Are the Chilean immigrants integrated into the Swedish society? : A study of integration processes among Chilean immigrants in Sweden.

Sammanfattning: Sweden is well known for receiving both immigrants and refugees.  People of Chilean heritage, make up the biggest Latin American group in Sweden with approximate 50 000 residents in Sweden being born in Chile or having at least one parent born in Sweden.  Slightly over half of these migrated from Chile. This study will therefore focus on the Chilean integration into a small society, which in this case is Växjö municipality.   This study investigates the extent to immigrants are integrated into Swedish society, and seek to understand the problems and obstacles the Chilean immigrants faces regarding social integration. It is a qualitative field study and using semi-structured interviews to understand and analyze the Chilean immigrants’ integration in Växjö on a micro level. There were ten interviews, with five female and five male participants. The interviews were analyzed by using the social integration theory.                                                      The findings are complex and demonstrate that most of the participants feel part of Swedish society and that most of them see themselves as integrated into the Swedish society. However, the majority of the participants speak very poor Swedish, and do not socialize with Swedish individuals very much. The findings thus contrast the theoretical idea of integration used as an analytical lens, which almost all participants in this study fails to achieve, with their own worldview that they have integrated into Sweden