Sweden
“(Maybe) I am going to school-age educare because now I have a residence permit”: Children’s non-access to school-age educare in a Swedish asylum context
Sweden’s school-age educare has been identified as important for children’s access to play and meaningful leisure. However, research has not addressed asylum-seeking children’s access to school-age educare or its potential role in asylum contexts. This article draws on data from a 1-year ethnographic fieldwork with children in a Swedish asylum context and explores asylum-seeking children’s perspectives and experiences in a…
2024
Refugees’ gendered experiences of education in Europe since 2015: A scoping review
This scoping review aims to explore the role of gender in refugees' educational access, experiences, and outcomes in Europe since 2015. Gender can act as a significant barrier to education, and gender stereotypes and bias can affect learning opportunities and outcomes. As a response, a scoping review was conducted to explore the role of gender in refugees' educational access, experiences,…
2023
Conceptualising the art of belonging for young refugees and asylum-seekers: Reflections from England and Sweden
The concept of belonging has grown in prominence in research and policy relating to new arrivals from refugee and asylum-seeking backgrounds. Arguably, belonging is replacing integration and inclusion as the panacea to perceived problems associated with places and societies where new arrivals settle. Belonging is also prominent in the literature about formal and informal educational contexts. This paper problematises the…
2024
Obstacles to the labour market integration of highly skilled refugees in Sweden
After the peak of the refugee “crisis,” host countries are now focusing on the long-term integration of refugees. This is also the case in Sweden, which took in the largest number of asylum seekers per capita of all European countries in 2015. The recent increase in refugees has renewed attention to the need for effective integration initiatives that foster an…
2023
The integration of refugees into the Swedish labour market: Intersectionality and the mechanisms used for employment
This study examines the intersection of race, gender and class in the integration of Syrian refugees into the Swedish labour market and the mechanisms they utilize to find employment. The empirical data was analysed using the content analysis method and interpreted by taking an intersectional approach. Findings show that integration programmes in Sweden are focused particularly on speeding up the…
2023
Rural education and migration: A study of the 2015 reception of young refugees in Sweden
In the autumn of 2015 a large number of mainly Syrian refugees arrived in Sweden. They were unevenly distributed geographically by the authorities and smaller municipalities received proportionally larger numbers than others. The schools became central in the local reception processes. They faced difficulties but also possibilities, both pedagogical, organizational and in relation to social issues. Based on participant observation…
2023
Governing resettlement beyond safety: Multilevel governance as a model for sustainable resettlement of unaccompanied refugee children in rural Sweden?
This article explores the sustainability of the resettlement of unaccompanied refugee children from their perspective. Against the backdrop of a critical assessment of the multilevel governance of resettlement, it compares two rural municipalities. Unaccompanied refugee children in the municipality with a disempowering local governance model were hindered to engage with civil society, while in the municipality with an enabling model,…
2023
Guided play supporting immigrant children’s participation and bilingual development in preschools
In recent decades, refugee immigration has had significant impact on educational contexts in Sweden, with preschools the primary arenas for young children’s language learning experiences. The present study examines second language and literacy training practices for immigrant children (aged 1–5) in preschools in Sweden. The empirical data consist of video recordings of teacher-guided play activities. These were designed to create…
2023
Psychological and pedagogical aspects of adaptation of displaced Ukrainian children to the educational environment of another country
The sudden and unexpected war in Ukraine led to a large flow of citizens displaced abroad. Almost half of them are preschool-and school-age children. The peculiarities of their adaptation to the educational environment of another country necessitates the study of the main aspects of adaptation in these conditions. The aim is to identify the psychological and pedagogical aspects of adaptation…
2024
Supporting the educational integration of young people seeking asylum and refuge: Examining good practices from Germany, Sweden and England
The educational integration of Newly Arrived Migrant and Refugee (NAMR) children and youth in a host country is complex. It requires educational systems responding to their diverse needs. Some of these needs are exacerbated by NAMR young people and their families’ limited understanding of the host country’s policies, structures, and procedures. Amidst these complexities, policy makers, practitioners, and other stakeholders…
2024
Addressing social disparities in special education placement in three welfare states: Student demographic correlates of the share of students identified with special educational needs at the school level using TALIS data
The number of students with special educational needs (SEN) is growing rapidly. This study compared the correlations between the share of students identified with SEN and student diversity (socioeconomic status and ethnicity) at the school level in three countries. We used the principal questionnaire from the 2018 Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) to examine data from principals in three…
2024
Language learning, gender and education: Understanding the agency and affordances of refugee-background women with emergent literacy
Forced migration can bring adults who have previously been denied formal education and print literacy into contact with highly technological and literacy dependent societies that lack the knowledge and expertise to cater to them as simultaneous learners of language and literacy. As educational disadvantages are often conditioned by gender, many of these learners are also women and mothers who may…
2024
Welcoming refugee children with a moral, rather than merely legal, right to education: Ideas for a cosmopolitan design of education
In this paper, we argue for the moral and not merely the legal right to education for refugee children. National education in many countries is challenged by refugee flows and influx of displaced people. However, there is a tendency to think of refugee flows as isolated events rather than parts of the dynamics of a world society that national education…
2023
Associations between social factors and school belonging among newcomer and non-newcomer youth in Sweden
Feeling a sense of belonging at school is associated with important positive outcomes for youth and requires youth to engage in positive social relationships. Yet there is a limited understanding of the social factors most associated with youths' school belonging and limited evidence about whether correlates of school belonging vary for marginalized groups like newcomers compared to majority groups. Sweden…
