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ANITA OLSON GUSTAFSON SWEDISH IMMIGRATION comprised a significant portion of the massive movement of Northern Europeans to the United States in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. From 1850 to 1930, one million Swedes left their native country to settle in America, and by 1910, one-fifth of the world's Swedish population lived in the United States. Nearly half of these immigrants arrived in the United States during the decade of the 1880s, pushed on by economic, religious and agricultural problems in Sweden. To these immigrants, America represented opportunities of economic security and social advancement not available to them in their native country. By the end of the nineteenth century, more Swedes came as single individuals and fewer arrived in family groupings, and increasingly, many of these newcomers made homes in large cities such as Chicago. Economic opportunity was greater in Chicago than in rural areas and furthermore, earlier Swedish arrivals had established significant social networks which helped ease adjustment to a new and strange culture.
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