Stockholm city council commissioned a study based on a survey of 2.300 students from Eritrea, Somalia, Middle East, North Africa as well as South East Asia. Most of the students live in the poorer suburbs of Stockholm, which are known for their high number of immigrants. The survey focused on how cultural traditions impact the integration of the teenagers into the Swedish Society.

According to the survey, the findings show that teenagers face restrictions in their upcoming, because of cultural traditions, which in certain cases violate Swedish law. For example 23% of the females responded, that they are expecting to remain virgin until they get married and that they are not allowed to have a boy friend. Moreover, 16% of females said someone else is deciding who they are going to marry. Amongst the sample of boys 7% responded they are not allowed to decide who to marry on their own. What makes integration difficult and slows down educational development is that 10% of girls and 4% of boys say that they are limited in their private lives compared to their fellow students.

Most probably the same might apply to many other urban cities in Europe with a high density of people with immigrant background. In many Eritrean families of the first generation girls were treated somehow stricter than their male counterparts. The more the families appear to be integrated, the less the restrictions due to culture and traditions, especially amongst the Eritreans living in the second or third generation in the West. Read more Gulf-Times.

Having worked for several years as an Eritrean in East Europe, I came across a quiet unique but somehow to me familiar experience of life.nIt reminded me on the time during the early 80s, when my parents migrated to Germany during the liberation struggle in Eritrea. Back then, I was a young boy in a family with many children and I am still a child today.

Eritrean families used to be rather huge in size at that time.The German authorities settled us far out from every civilisation in a small village near the boarder to France. Hence, the villagers were quiet curios’ and astonished about the newcomers, which I did not understand at that time.

We were the only black family within a radius of 31 miles from the place we were living. No wonder that we were an attraction in many ways for the local people.

Some of the locals felt sorry, and tried to make life easier for us by inviting us to their home or helping us with formalities. I just remember one funny occasion, when our whole family was invited to a nights out at our neighbours place. When we arrived at the place there were many friends and relatives of our neighbours.

To my surprise they had placed three or four African drums at the middle of the living room and expected us to play them. In astonishment we looked at each other not knowing how to avoid disappointing our neighbours. So we started drumming the typical Eritrean “gualia” rhythm, which is no major science to do.

Honestly, no one of us new how to get African vibes and beats out of these drums. To our relieve people got bored quiet soon and the hosts changed the venue to the hobby room in order to show dia slights of their last holiday.

Read the full story

Stockholm, Sweden: Politicians and media in Stockholm claim, that Eritreans in Sweden have to pay a 2% tax on their net income to the Embassy of Eritrea in Stockholm. Fredrik Malm, a member of the parliament for the Liberal Party states; it is unacceptable for other states to recover tax from Swedish citizens. He further claims that the monopoly to collect tax in Sweden is owned by the State of Sweden. According to the newspaper Expressen people who do not adhere with paying the tax will be imprisoned when they return to Eritrea for holiday or for visiting relatives. Having fact checked the story, this is not true and people visiting Eritrea are not being imprisoned, because they do not pay the 2% tax. Having visited Eritrea many times without paying the tax, it has never happened that the freedom of movement was limited by being imprisoned due to not not paying the 2% tax. The tax is rather seen as a voluntary contribution from the Eritreans living abroad to the countries struggle for independence. The only limitation one has if not paying the tax is, that it might be difficult to do business or purchase property in Eritrea. read more:

Stockholm, Sweden: Adiam Dymott has Eritrean parents and was born in Sweden. She never was pushing it to be successful with her music, but destiny helped her to make it into the Swedish Music Charts with her just recently produced first Album. Her music reflects the different influences she came across as a professional musician and as a young fan of soul, hip hop, and rock music of the so called “generation x” time. read more: