Risk of segregation in some housing areas

The municipality has been given funding by the authority Delegation against Segregation to examine where there is a risk of segregation.

Facts concerning the labour market, employment, economy and education are all in the report.

The industrial crisis in 2008 and the influx of new arrivals in 2015 make the municipality more vulnerable to segregation.

– 5 000 jobs in industry have disappeared within the past 40 years, 1 000 of them during the past ten years, says Patric Åberg (M), chairman of the municipal council.

The level of education is low.

People who live in rural areas and in residential areas have a good life in Östra Göinge. There are areas with flats where many people are out of work and have very little education. This contrast makes for segregation.

The big new group of people born abroad is a challenge for the municipality. At the same time the group has helped Östra Göinge to break a trend, and the number of inhabitants is now on the rise.

How the politicians can reduce the increased gap is not clear. Åberg wants to have more building-society flats to attract more taxpayes to the municipality. Another project is to have more meeting-places. In school, boys have lagged behind in their education, something must be done there. There is an ”anti-school” culture that is a leftover from the ”industrial phase”

Opposition councillor Anders Bengtsson (S) thinks that it is a good idea to examine class differences in Östra Göinge , but they have nothing to do with immigration.

– As usual the people who run things don’t know what they’re talking about.

– I think it’s hard to draw any statistical conclusions. Östra Göinge is too small.

He thinks that people in.Östra Göinge are well-favoured, and there is hardly any segregation to speak of.