Sodertalje, Sweden -- Jalal watches local Syrian television when he wakes up, worships at a Syrian Orthodox cathedral down the road, and has his choice of two Assyrian professional football teams to support at the weekend. But he does not live in Syria; instead he lives in Sodertalje, a Swedish town about 35km south-west of Stockholm that has taken more Iraqi and Syrian refugees than the US and UK combined. "There are days that go by when I don't speak Swedish, see almost no Swedish people," says the Syrian refugee, who has lived in Sodertalje since the outbreak of civil war in his country. Foreigners make up half of Sodertalje's population of 92,000, a reflection of Sweden's liberal immigration policies. About 30,000 of the city's residents are Christians from Middle Eastern countries, including Syria and Iraq, who have fled to Sweden after decades of fighting and religious intolerance. As Europe struggles to absorb waves of refugees from Syria and other conflict zones, Sodertalje's decades of experience illustrate the range of challenges host countries may face. Though Sweden is resolutely pro-immigration -- thousands have turned out in the streets recently in support of welcoming more refugees from Syria -- it is not immune to problems in distributing, educating and housing the new residents. In the north of Sodertalje, not far from the factory of drugmaker AstraZeneca, one of the town's biggest employers, lies the suburb of Ronna. It is here many of the problems are most acute. Ronna has long attracted immigrants, from the Finns who arrived in the 1950s and 1960s to the Balkan arrivals in the 1990s to the Assyrians of today -- Christians who historically hail from an area including southern Turkey, northern Syria and northern Iraq. About 85 per cent of the population is classed as foreign, leading many to describe Ronna as one of the most segregated parts of Sweden. Such segregation is easy to see at Ronna School, where just two of its 750 pupils are classified as ethnic Swedish, meaning both parents are Swedish. In one sign of the current crisis, 26 new refugee children have arrived and started in just six weeks -- equivalent to an entire class. Headmaster Henrik Ljungqvist, a former military officer, says the school has become skilled at absorbing such pupils, placing them in ordinary lessons after just one week. He extols the virtues of his students, saying it is the first school he has been in where the pupils complain that the teachers should have better skills. But big challenges remain: about half the students struggle with Swedish. Mr Ljungqvist is also concerned about what he and many others term "the Ronna bubble": the fact that many residents rarely venture outside of the suburb, making it more difficult for them to integrate into Swedish society. "Even before they finish school they have this picture of themselves as losers. They mainly interact with people from a similar background," he says, adding that the school's job is to give them self-esteem so they "feel they can do something in spite of their names, their looks". Flawed system Boel Godner, Sodertalje's Social Democrat mayor, is clear where the blame lies: Sweden's immigration system, which allows new arrivals to choose where they want to live. As a result, many follow family and friends to suburbs like Ronna and other, equally segregated, parts of Stockholm, Gothenburg and Malmo. "We make people choose poverty," she says. "So many [Assyrian] Christians can and do choose Sodertalje but that will make their situation much more difficult because they won't learn Swedish." Instead, she wants the burden to be shared between other municipalities -- mirroring the EU debate where countries such as Germany and Sweden want other states to take a fairer share of the refugees coming to the continent. Many Swedish municipalities that take in the fewest immigrants are controlled by the centre-right and are among the wealthiest suburbs of Stockholm. At 15 per cent, unemployment in Sodertalje is double the national average; in Ronna it is nearly twice that at about 25 per cent. Ms Godner offers this advice to refugees arriving in her city: "Start your life somewhere else in Sweden." Many in the Assyrian community agree, including Benjamin Atas, an archbishop of the Syriac Orthodox Church. He came to Sweden from Turkey when he was 16 and says immigrants feel safe in the country. But as he stands outside Sodertalje's St Afrem cathedral, where a monument to the 1915 Armenian genocide is being built, he laments the lack of integration in Ronna. "It's like the same village in Syria or Iraq. We can't be part of society," he says. "To be part of society we need to learn the language, learn the rules, conduct our lives as Swedish people." Mr Ljungqvist says that more should be done to create a "healthier mix" in schools too. Bussing pupils between different suburbs is "a burning question", he says: "I think we should." But the problems go beyond the ethnic make-up of Ronna. Housing is the biggest problem in Sodertalje, according to the city manager, Martin Andreae, with the town lacking "thousands and thousands" of flats. This has led to terrible overcrowding, he says, adding that 20 people living in a three-room apartment is not uncommon. Ms Godner says families sometimes move 20 times a year. When Mr Atas moved to Sweden in 1980, he shared a three-room flat with 12 people. "Now it's worse. Maybe it's better in their home country than here," he says of arriving immigrants. Mr Ljungqvist worries about the impact on children of living in such cramped conditions. "Is it possible for them to do homework? Maybe they live 16 people in two rooms -- do they sleep at night? What have they experienced?" The city is pressing national authorities to check all the housing immigrants live in to help move them out of overcrowded areas. Jobs are also a problem. The