I want to start with a short presentation of
the Immigrant Institute. The institute is a research and documentation centre
on migration, refugees and issues on racism and discrimination. It has a
library, an archive and even a museum of immigrant artists with exhibitions
about migration in Sweden and in Borås. The institute cooperates with immigrant
organizations in Sweden, universities and other Swedish organizations. The
research made by the institute tries to part from the immigrants’ perspective.
One of the first projects of the Immigrant
Institute was to collect immigrant journals. The institute has since 1976
published a list on immigrant and minority journals. The first edition
comprised 129 titles and the last edition from 2001 comprised 230 printed and
40 electronic journals. This list is available on paper but also on the
internet.
An archive with more than 1000 journals is
available in the institute’s library. Many new magazines have been published during
the past years. There are some magazines who started at the forties or fifties
and who are still appearing, while others have an average life of 4-5 years of
publication.
The immigrant journals are very different from
each other. We find many different categories, for instance general journals
for a general public, local journals which address to members of a local
immigrant organization (very common between the Finnish population), cultural
journals addressing to cultural workers in some minorities and mostly published
by individuals or by some organisation which only aim is to publish the journal
(for instance in Kurdish and Farsi), journals for the youth and for women, for
fishing and for music instruments. The diversity of the journals makes of course
difficult for the Swedish authorities to find a system that could be suitable
for giving support to them.
Still, it was possible in the seventies to get
support for three different groups of journals. Journals appearing every day or
at least once a week could get support from Presstödsnämnden (press Subsidy
Council). This is still possible today. The number of such journals varies from
time to time but is not bigger than six-seven, five actually. The languages of
publication are Swedish, Estonian, Spanish, and Finnish.
There was in the seventies a kind of support
for journals appearing twice a month or journals published by immigrant
organizations in the national level even if they appeared once a month. This
support continued for a few years and it was administered by the Swedish
Immigration Board. Things changed in 1985.
A new support system to immigrant organizations
made that from this time the support to them could be used for any activity in
the organization, even for the publication of a journal. Since then the support
for magazines published by national organizations disappeared. Some kind of
support continued until 1998 for other magazines. Some journals published by
local organizations or by individuals could still get direct support. This also
changed later when the Swedish Immigration Board become two organizations and
the Integration Council was created.
The Cultural Council gave also support to a few
journals, mostly in Swedish but even in other languages, if they were published
for children. Some Kurdish journals got support this way. Nowadays the Cultural
Board gives support to about 16 journals, of which some are journals from
approved minorities. The Roma community has for the first time possibility to
publish in romani with support from the society.
Many of the local journals have survived thanks
to the local community, which in many cases has supported them economically.
Another important economic income has been advertising. Here we can see very
quickly which magazines have succeeded and which have not. We can see that
there is a very big variation between them.
There is not a single journal that has survived
thanks to subscriptions only. Either they have a strong organization behind
them as the journals published by national minority organisations or they have
a strong support from the authorities. One exception is the Estonian press,
which has survived during many years thanks to the efforts of the Estonian
community together. The Estonians have had a kind of solidarity between organizations
as to help each other in the distribution of materials and information, as well
as participation in each other’s activities. The Finnish community, which is
the largest minority community in Sweden, tried to have a daily journal, Finn
Sanomat. It was published for some years from 1979 to 1983. Nowadays the
Finnish have found that weekly publication is enough. There are two such
publications now.
The minority media in printed form fills a very
important task. The minority media helps to know a lot of the minorities living
in Sweden, their aims in Sweden, culture and struggles vis a vis their home
countries. It is an historic source that cannot be replaced by other means.
My knowledge about radio and television is not
the same. There are programs in the local near radio, a special system by which
local organizations can send within a restricted area, especially in the big
cities. Here the most important task is to function as a social catalisator
within the colony they address to. They are also important when thinks happen,
as they can send information directly.
Some reflexions about late events in Sweden. In
2000 there was a conference in Malmö for minority media. Africa Forum published
a report of the conference and FIMMS was created. A year later FIMMS and the
Immigrant Institute organized a conference in Borås, which was opened by the
minister of culture Marita Ulvskog. After her visit to Borås and the exhibition
of minority magazines she decided to appoint an investigation of minority media
in Sweden and their needs. Some of you have surely read the report; publish by
the press Subsidy Council. You may not find a single proposal unless things
that somebody else than the Swedish state can do. This is a new way of making
propositions, as I see it.
The most striking is that you may not find a
single word about the catalogs and the library of the Immigrant Institute. A
list with addresses published in the report was a copy of the Immigrant
Institutes addresses. Not a single acknowledge. Instead of that, the reader
gets the idea that the researcher has done all the work alone. This kind of
cribbing is allowed today by the official Sweden.
You understand that I am not optimistic any
longer about the possibilities of support by the Swedish society. The only
think is that media lives its own life; even if the society doesn’t support it.
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