Nineteenth International Conference on Interdisciplinary Social Sciences

Abstract

In the Scandinavian countries emigration was considered a big social problem in the 19th century. North America was the destination for many, not least because a similar climate made it easy to settle down. However, many returned to their home country, and it became a political question how to help returnees. There was also concern about agents trying to profit from immigrants financially. This paper examines migration from a historical perspective. Instead of looking at the destination country of migration, the focus here is on the home country of the migrants. Also, positive aspects of migration arose. In Sweden military reforms did not cause emigration as in Finland and in Norway. This can explain why Finland and Norway had more restrictive politics concerning migration while Sweden from the 1860s opened its society. In the Nordic countries, where state philosophy was grounded on German philosophical tradition, first on F.W.J. Schelling and then on Immanuel Kant and G.W.F. Hegel, it is possible to obtain a common interpretation basis. The leading scholars pursued their education at German universities, and through contacts with each other they were aware of social processes in the neighboring countries which then led towards the Nordic welfare state. Comparing the Nordic countries, we can approach the question how the idea of free will, seeing through the Hegelian concepts “common will” and “individual wills” and the Kantian idea of “ability to act on principles” influenced political decisions about social phenomena such as migration.