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This paper studies how immigrant–native intermarriages in Sweden are associated with individual characteristics of native men and women and patterns of assortative mating. Patterns of educational- and age-assortative mating that are similar to those found in native–native marriages may reflect openness to immigrant groups, whereas assortative mating patterns that indicate status considerations suggest that country of birth continues to serve as a boundary in the native marriage market. The study uses Swedish register data that cover the entire Swedish population for the period of 1991–2009. The results from binomial and multinomial logistic regressions show that low status of natives in terms of economic and demographic characteristics is associated with intermarriage and that intermarriages are characterized by educational and age heterogamy more than are native–native marriages. The findings indicate that immigrant women as well as immigrant men become more attractive marriage partners if they are considerably younger than their native spouses. This is particularly true for intermarriages with immigrants from certain regions of origin, such as wives from Asia and Africa and husbands from Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. Gender differences in the intermarriage patterns of native men and women are surprisingly small.

In his pioneering hybridization experiments with two species of tobacco (Nicotiana paniculata and N. rustica) Koelreuter (1763, Fortsetzung, p. 24) concluded that it was a matter of indifference which of these species was taken as the mother and which as the father. In both cases, the same result was obtained; the Fl-generation of N. paniculata ♀ × N. rustica ♂ was not distinguishable from that of the reverse or reciprocal cross N. rustica ♀ × N. paniculata ♂. Although he found deviations from this rule of the similarity of reciprocal crosses in some other hybridization experiments, however, these were not sufficient to prove the rule invalid. His successors could only corroborate his findings, that in general no difference worth mentioning occurred between reciprocal crosses. Hence Focke, in his meritorious ‘Pflanzenmischlinge’ (1881, p. 479) comes to the conclusion ‘that in general, in true species of the vegetable kingdom, the shape-determining ability of the male and the female element are absolutely equal at fertilization’. Nevertheless this rule does not have so firm a foundation as the previous one. There are many exceptions to Focke’s rule which later turned out to have a fundamental significance (Pellew, 1929). We find important examples in which both of the reciprocal hybridization products are dissimilar. Quoting again from rich Oenothera-investigations we find (besides the strong linkage of genes in groups and dissimilarity with in Fl-generations) another striking phenomenon in many of the species of Oenothera investigated. This is the phenomenon of heterogamy (De Vries, 1911, p. 99). In 1903 for instance De Vries had already concluded (1903, p. 471) that the hybrids Oenothera biennis ♀ × O. muricata ♂ showed many more ‘muricata’ characteristics than the reciprocal cross O. muricata ♀ × O. biennis ♂ which tends to resemble the biennis-plants (figure 64).