town is dominated by truckmaker Scania, which has its headquarters in Sodertalje, and AstraZeneca. But there is a mismatch between the skills they need and those the immigrants offer, city officials say. Many of the jobs that frequently hire the immigrants lie outside Sodertalje and more towards the capital, Stockholm. But Mr Andreae says there is a distinct lack of mobility in Sodertalje's population: whereas 20,000 people commute into the town from outside, only 12,000 go the other way despite Stockholm being only a 45-minute train journey away. Immigrants argue that the Swedish system stacks the odds against them. It often takes more than a year for asylum claims to be processed; it is difficult to work until the paperwork is done. Once they are excluded from the system, getting back in is tough. "I waited more than a year for my permission [to stay in Sweden] and it then took years to find a job," says Jalal. Lack of integration Tensions have surfaced in recent years. In Malmo there has been violence in immigrant areas, including hand grenade attacks and shootings. Stockholm's suburbs had six nights of race riots in 2013, which the anti-immigrant Sweden Democrats party blamed on "irresponsible" immigration policies. There has been little such trouble in Sodertalje since a crackdown on gangs several years ago, according to the deputy police chief, David Beukelmann. But he worries about the lack of integration. "It makes the adjustment to the country slower. It creates [isolated] cultures that sometimes come into conflict with Swedish society," he says. The increase in the town's population from immigration has strained Sodertalje's finances. It has risen by 15,000 people in the past 15 years and nearly trebled since 1950. Mr Andreae says the SKr80,000 they receive from the central government for each refugee is on the basis the person will find work within two or three years. "The median time is seven years," he says. Sodertalje has the highest percentage of people in Sweden in so-called social assistance, designed to boost the income of the poorest, but the town was forced to cut it by half, according to Mr Andreae. Ms Godner deflects any of the blame from immigrants. "We can't complain about a bad economy because of the refugees," she says. Instead the town tries to funnel as much money as possible -- currently about 40 per cent of its annual budget -- into schools while reducing benefits such as social assistance to the national average from previously generous levels. "Education is the most important thing we can do for integration," says Mr Andreae. Many immigrants say one result of all this is that children and adults are integrated in different ways. Children enter the system straight away, have the chance to learn Swedish and be inculcated into Swedish ways. Adults, on the other hand, are often kept out of the system for years and have greater difficulties in learning Swedish. "The father and mother, they want to build a stable life. But while they wait for residency their lives stop," says Mr Nagy. But even if the children get a chance to learn Swedish, identity issues ensue. To be officially classed as Swedish, a child must be born in Sweden and have at least one Swedish parent. A pupil at Ronna School, who declines to be named but who has two foreign parents, says: "I was born in Sweden, I speak Swedish but I'm not considered Swedish, I don't have the same chances as a Swedish person." Similar complaints were heard during the 2013 race riot where immigrant youngsters expressed frustration at their lack of official integration. Despite all this, officials in Sodertalje remain upbeat. There is a feeling they are dealing with national and international problems with their imperfect local tools, and the town hosts visitors other cities dealing immigrant surges. Mr Ljungqvist's predecessor has written a book about her experience and Ms Godner still believes in Sweden's generous stance on immigration. "The great thing is that in Sweden we don't say: it's full now. We honour the right to asylum," she says. Mr Andreae adds: "Don't feel pity for us. We are trying to find practical solutions to the problems. Every individual who comes here should feel welcome." But seven of the eight parties in the Swedish parliament are in broad agreement over immigration. The sole exception is the Sweden Democrats, an anti-immigration party who shocked the establishment recently by topping several opinion polls with close to a quarter of Swedes supporting them. In Sodertalje, Boel Godner -- mayor and a member of the same Social Democrat party as prime minister Stefan Lofven -- blames the establishment parties for being too scared to discuss the issues properly. "We have left that party to describe the immigration situation in Sweden. The other parties are so careful. They have not wanted to talk about immigration at all. I think that was wrong," she says. Tommy Hansson, the spokesman for the Sweden Democrats and former local leader, agrees with Ms Godner's proposals to share immigrants more fairly within Sweden and over housing checks. "The city has managed to adapt to the situation rather well," he says. Part of that may be the near absence in Sodertalje of Muslims, who come in for particular criticism from the Sweden Democrats. David Beukelmann, deputy police chief of the town, says: "The Christians who are here had a bad experience with Muslims in their home countries so they see a chance to get revenge here." The debate in Sweden appears to be becoming more polarised. As the Sweden Democrats' support increases -- from the 13 per cent it recorded last September to about 20-25 per cent in recent polls -- so does support for increased immigration. A poll for Dagens Nyheter last week showed that 44 per cent of Swedes think the country should take in more refugees, up 18 percentage points from February.