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Sweden, a new frontier
Rural areas go Europe: a contribution to mobility
In rural areas in Sweden, as in similar regions in the UK, lots of municipalities/regions suffer with depopulation. Young people move out to the more urban areas to study and will not come back after having finished their study. Besides that, people move because of the fact that they can’t get work in the region. The municipalities and regions are very often not able to keep up the level of services. They might have to close down the school, and so on. And as a result of that, more families plan to move from the village. Actions from county councils to get people back to the places they come from, were not successful.
A few communities, however, did not give up and started a new programme (project), in which they target on recruiting families from other European countries. The results are promising. There is a great interest from families in the target countries Germany, The Netherlands and Belgium to move to Sweden.
An analysis of interested families shows that the breadwinner is well educated, employed or self-employed and owns a house.
The reason they want to move to the rural areas in Sweden is that they want a better quality of life, less stress, less traffic, more place and safety for their children. For this “ideal” they are prepared to give up their jobs or their own companies, sell their houses and make an exiting new start in a small rural village, employed, but also self-employed. They bring also their own work with them.
The interested families get all the support (online and personal) they can get in the whole process from decision making and learning the Norwegian language to the actual emigration. But they get also guidance after they are living in the village.
For the purpose of the recruitment project an internet site, at this moment in Dutch only, is developed. There the interested families can find information about living and working in Sweden in their own language, they can read about other’s experiences, come into contact with other people who have moved or who want to move to Sweden, online help, and so on. And of course they can read everything about the villages who want to welcome them as a new inhabitant, the way they have to apply for the projects and which opportunities there are.
At this moment we have projects in the red colourend areas on the map Because of the success of the recruitment programmes so far the expectation is that more regions in Sweden are going to invest in the programme. We also have projects in Norway.
Feel free to contact us if you need more information about our projects. Our services are free of charge.
Gert Rietman
Recruitment Projects Norway and Sweden
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