Hrolf Kraki
01-15-2007, 06:24 PM
The number of immigrants in Oslo has increased by 40 percent over the past five years, and the capital is an increasingly popular destination for Norway's new residents.
Immigrants are steadily on the move to Oslo's suburban districts.
Seven suburban city districts have a population segment of over 20 percent of people who come from a non-Western background according to city statistics, and it is this group that is growing most quickly in the capital, newspaper Dagsavisen reports.
The figures are from the latest edition of Oslo Speilet (=The Oslo Mirror), a journal based on city statistics and analysis.
There are now 101,649 non-Western immigrants living in Oslo, which is 18.9 percent of the capital's total population. The non-Western immigrants are not evenly distributed across the city.
"At the end of the 1990s non-Western immigrants began to sell their small one and two-room apartments in downtown Oslo and buy three and four-room apartments in the suburbs instead," special adviser Paul Håvard Kvangraven at the City's Department of Development and Human Resources told Dagsavisen.
This means that the outer edges of the city have the highest percentage of non-Western immigrants, with Søndre Nordstrand leading with 38.4 percent.
"It is very unusual that the district Gamle Oslo (Old Oslo) has seen a relative decrease in the amount of non-Western immigrants since 2000. This completely contradicts the predictions from the 1990s that the district would become an immigrant ghetto," Kvangraven said.
He believes that Oslo's eastern inner city districts will increasingly go from being immigrant areas to a middle-class Norwegian area over the next decade.
http://www.aftenposten.no/english/local/article1597361.ece
http://i12.tinypic.com/4bgzbm8.jpg
Two out of three charged with rape in Norway's capital are immigrants with a non-western background according to a police study. The number of rape cases is also rising steadily.The study is the first where the crime statistics have been analyzed according to ethnic origin. Of the 111 charged with rape in Oslo last year, 72 were of non-western ethnic origin, 25 are classified as Norwegian or western and 14 are listed as unknown.
Rape charges in the capital are spiraling upwards, 40 percent higher from 1999 to 2000 and up 13 percent so far this year.
Nine out of ten cases do not make it to prosecution, most of them because police do not believe the evidence is sufficient to reach a conviction.
Police Inspector Gunnar Larsen of Oslo's Vice, Robbery and Violent crime division says the statistics are surprising - the rising number of rape cases and the link to ethnic background are both clear trends. But Larsen does not want to speculate on the reasons behind the worrying developments.
While 65 percent of those charged with rape are classed as coming from a non-western background, this segment makes up only 14.3 percent of Oslo's population. Norwegian women were the victims in 80 percent of the cases, with 20 percent being women of foreign background.
Larsen said that since this was the initial study examining ethnic make-up there were no existing figures to put the numbers into context.
"Meanwhile, it is our general experience that this is an increasing tendency. We note this by the number of time we need to use interpreters in the course of an investigation," Larsen said.
http://www.aftenposten.no/english/local/article190268.ece
Immigrants are steadily on the move to Oslo's suburban districts.
Seven suburban city districts have a population segment of over 20 percent of people who come from a non-Western background according to city statistics, and it is this group that is growing most quickly in the capital, newspaper Dagsavisen reports.
The figures are from the latest edition of Oslo Speilet (=The Oslo Mirror), a journal based on city statistics and analysis.
There are now 101,649 non-Western immigrants living in Oslo, which is 18.9 percent of the capital's total population. The non-Western immigrants are not evenly distributed across the city.
"At the end of the 1990s non-Western immigrants began to sell their small one and two-room apartments in downtown Oslo and buy three and four-room apartments in the suburbs instead," special adviser Paul Håvard Kvangraven at the City's Department of Development and Human Resources told Dagsavisen.
This means that the outer edges of the city have the highest percentage of non-Western immigrants, with Søndre Nordstrand leading with 38.4 percent.
"It is very unusual that the district Gamle Oslo (Old Oslo) has seen a relative decrease in the amount of non-Western immigrants since 2000. This completely contradicts the predictions from the 1990s that the district would become an immigrant ghetto," Kvangraven said.
He believes that Oslo's eastern inner city districts will increasingly go from being immigrant areas to a middle-class Norwegian area over the next decade.
http://www.aftenposten.no/english/local/article1597361.ece
http://i12.tinypic.com/4bgzbm8.jpg
Two out of three charged with rape in Norway's capital are immigrants with a non-western background according to a police study. The number of rape cases is also rising steadily.The study is the first where the crime statistics have been analyzed according to ethnic origin. Of the 111 charged with rape in Oslo last year, 72 were of non-western ethnic origin, 25 are classified as Norwegian or western and 14 are listed as unknown.
Rape charges in the capital are spiraling upwards, 40 percent higher from 1999 to 2000 and up 13 percent so far this year.
Nine out of ten cases do not make it to prosecution, most of them because police do not believe the evidence is sufficient to reach a conviction.
Police Inspector Gunnar Larsen of Oslo's Vice, Robbery and Violent crime division says the statistics are surprising - the rising number of rape cases and the link to ethnic background are both clear trends. But Larsen does not want to speculate on the reasons behind the worrying developments.
While 65 percent of those charged with rape are classed as coming from a non-western background, this segment makes up only 14.3 percent of Oslo's population. Norwegian women were the victims in 80 percent of the cases, with 20 percent being women of foreign background.
Larsen said that since this was the initial study examining ethnic make-up there were no existing figures to put the numbers into context.
"Meanwhile, it is our general experience that this is an increasing tendency. We note this by the number of time we need to use interpreters in the course of an investigation," Larsen said.
http://www.aftenposten.no/english/local/article190268.ece