Fewer immigrants arrive in Norway

As the economy shows signs of slowing down in Norway, fewer immigrants from eastern Europe are arriving in the country looking for work. More are still coming from southern Europe, but many find it hard to find a job despite Norway’s low unemployment rate. Newspaper Dagsvisen reported on Wednesday how Theo Nikolaidis from Greece has [...]

‘More radicals like Breivik in Norway’

An award-winning Norwegian journalist and author who specializes in the right-wing extremist and anti-Jihad movements fears more radicals may resort to terrorist attacks in Norway. He doesn’t think confessed terrorist Anders Behring Breivik is the “lone wolf” he’s made out to be. Øyvind Strømmen recently won Norway’s “Freelancer of the Year” journalist prize for his [...]

Call goes out for Global Talent group

How can Norway make talented foreign workers feel at home? Scores of players in the business world grappled with that question at Norway’s first Global Mobility Forum on Wednesday, and a call went out for a so-called “Global Talent Consortium” to attract talented foreign workers to Norway, and hang on to them. The goal is [...]

Effort grows to revive ‘Nansenpass’

As government officials hail Norway’s famed explorer and humanitarian Fridtjof Nansen this year, refugees in Oslo wish they’d take more to heart Nansen’s efforts to provide stateless persons with rights and credentials. One teenager whose family fled Lebanon planned to confront Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg with a replica of a “Nansenpass,” the special “passports” for [...]

Immigrants and refugees opt to leave

Refugees who’ve been denied asylum in Norway are opting to leave voluntarily, in record numbers, while other foreigners who’ve been granted permanent residence are leaving as well. Many are moving on after having trouble finding  jobs or running into racism. The head of Norway’s immigration directorate UDI (Utlendingsdirektoratet), Ida Børresen, told news bureau NTB that [...]

Government drops refugee return centers

The Norwegian government won’t be building new centers to house rejected refugees after all. Justice ministry officials decided the centers would be too expensive. Pål Lønseth, state secretary in the ministry, said the government would instead put a priority on other measures aimed at expediting the return of those whose applications for asylum have been [...]

Immigrants come looking for work

Immigrants from the European Union (EU), the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand made up fully two-thirds of the roughly 50,000 persons who arrived in Norway from outside the Nordic area last year. Most were hoping to find a job. With Norway’s economy remaining strong at a time when other countries are suffering serious debt [...]

Mayoral candidate sets off storm

Carl I Hagen, the former high-profile head of Norway’s most conservative political party, officially retired two years ago but quickly admitted that he missed politics and the public spotlight. He’s been making a comeback as a candidate for mayor of Oslo for Fremskrittspartiet, Frp (the Progress Party), and he just as quickly set off a [...]

Calls to tackle racism after attacks

Issues of racism and discrimination continue to be hotly debated in Norway in the aftermath to the Oslo bombings and Utøya shootings that the confessed perpetrator, Anders Behring Breivik, claims were an attack on the country’s multiculturalism. The leader of the Conservative Party, Erna Solberg, has commented on the need to tackle racism, particularly Islamophobia. [...]

‘Fear of foreigners’ breeds extremists

Anders Behring Breivik is by no means Norway’s first home-grown right-wing extremist. Concerns are rising that the country, with its relatively small population, has produced what some experts call a disproportionate amount of internationally known extremists, and some link it to a history of fremmedfrykt (fear of foreigners). While Norwegian society generally has grown more [...]

‘New form of debate’ promised

With local elections due across the country on September 11 and 12, Norwegians and their political representatives are discussing how the election campaign and sensitive debates, including those around immigration and integration, will be carried out following the attacks on Oslo and Utøya island. Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg has warned against a “witch-hunt against opinions” [...]

More refugees expected

Norwegian immigration authorities are bracing for a new wave of asylum seekers from Somalia and Eritrea, because of the drought and famine now gripping the east coast of Africa. Norway already receives a steady stream of refugees from the troubled area, but the drought now hitting the area known as Africa’s horn is the worst [...]

Immigration hit by ‘negative focus’

An ongoing debate in Norway over immigration and the progress of integration has been soured, claim some politicians, by an “increasing negative focus” on certain groups of immigrants. All newcomers thus stand to be stigmatized, no matter how well they’ve done in Norway or how integrated they are. The debate picked up last week when [...]

Skepticism grows over immigration

A new study suggests that half of all Norwegians want to shut Norway’s borders to new immigrants. Just as many believe integration efforts have failed. Immigrants from North America, Asia, Africa and other parts of the world only make up around 10 percent of the population in Norway, but it doesn’t appear many more are [...]

Integration hinges on a good job

A government commission studying integration in Norway has concluded that most immigrants are well-integrated, but around 125,000 are stuck in low-income jobs or dependent on state aid. The commission urged new measures to get them into the higher-paid workforce. “The commission has documented that current measures don’t yield good enough results, and criticizes public sector [...]

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