Socializing in Scandinavia

The whole world is amazing. Its soil produces so many different kinds of products under same conditions. And one particular environment produces so many different behaviors in the people. Even two children born and grown up in the same family have different behaviors. And these differences are the beauty of life. If we want to standardize nature or people, it is practically impossible. But all these people have their own role in balancing the societies. By understanding and communicating our behaviors we can produce a better balance in the society in which we are all breathing. Scandinavia is one of the societies in today’s time that has set some standards. Due to many reasons it is one of the best places on earth to live. Therefore it is an attractive place for immigrants. A lot of governments are spending billions of dollars to settle the foreign immigrants based on their residence permit. But the challenges related to immigration are really huge. Human behavior is something that takes really long time and consistency to chance. Sometimes it takes more than two generations to have a complete integration. A lot of universities are doing studies on global immigrations and therefore it is interesting to learn from experiences of the individuals in another society.

Since I am not a social scientist, I am just reflecting on the basis of my experience in Scandinavia. I am sure that every person who has lived here in Scandinavia has his/her own story. During my first two years I spent most of the time with Pakistani community, and later on I spent most of the time with Swedish people at work and living with exchange and international students.

Starting from my early days, all the universities in the Scandinavia has an office for international relations. People in these departments are working really hard to deal with students from all over the world. Since the inflow of the students in different universities is quite different, therefore their experience in handling students from different regions of the world. Believe me it is very exciting and very annoying job at the same time. There are lot things that are normal for the people living in here and they are really strange in other parts of the world. And due to different understandings of the same information, a massive amount of questions has been received by the international offices. Their experience in dealing with a particular group of students becomes very good and with some groups it never becomes that comfortable. For example the majority of the students in Scandinavia are Europeans these days. So a major number of orientation activities fit well according to them and they are not that good in case of international students from other regions. On the other hand side there are two kind of students, the ones who are open to learn all kind of new experiences and have the passion to integrate and the others that are curious but really shy or reluctant to try new experiences. Both kinds of students end up in different experiences of living abroad.

There is a lot of information available by student magazines, local online English newspapers and international offices for the practical guidelines to survive in Sweden, Norway and Denmark. Ways of social integration and general information about Scandinavian people and their behaviors, therefore I am not going to write in detail. General information is that due to cold weather, less population density and good social system, Scandinavians are much more isolated than other parts of the world. It is a difficult task to make and build connections here. It takes a long time to make a friend but once they are your friend, they are friends forever. They are different when they are drunk and alcohol is a big help when it comes to socializing in Scandinavia. A common friend is always an advantage; otherwise the people here are not that good at socializing with a stranger. Modesty, sports and healthy life is one of general priorities in the culture.

Pakistani students in Sweden, Norway and Denmark are much more closed community, even more closed than Scandinavian society. There are many reasons behind that

The first and more vibrant reason is source of information. Majority of students that come from Pakistan do not do much research about the local society and specially the student community. Most of them apply in many countries for education and depending upon the admission and visa availability they take their final decision. There is another believe in Pakistan since Afghan war, that it is better to live anywhere outside Pakistan than Pakistan. Therefore coming to a developed country is already considered as a great opportunity. No one thinks that how much it is going to cost them, how long it will take to integrate, what kind of job opportunities are there and what are the growth opportunities for the people with similar backgrounds. They normally do not have any idea about what they are going to face. Since they do not have enough information, therefore they face enormous amount of cultural and economical shocks in the early stay and they feel their behavior as an alien in the society and in the end they hang out with the people from similar background.

On the other hand majority of Scandinavian population has wrong information about gradate Pakistani students. Media in Europe always covers the stories of regional war, some stories of gender discrimination, corrupt politicians and extreme side of the south Asian society. The main stream is never in the stories in the news channels. It is totally different from what they read and listen. Since Scandinavians are shy they never go and talk to these students, so these kinds of misunderstandings continue.

Second major reason is the economical differences. I have already written about it before. Cost of socializing is really high. Since the rents are high therefore Pakistani student share their accommodation in the low rent areas of the city and the local students can afford relatively expensive housing close to the university due to reasonable financial aid and study loans from the government. Pakistani students avoid eating outside and spend money on café; therefore they never get the opportunity to socialize with the local students during free timings at the university and after university. The sports are also expensive as compared to home.  Due to shared accommodations they do not invite people over as well. Some guys who do part time jobs do not get enough time to socialize as well.

People with good information about each other and reasonable economical balance can easily socialize from both regions. But here it hits the third challenge.  That is difference in values. In Pakistani culture there are three major values

1-      Family

2-      Money

3-      Education

4-      Religion

For a Pakistani family comes first, every thought and every act is done to make the family life better. All the assets are shared, and due to inefficient social system, people in the family are dependent on each other, children on parent, and adults on each other and older people on young people. 2^nd money can give you status, respect and everything you want in the society, 3^rd is education, if you have education you have a good respect and finally the religion. Everyone believes in religion and you will hardly find people who do not believe in religion.

On the other hand the Scandinavian society has following major values

1-      Equality

2-      Individuality

3-      Modesty

4-      Society

When Pakistani students meet Scandinavian students, they talk about family and relations, it makes the counterpart uncomfortable. No one here do that until they know each other very well. They think that they should be respected for their degrees, but it do not give them any benefits, it is really hard for them to believe that people do not believe in God. Social boundaries, food and drinking habits are totally different in both societies, therefore when they are in social gathering in Scandinavia they look kind of mysterious to the local people. And this uncomfortable attitude between both groups creates a long distances. That leads to three kinds of Pakistani students. The ones who start drinking and since they are uncomfortable with their fellow Pakistanis on this behavior, they just hang out with the non Pakistanis. The other group tries to hang out with both of them but do not drink and keep their choices; Scandinavian people respect that as well. And the third group is the closed group of a few Pakistani students who just hang out with a small group and stay online all day and night and talk to the people back home. These students do not learn much from the local society and even after staying 5 years in Scandinavia they can hardly speak a few sentences of the local languages.

I personally know a lot of examples of all three kinds of people. Everyone has its own reason for their decisions of living their lives. All of them know that how and how much they can get involved in the society. This kind of behaviors do not just exist in Pakistani students, they exist in most of the Asian societies. For example people from China, India, Korea, Malaysia, Indonesia, Africa and South America. Students from North America, Canada, Australia and major regions in Europe face lesser cultural shocks in Scandinavia and get themselves easily comfortable in these societies.

From the Scandinavian point of view, the students who have already lived abroad understand the situations with international students better. These are the people who always move forward to invite you at their places and introduce you their friends. They are a little different from the main stream Scandinavian and these outsiders in the society are a real help for the foreigners to be a part of the society.

Based on my experience I would like to give some recommendations to foreign students in the Scandinavia and the Scandinavian people who want to integrate foreigners in the society.

As a foreigner, try to understand the values of the local society and respect them. Imagine if a foreigner in your own country want to bring his/ her system would you like that or not? Avoid getting trapped in an international bubble or people from your own country. Keep a balance in all of your social gatherings. Learn from other cultures, share your culture. Difference will  be there, try to focus on common interests like sports, food that you can share, social work, topics that you can discuss, organizations with common interests and celebrations. Love everyone.

As a local student, try to understand that there is plenty of experience from other countries; international students are a good source of learning. If you respect other’s values they will respect you more and will be ambassador of your culture in their home towns. Since Scandinavian economies are based on exports, therefore relationships with all foreign countries will bring a lot of benefits. If you think that you have better values in your society, export them. And a stranger is a friend whom you have never met before.