By sharing housing, seniors and migrants in Sweden build bridges
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Loading... - Cheryl Gilbert
- 21 Mar 2023
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It was when his older Swedish neighbors threw him a high school graduation party that Afghan native Zia Sarwary finally felt a sense of belonging in this picturesque seaside city.
“It meant everything to me,” says Mr. Sarwary, who at the age of 13 arrived alone in Sweden during the 2015 refugee crisis. “That was the beginning of feeling at home.”
Mr. Sarwary is one of dozens of tenants living in Sällbo, a shared-living project mixing elder Swedes and young adults, some of them from Sweden, others – like him – from the Middle East or Afghanistan. The six-story building with 51 apartments helps counter both the loneliness of advanced-age Swedes and the integration difficulties facing migrants who arrived as unaccompanied minors.
Tenants of Sällbo have found common ground within these colorful walls, which they attribute to the cumulative impact of courtesy, kindness, mutual curiosity, and understanding.
“The whole goal was to show that even if you are different and even if you are people who would not usually socialize, you would do so if there is a safe environment where you know who is in the house,” says Dragana Curovic, the project manager for Sällbo. “After three years, we can say that it worked.”
“We can meet in the middle ground”
Had they not moved under the same roof, the older Swedes and young migrants living here would almost certainly not have mingled. Fear and misunderstanding would have been major obstacles. Older Swedes’ impressions of young migrants draw heavily on negative press reports linking them to crime.
As for the immigrants, their interactions with Swedes had largely been limited to asylum center officials – authority figures who set the initial tone for the newcomers’ experience, but weren’t focused on building bonds with them. Read More…
