When the current centre-right government coalition, supported by the far-right Sweden Democrats party, took office in Stockholm in October 2022, it announced a hardline “paradigm shift” in migration policy. Sweden used to be, during the years preceding the summer of migration 2015, a relatively open and liberal country, where the granting of protection and avenues of safe in- and outmigration were predominantly discussed in a positive spirit. Over the past ten years, it has turned into a country that not only participates in, but also propels, a race to the bottom on asylum standards in the European Union (EU). This blog post aims to characterise and analyse the asylum policy tendencies in Sweden since 2015 in relation to domestic policy and Sweden’s approach to EU-level policymaking on migration. It also explores, in a non-exhaustive manner, some of the dynamics underpinning and explaining the evolution of asylum policy in Sweden.
Research suggests that the EU member states were unequally affected by the arrival of hundreds of thousands of people seeking protection in Europe in 2015. Many people at the time came from Syria, but also Afghanistan, Iraq and other countries, and for varying reasons, some EU countries appeared more attractive to these groups of people than others or were easier to reach. For the Swedish case, it has been shown that Syrians had a positive image of Sweden as a welcoming country. The fact that the Swedish Migration Agency in 2013 had decided to generally grant all Syrian asylum applicants protection and permanent residence in the country became known to Syrians still staying in the Middle East or Turkey – despite other EU countries having had similar approaches. Other groups, such as Afghans or Eritreans, also had an idea of Sweden being a country where they would be welcome. Statements by Swedish top politicians, such as former prime ministers Fredrik Reinfeldt in 2014 and Stefan Löfven in 2015, may have contributed to this positive image.
According to Eurostat, Sweden received roughly 156 000 asylum seekers in 2015; figures from the Swedish Migration Agency are even a bit higher, placing the Scandinavian country among the absolute top of EU recipient countries if measured per capita. Most people crossed into the South of Sweden via Denmark, and a peak was reached during a short time span between September and December 2015. This led to capacity problems and delays as registration, accommodation, asylum examination and social services were overwhelmed (see English summary on pages 25-35 of this government-commissioned report and the Chapter by Parusel).
Towards the end of 2015, the government tried to pull an emergency break by announcing a number of temporary restrictions to asylum, including constraints on family reunification and residence on humanitarian grounds. It also (re-)introduced controls at Sweden’s intra-Schengen borders and ordered extraterritorial identity checks on people using public transportation from Denmark. Most importantly perhaps, Sweden in 2016 stopped issuing permanent residence permits to people found to be in need of protection. Instead, permits for refugees got a limitation of three years, and those for beneficiaries of subsidiary protection, 13 months. (After these initial periods, holders need to apply for extensions).
As asylum numbers declined sharply in 2016 and remained low, the identity checks were abandoned in 2017, and some of the restrictions on family reunification and residence on humanitarian grounds were relaxed in 2019 and 2021, respectively. Residence permits remained temporary, however, and border checks continue to be carried out to this day as well – albeit with lower frequency.
When the government changed in 2022 and a centre-right minority government took office on the basis of a cooperation agreement with the far-right, immigration law was soon changed again and in essence came close to the restrictions imposed in 2016 again. The new government also commissioned a systematic review of the Swedish Aliens Act with the objective of removing or changing all regulations that could be seen as giving asylum seekers and beneficiaries of protection better conditions than what international and European law requires as absolute minimum standards. This means, for example, making it easier to revoke protection statuses, categorising more applications as inadmissible, restricting rights to free legal representation and interpretation, and making it impossible for holders of protection statuses to qualify for permanent residency.
The reception system for asylum seekers is being changed as well. As a main rule, asylum seekers will not be housed in rented apartments across the country or be allowed to find their own accommodation anymore but will have to stay in collective reception or return centres in a limited number of municipalities. Measures have also been taken to increase police checks on foreigners in Sweden to detect individuals without permits, and the government wants to introduce a requirement for public sector employees to report undocumented people they come in contact with.
Wider changes on immigration and citizenship
Further, the government is making it harder for immigrants to become Swedish citizens and is planning to abandon a long-standing principle of the Swedish welfare state, where all legal residents have traditionally enjoyed equal access to services and benefits. Under a “qualification” system yet to be decided, immigrants would be required to meet integration requirements (or perhaps become citizens) before gaining full access to benefits. Opportunities for third-country nationals to move to Sweden for work purposes have been restricted as well. Employers used to be able to recruit people of all skills levels; now, a new salary threshold prevents legal immigration into low-paid jobs. And while a cross-party emergency agreement of 2015 included a commitment to raise the Swedish refugee resettlement quota to 5 000 people per year, the current government downsized the programme to 900 annual admissions.
In sum, the restrictive U-turn in 2015-2016 turned out not to be temporary. Instead, Sweden is still on a trajectory of trying to limit the arrival of asylum seekers with new laws signalling deterrence. As the number of asylum seekers is now at historical lows, we can assume that the policy has produced its intended effects, even if a causal relationship between policymaking and the number of arrivals is impossible to prove and other developments and events in Sweden (such as Quran burnings, reports about segregation and crime, rumours about Swedish social services kidnapping Muslim children, low protection rates for certain groups of asylum seekers or so-called “talent expulsions”) might also have contributed to a more negative reputation of Sweden abroad.
