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Radical shift in Swedish migration policy analysed

Johan Sandberg's article "Beyond Granted Asylum-Labor Market Integration Challenges in Sweden" has been published in the latest issue of SAIS Review, on migration and its consequences.

The article analyses recent changes to Sweden’s immigration policy and draws upon statistical data to show the effect of the new immigration regime.

It discusses the structural economic challenge of integrating immigrants who lack education and job training, and offers Sweden as a reference (or perhaps cautionary tale) for other countries seeking to change their immigration policies.

Sweden is also unique in its radical shift in policy from “most open” to one of the most closed in a matter of weeks. Like other European countries, Sweden struggled to respond to a situation for which the country was ill-prepared.

After an initial review of Sweden's contradictory management of the refugee flows in 2015-2016 is presented, the article focuses on the historical, structural economic challenges that complicate the integration of low-skilled immigrants into the Swedish labour market.

This integration is complicated furthermore by accumulating processes of housing segregation and education segmentation that, in conjunction with labour market margins, deepens socioeconomic exclusion.

Finally, the Swedish refugee policy is discussed in an international perspective, where Sweden's assistance is partly redirected from foreign efforts to refugee reception and establishment.

In 2015, Sweden experienced an unprecedented inflow of nearly 163,000 asylum seekers, more than double the previous record in 1992, which was driven by the Balkan conflicts in former Yugoslavia. While the Syrian conflict received the most attention, and indeed some 51,338 Syrian refugees constituted the largest group seeking asylum in 2015, there were also large groups from Afghanistan (41,564 asylum seekers) and Iraq (20,858).

Read the article at muse.jhu.edu

The article in Lund University's research database

The latest issue of the SAIS Review of International Affairs is called "Migration and its Consequences" (Volume 37, Number 2, Summer-Fall 2017).

Johan Sandberg is Senior Associate Lecturer at the Department of Sociology, Lund University and Research Fellow at Office of Population Research, Center for Migration and Development, Princeton University.

Johan Sandberg's personal page