Integration mot alla odds? En longitudinell kohortstudie av östjudars barn i Sverige, 1880–1920

This book is about immigration and integration. I explore the integration of the children of Eastern European Jews living in Sweden on 31 December 1880. Having migrated to Sweden from the Russian Empire, this immigrant group was stigmatized and subjected to a form of selective antisemitism now known as Eastern Jew phobia. How did Jewish immigrant children integrate into Sweden’s majority society and culture? The elusive phenomenon of integration has been studied as a question of socioeconomic and political inclusion in ten longitudinal, micro-level sub-studies. The study population consists of all 857 children born between 1865 and 1880 to parents born in the Russian Empire, primarily identified using primary data from Sweden’s official population statistics in 1880, but also using several supplementary sources. Each individual has been tracked into adulthood using population registers and other primary sources in Sweden and elsewhere (usually until 1920). Several variables have been categorized in a database to answer the questions posed in each sub study, such as name, year of birth, place of birth, parents’ birthplaces, father’s occupation in 1880, place of residence in 1880 and 1920 (or an alternative reference year), own occupation in 1920, spouse’s ethnicity, income in 1920, and surname changes. The first three sub studies concern migration patterns. Less than 50 per cent of the study population remained in Sweden as adults, while at least 25 per cent – perhaps closer to 30 per cent – emigrated to the US and about 15 per cent to other countries. A slightly smaller proportion of men than women remained in Sweden, but over 60 per cent of emigrants to the US were male. When it came to internal migration, many moved from towns and cities to Sweden’s two largest cities, Stockholm (the capital) and Gothenburg. Of the 390 individuals in the study population living in Sweden in 1880, only 37 per cent lived in Stockholm or Gothenburg, but in adulthood this figure rose to 56 per cent.