Migration and sustainable development in the European Arctic
Introduction
The circumpolar Arctic is an area of great diversity but shared challenges. Hardly any other part of the Arctic is as accessible as the continental European High North (EHN), the Arctic and subarctic region consisting of the northernmost parts of Norway, Sweden and Finland, comprising the Norwegian counties of Nordland, Tromso and Finnmark, the Swedish counties of Norrbotten and Vasterbotten, as well as the Finnish region of Lapland. Climate change and globalization are the two key issues affecting the Arctic today. The same applies to the EHN, which has a population of approximately 1.2 million people (including tens of thousands of indigenous Sami) but, at about 446,000 km2, is larger than Japan or Germany and about the size of Sweden. In recent years, like other parts of Europe, this sparsely populated area has seen an increase in the number of migrants and, in particular, refugees. This has proven to be both a challenge and an opportunity for small communities in the far north. Mobility is a key element of our globalizing world (see e.g. Bederman, 2008: p. 55 et seq.) and it also affects the Arctic, most notably in the forms of the mobility of money and investments and the mobility of people -that is, tourism and migration.
Although an attempt to draw a complete picture of the situation across the entire EHN would be beyond the scope and the page limitations of this chapter, it will attempt to show the role immigration can play in sustainable development in the region. Particular attention will be paid to the role rural communities can play in the integration of migrants, especially refugees, and how local communities in the EHN might benefit from increasing migration.
Climate change and globalization in the Arctic
According to the Swedish government’s official Arctic policy,
[t]hc Arctic is in a process of far-reaching change. Climate change is creating new challenges, but also new opportunities, on which Sweden must take a position and exert an influence. New conditions are emerging for shipping, hunting, fishing, trade and energy extraction, and alongside this, new needs are arising for an efficient infrastructure. New types of cross-border flows will develop. This will lead state and commercial actors to increase their presence, which will result in new relationships.
(Sweden, 2011, n.p.)
Nothing has changed the Arctic and the living conditions of the people in the far north as rapidly as climate change, which is the fundamental challenge of our time, and globalization, the fundamental opportunity gained by humanity in recent years. Despite the current debate about trade wars and limits to free trade, the essential direction of the development in this regard remains unchanged, and globalization is more than a trend: it is a key characteristic not only of the global economy, but of human society as a whole. Unfortunately, this economic freedom is not yet reaching everybody in the Arctic (as is the case in many other parts of the world as well). At the moment in history when the world looks at the Arctic both with concern and optimism, the economies of many northern communities are limited, often to one or just a few forms of income, such as extractive industries or tourism. Although these income streams are facilitated by globalization, they are in themselves insufficient for the creation of truly sustainable local industries. Climate change, meanwhile, puts additional pressures, in particular, on traditional and indigenous livelihoods in the Arctic owing to the radical changes in the natural environment that is essential for the successful conduct of, for example, reindeer herding.
