Towards a Multilateral Migration Regime [antikvár]

ForewordBy Anita Gradin1JONAS WIDGREN - MY FRIEND AND COLLABORATORJonas Widgren is a person widely known when it comes to migration and refugeepolicy. We have for decades now worked together, discussed and analysed the causesand effects of international migration. This close co-operation has also resulted in apersonal friendship that I appreciate very much. We have always tried to have a clearpicture of reality when it comes to emigration and immigration legislation, to political,social and cultural rights of aliens and ethnic minorities and their protection againstdiscrimination.We all know that it was refugees from Sweden's Nordic neighbours, from the BalticStates and from Germany that transformed Sweden from an emigrant country into animmigrant country during the course of the Second World War. In the post-war periodimmigration was dominated by emigrant labour from Finland and from Italy, formerYugoslavia, Turkey and other mostly European countries. Sometimes people werebrought to Sweden in organised groups by the labour market authorities, but mostly thepeople found their way to Sweden themselves.When Jonas went to university he started with philosophy and he became a member of^the politically active association of young philosophers. Like so many other youngstersin Sweden in the 1960s he became interested in international affairs and protested e.g.against the US war in Vietnam already in 1964-65. He also became active in a groupacting for refugees from Tibet. He went on behalf of this organisation to UNHCR andICVA in Geneva to solicit support. At the same time, he followed closely, as a youngphilosopher, the vital debate in Sweden in 1966 on the rights of immigrants and ethnicminorities to retain their identities. In 1967 he got his BA (fil hand) from StockholmUniversity and he was qualified to work as teacher in philosophy in public schools.Parallel to the engagement in international issues, Jonas was also interested in theatre -being the son of a famous actor he got to know a lot about theatre and its possibilitiesto influence different situations in society. As vice-president of the Stockholm StudentTheatre he went to Zagreb in September 1965 to study how theatre was sophisticallyutilized as a form of protest in communist countries. In Zagreb he also met JadrankaCacic and fell in love with her. She told me once that Jonas was a very bad dancer.Anyhow they kept in close contact and she came to join him in Sweden. They marriedin 1967 in the Catholic Church in Stockholm.