The Oresund Bridge is the crossing from Sweden to Denmark made famous by the TV crime drama The Bridge, but it is no longer open for business as usual.
Self-study activity:
Watch the video and answer the questions below.
1 What has happeened at Oresund Bridge for the first time in 50 years?
2 How many immigrants arrived in Sweden last year?
3 Where do the last immigrants to arrive sleep?
4 What does the Schengen Zone mean?
5 Why did the girl who went to Copenhagen the other day go back home?
This is a country which likes to get on with its neighbours. Sweden's Oresund Bridge is a link to Denmark and an open door to the rest of Europe. Not any more. For the first time in 50 years, there are controls at the border. Trains re-routed, commuters delayed, refugees turned away. No-one without a passport gets in. And here is why.
160,000 refugees arrived last year. Sweden is running out of room. This tent city was hastily built just a few weeks ago. These tents are usually destined for disaster zones overseas. Right now, Sweden is having to use them to deal with the crisis right here on its own doorstep. This is one of the most welcoming countries in Europe when it comes to refugees, but that is starting to change.
Who knows what that means for Javid? He hopes his wife and children will join him from Afghanistan. Sweden, he tells us, has been good to him.
There is too much cold. But they give us heaters and everything, gloves and shoes.
So people have given you clothes?
Yeah, yeah.
The border controls are said to be temporary. Some fear they will do permanent damage. This, after all, is supposed to be the Schengen Zone, where European citizens have the right to borderless travel.
No wonder, perhaps, the country's Deputy Prime Minister shed tears as the decision was announced, a decision she went on to describe as terrible.
It has gone down badly here, too. The people we met in this Malmo coffee shop told us they have friends, jobs, even homes just across the bridge in Copenhagen.
I actually had a nightmare the other day that I went to Copenhagen for shopping and I did not have any ID or passport and I was, like, how am I supposed to come home?
I think we're going in the wrong direction. I think that we probably should be more into the soul of Sweden and be more welcoming, because I don’t think that the way we are handling the situation right now is the way to do it.
As Sweden struggles with its decision, the refugee crisis continues to divide Europe, exposing its borders, perhaps even changing its horizons.
Jenny Hill, BBC News, Malmo.
Key:
1 There are controls at the border.
2 160,000.
3 In tents.
4 European citizens have the right to borderless travel.
5 She didn't have passport or any ID.
