We Need to Talk : About How Frequency of Political Discussion Vary Between Immigrated and Native-born People in Sweden.

Sammanfattning: This thesis investigates the correlation between immigration and the tendency to discuss politics. The aim of the study is to analyse how often immigrated people in Sweden have political discussions compared to native-born people, by looking at several different social scenarios in which one can have these talks. The importance of birth region and time of residence is studied as well. As this is quite an unexplored area of study, a contribution is made to the knowledge about immigrated people’s political participation. By using regression analysis, the results show us that having immigrated leads to higher levels of political discussion in some of the social scenarios studied, but not all of them. Additionally, longer time in Sweden is linked to a small increase in discussions. The main conclusion drawn is that the difference in political discussion is bigger within the group of immigrated people, rather than between immigrants and natives, as there is a substantial difference in discussions between those born in the East and South compared to those born in the West. Finally, these results point towards a need for further investigation of the political integration of immigrated persons, as the lower levels of reported political discussion can be a result of poor integration. The differences found could also indicate the lack of social ties between immigrated and native-born people, which in turn can have a negative impact on the integration of immigrated persons.