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The question of immigrants and crime is a sensitive one in Sweden, not only because Sweden prides itself as a “humanitarian superpower” that has admitted large numbers of refugees from war-torn countries, but also because it is deeply committed to integrating immigrants into Swedish life, not vilifying them. In 2017, for example, Prime Minister Stefan Löfven refused to update statistics on the countries of origin of criminal offenders, in a bid to fend off charges that a majority of crimes were being committed by immigrants. Instead, Löfven has consistently stressed the vibrant diversity that immigrants bring to Sweden, meanwhile lobbying for increased social programs to address problems of alienation and unemployment in immigrant communities.

It’s worth pointing out that, even at its worst, crime in Sweden is startlingly low, particularly compared with the United States, where the homicide rate in St. Louis alone is consistently twice that of the entire Swedish nation. However, the idea that Sweden is a socialist Utopia has begun to lose some of its glimmer. This summer, for example, Löfven’s optimism met stiff resistance at Almedalen, a popular conference where the nation’s political leaders gather ever year to discuss policy. Moderate Party spokesperson Elisabeth Svantesson declared forthrightly that gang activity is directly related to immigration and that the question of immigration is linked to a larger failure on the part of the Swedish state to integrate immigrants into Swedish life. Citing integration’s link to security, Svantesson stressed the need to improve instruction in the Swedish language, which she argued all immigrants should learn.

Calls for the cultural assimilation of immigrants are on the rise, and are also sparking resistance. For example, one of the most popular artists in Sweden at the moment is Erik “Eboi” Lundin, the son of a Swedish mother and Gambian father who happens to be a spokesman for the diversification of the Swedish language. Lundin incorporates words and phrases from a variety of languages into his music—so much so that he included a glossary with his last EP so that native-born Swedes could understand his lyrics. Not anti-Sweden by any means, Lundin belongs to a larger youth movement—euphemistically known as “Third Culture Kids”—which is actively working to transform and, as it would say, modernize Swedish culture.

How does the diversification of Swedish culture fit in with the current political trend toward assimilation? The answer is complicated, but seems, again, to implicate ASAP Rocky. Though Rocky’s music is singularly American, his art form—hip-hop and rap—is, in the Swedish cultural context, decidedly Third Culture, i.e., an art form that Swedish immigrant youth have embraced. For older Swedes who grew up on ABBA and Roxette, hip-hop’s popularity is unsettling, particularly since young immigrant rap stars have no qualms about criticizing conservative assimilationists. No better example of this exists than Silvana Imam, a Lithuanian-Syrian-Swedish rapper who belongs—along with Eboi—to a hip-hop collective known as RMH. Like Lundin, Imam has embraced politics, singling out for attack the rise of the right-wing Sweden Democrats party, whose motto “Keep Sweden Swedish” reminds her of Nazis.

Of course, the Sweden Democrats are unfazed by such charges, pushing instead to use the failure of immigrant integration, and the rise of immigrant crime, as a ploy for dismantling the welfare state. The strategy is mildly reminiscent of Reagan-era attacks on “welfare queens” and George H.W. Bush’s “Willie Horton” campaign. It has proved effective enough to push Sweden’s biggest party, Löfven’s Social Democrats, to make law enforcement a central part of its platform. Just this summer at Almedalen, the Social Democrats announced a plan to hire 10,000 new police by 2024 and also increase penalties for violent crimes, particularly gang-related crimes.

The stakes in this debate are high. If the Social Democrats do not get a handle on crime, they face losing support in the Riksdag, which means trouble for their larger platform of policies that subsidize the Swedish welfare state. Such policies, argue the Sweden Democrats, are bankrupting the country, burdening tax payers, and disproportionately benefiting ungrateful immigrants who then launch violent attacks on Swedish women, children, and senior citizens.

So long as the population was overwhelmingly blond and blue-eyed, conservatives found it difficult to undermine support for the high tax rates that subsidized the welfare state. Now, with higher immigration rates and increased diversity, Swedes may be starting to lose their sense of collective social responsibility.

The upshot is that Sweden risks going down the same road that the United States did in the 1990s, when Democrats like Bill Clinton and Joe Biden outflanked Republicans on crime control, calling for more prisons and police precisely because they needed to do so in order to preserve their more progressive agendas.

This won’t stop American efforts to bring ASAP Rocky home, nor should it, but it may give Swedish officials—on the right and the left—pause before releasing him.

• Crime
• Europe
• Hip-Hop
• Immigration
• Racism