "I feel like shit," he says. "Life here is just pressure, pressure and more pressure. Music is my life, but now I can't get any pleasure from it. The only good thing is that I am safe."
Debas's world began to crumble after the start of the Syrian revolution. Disgusted by what he describes as the blatant pro-government propaganda he heard on the radio, he quit his job and started work as a media activist for the Free Syrian Army. After the Syrian intelligence service started looking for him, he fled Syria in order to protect his family. Debas went to Istanbul and paid a smuggler to put him in the luggage hold of a bus bound for Stockholm. He spent seven days, breathing from an oxygen tank. He arrived in Sweden in March 2013. Seven months later, he was granted asylum.
Sweden has a long tradition of welcoming refugees and asylum-seekers. In the past decades, tens of thousands of Somalis, Palestinians, Iraqis and ex-Yugoslavians have found shelter from wars and deprivations here. The small city of Södertälje, on the outskirts of Stockholm, became famous for having accepted more Iraqi refugees than the whole of the US. Sweden takes in more refugees through the UN agency UNHCR than any other European country; this year it has decided to allocate almost one-third of its quota (600 out of 1,900 resettlement places) to Syrian citizens and Palestinians from Syria.
In September 2013 new regulations began offering blanket asylum to all Syrians who applied after arriving there. More than 2,700 did so, and according to the Swedish Migration Board, 12,000 were granted residence last year. Most come from the middle and upper classes, the only ones able to afford the roughly €10,000 necessary to purchase fake documents and be smuggled across Europe. The majority of those who make it are young single men, whose main goal is to quickly find a job and send money to their families back in Syria. This massive movement of people has created a severe housing backlog, forcing Arbetsförmedlingen, the Swedish government's employment agency (which also assists recent arrivals in finding accommodation and subsidises their rent) to allocate newcomers to remote and isolated villages in the north. Conditions here are tough and work hard to come by.
Ostersund in Sweden, home to many Syrian refugees. Photograph: Matilde Gattoni
Many of the young Syrians who arrive here are successful professionals – architects, academics and businessmen – who held a prominent place in Syrian society and, unlike economic migrants, would not have left their country if it wasn't for the war. "They had a very good position in Syria and they want the same position here. But they will not get it," explains Elias Kasgawa, a 47-year-old Syrian from Hassake who has lived in Sweden since 1970. Sweden and Syria are worlds apart in terms of food, weather, political systems, gender relationships and the way society is organised. "Syrians are raised in a more hierarchical way. You always have a leader figure, your parents, your relatives or your teacher," continues Kasgawa, who lives with his family in Sweden and works as in hotel construction. "In Sweden, you don't have many guidelines. You must develop yourself."
With the recent influx of Syrians, the waiting time to hear if an asylum application has been successful has increased from an average of 90 days to six months or, in some cases, more than a year. If the application is successful, the asylum-seeker is granted a five-year residence and enters a two-year introduction programme managed by Arbetsförmedlingen. During this time, the asylum seeker is paid roughly €650 per month for attending a full-time Swedish language course and is encouraged to seek job training or part-time work. Although the introduction programme is one of the most advanced in the world, the situation is not as rosy as it might seem.
Giwara, 28, in Sweden … now living with 10 others in a hostel. Photograph: Matilde Gattoni
"Everything looks nice on paper, but, in reality, the authorities are not looking at the competences of these people, their experiences or their dreams," says Lena Schroeder, associate professor at the Swedish Institute of Social Research. "Quite a lot of them are highly educated, yet they are trained to drive buses." As a result, most of the young and educated Syrian professionals in Sweden have either to invest two years of their working life in order to learn the language and try to continue their careers, or settle for less attractive, more menial jobs.
Giwara, a 28-year-old Syrian Kurd from Aleppo, arrived in Sweden 15 months ago. Once the owner and manager of a clothing dye factory that was employing 90 people, he was forced to close down the business two months before the Free Syrian Army entered Aleppo in the summer of 2012. "The rebels ransacked all the factories, selling the machineries and components to Turkey," he says bitterly. After an adventurous trip through Greece and Italy that lasted more than a month and cost him around €16,000, Giwara finally settled in Helsingborg, where he now shares a hostel with 10 other immigrants. "We have only one kitchen and one bathroom. Some of these guys have stayed in this place for 15 years," he says. His face leaves no doubt that he fears the same fate.
Some names have been changed.