Young immigrants are more regularly exposed to violence than the average in the Norwegian population

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Young immigrants, and especially young men from Poland, are significantly more vulnerable to exposure to violence than other nationalities,shows a new survey of living conditions among immigrant populations.

Gender, age, and country of origin are factors that affect the frequency and level of violence that immigrants experience.

The living conditions survey among immigrants to Norway took a representative sample of 4,435 immigrants from twelve countries.

‘Young immigrant boys are significantly more exposed.
There is a large difference between young men between the ages of 16, and 24, and boys otherwise’, said Kristin Egge-Hoveid of Statistics Norway (Statistisk sentralbyrå).

Among young immigrants aged between 16 and 24, 12.8% reported that they had been victims of violence or threats over the past 12 months.

For this age group as a whole, the figure was 6.9%.

Statistics Norway didn’t investigate the context of the violence and threats, or the reasons.

But Elisabeth Myhre Lie, of the Police College,believes three factors indicate why young immigrants are more frequently exposed to violence.

‘One is that they are subjected to hate attacks, i.e., violence because of their ethnicity. The second is that a small group are also part of subcultures that also acts violently towards others, and are subjected to it themselves.

The third reason is that immigrants have an increased risk of the danger of being subjected to violence by their parents.

The kind of thing that we used to call discipline during upbringing, we define today in Norway as violence.

This doesn’t apply to all recent arrivals in Norway. They have not contributed across the board to this development,’ she said.

‘I think it’s more common for parents to be violent against their children abroad than it is in Norway. The behaviour is passed on to the kids.

They take it with them into adulthood, thinking it’s the way to gain control in situations,’ said Ali Alrammahi, a student at Hersleb School.

When Statistics Norway viewed the entire immigrant population, Polish immigrants stood out as experiencing the most violence, while the Vietnamese responses demarcated them as experiencing the least.

‘Immigrants from Poland reported the greatest exposure to violence over the past 12 months. Then we must take into account that there are many young men from Poland, and we know that young men are the group most often exposed to violence,’ said Kristin Egge-Hoveid of Statistics Norway.

Immigrants from Pakistan and Afghanistan are also more often subject to violence than the average member of the immigrant population.

‘From Afghanistan, there has also been a larger percentage of young men immigrating into Norway’, added Egge-Hoveid.

 

Source: nrk.no / Norway Today