Chapter 1. Migration Insights: Flows, Stock and Nationality
PART I .MIGRATION SNAPSHOT: NATIONAL LEVEL AND IN THE CITY OF GOTHENBURG 29 │ Chapter 1. Migration insights: Flows, stock and nationality Migration flows and approach Sweden has a longstanding history of migration. People have migrated to Sweden since the 1500s. Gothenburg has a history as a city of commerce, trade, shipyard and manufacturing. The Swedish East India Company was settled in Gothenburg in the 18th century. It has been characterised by immigration since the 1600s, with Dutch architecture helping construct the canal system and the British contributing to trade and industrialisation of the city during the 1700s and 1800s. During almost a century (between the 1850s to the 1930s), Sweden was a country of large-scale emigration as poor peasants and workers made the hazardous journey across the Atlantic for economic as well as political reasons and in order to try to find better living conditions. Between 1860 and 1930 approximately 1.4 million individuals left Sweden (OECD, 2016b[2]). Gothenburg was, during the time of the great emigration, the main port of departure. Since World War II, Sweden has been a country of immigration (see Strömbäck 2016). Refugees (many from the Baltic states) and war survivors arrived in the aftermath of World War II. In parallel, from the 1950s and until the early 1970s, there was a fairly large inflow of labour migrants, in particular from Finland, Greece, Italy, Turkey and the former Yugoslavia. In Gothenburg, many worked in car production (Volvo), but also in bearings manufacturing (SKF) and in the leading shipyard industry. For more details on history of migration in Sweden please see (OECD, 2016[11]).
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