Sweden’s new role in the EU
Compared to 2015 and earlier, Sweden also plays a different role in migration and asylum policymaking in the EU. It once firmly supported the development of a Common European Asylum System (CEAS) based on high protection standards and enhanced solidarity among the EU member states including a mandatory responsibility-sharing system. The current government still wants to see European solutions but mostly restrictive ones, and it opposes relocations of asylum applicants to Sweden.
Sweden voted in favour of the recent CEAS reform, and during its Council presidency in spring 2023, it actively contributed to the adoption of the reform package by brokering compromise deals on two essential files within the New Pact on Migration and Asylum. Sweden is today also an advocate of making visa rules, aid and trade conditional on third countries’ cooperation with the EU on migration control and return, “cash for migration control” deals with third countries to limit irregular migration, the creation of “return hubs” outside EU territory for people that EU member states cannot send back to their countries of origin, and possibilities for member states to temporarily derogate from EU asylum law in cases of threats to national security.
Looking at asylum policy tendencies at national level across the EU, Sweden is today often quoted as a role model for restrictive policies. It thus encourages a race to the bottom concerning national asylum standards. It has also been accused of offloading responsibilities on other EU countries by maintaining a strict view on the grounds for asylum of certain nationalities, such as Afghans. Sweden does participate in receiving displaced Ukrainians under temporary protection (like other EU states), but the reception conditions and benefits it offers are more limited than in neighbouring Nordic countries.
How to make sense of the Swedish turnaround since 2015
Several – not mutually exclusive – explanations can be found for Sweden’s journey from a welcoming to an unwilling destination for asylum seekers.
One important trigger of the U-turn in Sweden after 2015 was that Sweden felt left alone by EU partners and therefore tried to downgrade asylum standards to coerce more intra-EU solidarity. Swedish politicians repeatedly declared in 2015 and 2016 that Swedish asylum regulations needed to be adjusted to the minimum level in the EU and that this approach was necessary to divert asylum seekers to other countries, which needed to do more. The fact that Sweden experienced, after 2015, a stronger decline in the number of asylum seekers than other major refugee-hosting countries in the EU suggests that the strategy worked. However, the outcome was not improved intra-EU solidarity but rather – as we know today – a proliferation and intensification of deterrence policies.
Another aspect is that the political advocates of a more hostile approach in Sweden managed to shift the narrative by making the claim that Sweden had done more than its fair share, that it had followed a “naïve” approach to migration and asylum, and that it needed a “respite” to catch up with challenges to integrate newcomers. However, for how long this respite would be needed, or at what point ‘good-enough’ integration would be reached, has remained unclear. In the absence of benchmarks, the temporary “respite” seems to have become a long-term goal.
Yet another significant factor is likely the preoccupation of Swedish politicians with so-called pull-factors, or factors that could affect asylum seekers’ choice of destination. This was already clear in 2015, when temporary restrictions were announced with the expectation that they would make Sweden less attractive as a destination and consequently divert refugee flows to other countries. When these restrictions were set to expire, the government appointed a parliamentary commission to present proposals for a more long-term migration policy. To inform and support these proposals, the remit of the commission included a research-based review of factors influencing asylum seekers’ destination choices. The commission did not pinpoint one or few specific destination-related factors that politicians could tackle to influence the number of asylum applicants, however. It rather suggested that many different factors were important for different groups in different contexts. The current government’s approach to review not just a limited set of asylum regulations but the entire asylum and migration system, as well as welfare rights and integration arrangements, to make the country less attractive for protection seekers, can be seen against this background.
Apart from these tentative explanations, there have been factual problems after 2015 as well, such as overburdening of and bottlenecks at state agencies and in municipal services. But the characteristics of Swedish party politics have also played a role. The two biggest mainstream parties in Sweden, the Social Democrats and the conservative Moderates, normally form rivalling blocs and do not work together in government coalitions. To get a realistic chance to form a government in 2022 after years in opposition, the Moderates and their smaller allies gradually normalised the right-wing Sweden Democrats (SD) and eventually negotiated a cooperation agreement with them. This gave the SD considerable leverage. Press investigations have shown that Sweden’s current asylum and migration policy largely reflects SD positions. Meanwhile, the Social Democrats, now in opposition, have also moved towards the right and have supported several recent restrictive asylum and migration policy changes, initiated by their political rivals, in Parliament.
Conclusion
After being a leading refugee recipient country in Europe in 2015 (and several years before), Sweden has now moved to the margins of Europe, quantitatively speaking. Qualitatively, it is not considered as an example of (relatively) progressive asylum and migration policies anymore, as was the case ten to 20 years ago, but as a model for parties and politicians in other EU countries, such as Germany, who promote a hardline approach. The Swedish journey is certainly not unique in Europe, but compared to other EU member states, its fall has been particularly drastic and steep.
The explanations provided above suggest that perceptions of overburdening can influence policy changes on migration and asylum in a country, but also political culture and dynamics of party politics, national self-image, ideas about “pull factors” and the international (in the Swedish case: the EU) context. The political framing of migration and asylum and the messaging around it is also a significant factor. Certainly not everyone in Sweden welcomes the hardline policies the country stands for today, but many people seem to accept that now is the time for a strict approach to make its way. This seems unlikely to change anytime soon.