Unknown migration

They came by the tens of thousands from a bombed-out Germany after the Second World War. As women, they were referred to jobs as domestic servants. Emma Strollo studied an unexplored side of the influx of foreign labour into Sweden.

emma-strollo

The Swedish Emergency Powers Act, in effect from 1943 to 1972, stipulated that women did not need a work permit to immigrate to Sweden. However the only work they could get was in the household sector, as domestic servants.

“Since the 1930s, Sweden had a shortage of domestic servants, when people were drawn to more well-paid jobs with better working conditions, in industry or other service jobs.”

So says Strollo, who will defend her thesis at the Department of Gender Studies this autumn. The Emergency Powers Act was used as a way to remedy the shortage without needing to raise wages for domestic servants.
In the 1950s, it was mostly German women who took advantage of the Act; they saw better opportunities in Sweden than in post-war Germany.

Strollo managed to find several of those who had remained in Sweden. 19 women, ages 70 to 85, were included in her study. The parallels with migration today are great, she says.

“While they were positive about the chance they got in Sweden, they ended up in very vulnerable positions here. They worked in private homes, away from the public eye and sexual assault was common.”

It was difficult for the women to leave their jobs as they were required to have a job in order to remain in Sweden. This was verified every three months. Gradually, however, they could attend training course or move to other jobs. They became nurses, secretaries, and preschool teachers.

Their German origins also rendered them vulnerable. In many places, they encountered incipient anti-German sentiment. At the same time, the picture of Germany as a refined country of culture remained, and in the upper-class homes where the women worked, there was also sympathy for Nazism.

“One woman even found a portrait of Hitler in the home where she worked."

The women were children when the war broke out, and did not feel they were to blame for it. Quite the opposite, they were also victims; many of them had lost both their homes and their loved ones.

The Emergency Powers Act divided the labour market for immigrants between men and women. It’s the same today Strollo argues.

“The RUT subsidy (cleaning, maintenance, and washing) has often been formulated as an opportunity to get a job in Sweden, primarily for immigrant women from the EU. Women, then as now, are referred to the most vulnerable and lowest-paid jobs.
A job as a domestic servant has, historically, been rejected by women; this isn’t necessarily owing to the work tasks, but that it was in such low esteem from others. The fact alone that we have to create special subsidies shows that we’re not prepared to pay for these kinds of jobs; we don’t value them.”

Her study is the first of its kind. No one has previously researched this exact group of immigrants, despite it being large; it is a question of perhaps 50-60,000 women in total.

“This is an invisible part of the history of the influx of foreign labour into Sweden.”

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