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Sweden


  • 18-April-2018

    English

    Working Together for Local Integration of Migrants and Refugees in Gothenburg

    Today, 34% of the population of Gothenburg, Sweden, was born outside of the country or has at least one parent born abroad. The city is growing at a fast pace: 4 400 new residents registered in 2016. Newcomers account for the bulk of demographic growth, of which 12 858 refugees settled in the city between 2010 and 2016. However, migration is not a new phenomenon in Gothenburg, with nearly 41.7% of migrant residents having arrived more than 10 years ago. The Gothenburg municipality has a significant track record in managing the impact of migration on local demand for work, housing, goods and services, cultural and linguistic diversity, and other parts of daily life. This report presents the way Gothenburg municipality and its state and non-state partners are addressing migrant integration issues and opportunities. It compiles data and qualitative evidence on how local integration efforts are designed and implemented within a multi-level governance framework.
  • 30-August-2016

    English

    Promoting Well-being and Inclusiveness in Sweden

    Sweden has a remarkable track record in sustaining a high level of well-being of its citizens. The country performs above the OECD average in all dimensions of the OECD’s Better Life Index, and these good outcomes are typically shared widely across the population. Sweden is one of the leading countries in receiving refugees and a strong supporter of ambitious global goals to fight climate change and implement the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda. However, for this success story to continue, the country needs to reverse the declining educational performance of its youth, speed up labour market integration of newly arrived immigrants and address infrastructure deficiencies, particularly in the housing sector. Also, Sweden’s high ambitions with respect to environmental protection call for further policy action to advance the transition to a low carbon and circular economy.
  • 13-May-2016

    English

    Working Together: Skills and Labour Market Integration of Immigrants and their Children in Sweden

    This review is the first in a new series on the skills and labour market integration of immigrants and their children. With 16% of its population born abroad, Sweden has one of the larger immigrant populations among the European OECD countries. Estimates suggest that about half of the foreign-born population originally came to Sweden as refugees or as the family of refugees and Sweden has been the OECD country that has had by far the largest inflows of asylum seekers relative to its population. In all OECD countries, humanitarian migrants and their families face greater challenges to integrate into the labour market than other groups. It is thus not surprising that immigrant versus native-born differences are larger than elsewhere, which also must be seen in the context of high skills and labour market participation among the native-born. For both genders, employment disparities are particularly pronounced among the low-educated, among whom immigrants are heavily overrepresented. These immigrants face particular challenges related to the paucity of low-skilled jobs in Sweden, and policy needs to acknowledge that their integration pathway tends to be a long one. Against this backdrop, Sweden has highly developed and longstanding integration policies that mainly aim at upskilling immigrants while temporarily lowering the cost of hiring, while other tools that work more strongly with the social partners and the civil society are less well developed and need strengthening.
  • 31-March-2015

    English, PDF, 343kb

    Sweden Policy Brief: Promoting Labour Market Integration among Sweden's Migrant Population

    Much thought has gone into the design of migrant integration policy in recent years, but migrants’ labour market outcomes continue to lag behind those of other Swedes, notably because of low educational attainment and literacy proficiency.

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  • 1-December-2014

    English

    Key findings on migration in Sweden 2014

    In December 2013, the Swedish population reached 9 million of which 1.5 million (15.9%) were foreign-born and about 468 000 Swedish-born with two foreign-born parents.

  • 19-December-2011

    English

    Recruiting Immigrant Workers: Sweden

    Sweden’s 2008 reform of its labour migration policy, now one of the most open in the OECD, has helped businesses hire foreign workers quickly and cheaply, without hurting conditions for local workers, according to this report.

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