beyond blond: diversity in scandinavia

so despite being sick as mentioned below, i did still go to the international studies colloquium today which was on what the title of this post says it was one. for the most part. there was a lot more on gender equality, stereotypes, sexuality, that kind of thing than diversity in the more commonly connotated meaning of the word. prof. martin talked a lot about how scandinavian women have, for quite a long time (1930s-), been portrayed as blond and beautiful but that scandinavian women are in general relatively radical given their portrayal in books and plays and movies (think ibsen's a doll's house, hans christen andersen's little mermaid, i am curious yellow, others which i've forgotten...) and often challenge the stereotypes of marriage and women's roles and sexuality. anyways there was more to that part, and not as much on the part that i think is really interesting which is...the part that first pops to mind when you hear beyond blond. immigrants in scandinavia. (ok, maybe it wasn't the first thing, but it was close). so apparently there's at least one town in sweden (i think it was sweden) that had a town that was 40% immigrants and that there used to be a 18-month integration program for immigrants for language help etc. that has now been cut down to 6-months of language and job help etc. (more appealing i'm sure to an immigrant family). but that all aside, i guess as the center-right wing has taken over they created this ministry on immigration and something else i can't remember (you can tell my mind is like a sieve right now) that many have disparagingly retitled the ministry of racism - i guess the government uses that ministry as a facade for harassing and discriminating against immigrants which just sucks since they seem to have a lot of immigrants up in scandinavia. so i would have liked to hear more about what this effect might have for the future of immigration in scandinavia which on many issues has been rather progressive. after all, the first openly gay head of state (iceland pm) is a part of scandinavia. and they've done all kinds of stuff relating to maternal and paternal leave before other western nations as well. anywho, just something to think about and something i would not have stumbled upon any other time.