2023
Teachers’ ideological dilemmas: lessons learned from a Language Introduction Program in Sweden
In this qualitative study, we draw on theory and practice in relation to the concepts of fixity and fluidity in language education (i.e. the simultaneity of bounded, named languages; and the need to transcend language boundaries). We use data from focus group interviews to investigate the entangled ideological dilemmas facing four teachers in a Language Introduction Programme in an upper…
2022
Differences in all-cause and cause-specific mortality due to external causes and suicide between young adult refugees, non-refugee immigrants and Swedish-born young adults: The role of education and migration-related factors
Background International migration has increased during the past years and little is known about the mortality of young adult immigrants and refugees that came to Sweden as children. This study aimed to investigate 1) the risk of all-cause and cause-specific mortality in young accompanied and unaccompanied refugees and non-refugee immigrants compared to Swedish born individuals; and 2) to determine the…
2022
Integration policy and refugees’ economic performance: Evidence from Sweden’s 2010 reform of the introduction programme
In this paper, we investigate whether integration policy improves refugees’ economic performance, specifically examining the effects on refugees’ income of Sweden's 2010 reform of the introduction programme (or IP). We also evaluate how the reform effects vary depending on refugees’ gender and educational attainment. Our key finding shows a strong positive effect of the reform on refugees’ income, immediately after…
2021
A help or hindrance? Highly educated refugees’ perceptions of the role of civic integration programmes in accessing the labour market in Oslo, Malmö and Munich
Research often focuses on individual-level factors shaping refugee labour market participation. Less research has been conducted on the implications of the roles of employers, integration programmes, migrant support organisations and similar. This article contributes to the literature by seeking to understand highly educated refugees’ perceptions of how civic integration programmes shape opportunity structures for their labour market participation. It is…
2022
Understanding Participation Experiences in Sport Programs for the Acculturation of Refugee Youth: A Comparative Study of Two Different Programs in the US and Sweden
Sports can help refugees mitigate traumas, connect with others, and learn positive values. In this illustrative comparative study, we compare two sport programs for the acculturation of refugees in the US and Sweden. Our aim is to describe both programs, compare them with the literature, and present suggestions for the field. Hence, we placed the program participants at the center…
2022
Feasibility of a randomised trial of Teaching Recovery Techniques (TRT) with refugee youth: results from a pilot of the Swedish UnaccomPanied yOuth Refugee Trial (SUPpORT)
Background: Although post-traumatic stress is prevalent among unaccompanied refugee minors (URM), there are few evidence-based psychological interventions for this group. Teaching Recovery Techniques (TRT) is a brief, manualised intervention for trauma-exposed youth, which has shown promising results in exploratory studies. The aim of the present study was to assess the feasibility of conducting a randomised controlled trial (RCT) evaluating the…
2022
Sexual risk-taking behaviors among young migrant population in Sweden
Background: Migration is a complex process of high uncertainty with adjustments to new contexts and experiences influencing individuals’ health. This study aims to assess the prevalence of self-reported sexual risk-taking behaviors among migrant youth population in Sweden, fulfilling the research gap in that field. Methods: A pre-tested, web-based self-administered cross-sectional survey was used to collect data among 1563 migrant youth…
2022
Registration of immigrants’ educational attainment in Sweden: an analysis of sources and time to registration
Swedish register data include a number of variables related to individuals’ educational level. In contrast to many other countries, the registers even include information on the education obtained by immigrants outside Sweden. For studies on immigrants’ labour market integration, this is an important asset. However, the quality of data in terms of the source and extent of data coverage for…
2022
Refugee women’s establishment in the rural north of Sweden: cultural capital in meeting local labour market needs
This paper investigates opportunities and obstacles refugee women face in establishment in rural areas. Drawing on ethnographic research in three rural municipalities in northern Sweden, including interviews with refugee women, local employers and educational staff, I analyse the women’s space for agency and opportunities to use and capitalise on different resources in relation to the local labour market and belonging.…
2022
Educating in the context of ‘Dispersal’: rural schools and refugee-background students
Policies of dispersal are increasingly favoured internationally for the resettlement of refugees and asylum seekers. With forty percent of the world’s forcibly displaced people being school-aged children, the dispersal of refugee-background people into regional areas means that rural schools are central sites of community response to refugees. Little is known in published research about how rural schools engage in refugee…
2022
Parental Posttraumatic Stress and School Performance in Refugee Children
Refugee children in the Nordic countries have been reported to perform poorly in school and carry a high burden of familial posttraumatic stress. The present study aimed to investigate the impact of maternal and paternal posttraumatic stress on the school performance of refugee children. We used national register data on school grades at age 15–16 along with demographic and migration…
2022
Education of unaccompanied refugee minors in high-income countries: Risk and resilience factors
Record numbers of unaccompanied refugee minors continue to arrive in high-income countries seeking asylum and protection. Despite receiving educational support, unaccompanied refugee minors continue to be vulnerable to negative educational experiences and outcomes. The review investigates what resilience factors enable unaccompanied refugee minors in high-income countries to have positive educational experiences and outcomes. It aims to inform the literature on…
2022
Labour market marginalisation in young refugees and their majority peers in Denmark and Sweden: The role of common mental disorders and secondary school completion
Background Due to the circumstances of their early lives, young refugees are at risk of experiencing adverse labour market and health outcomes. The post-settlement environment is thought to play a decisive role in determining how this vulnerability plays out. This study compared trends in labour market marginalisation in young refugees and their majority peers during early adulthood in two national…
2022
The integration of asylum seekers and refugees in the field of education and the labour market: Comparative thematic report
This report is based on a meta-analysis of nine national reports on integration from countries along the so-called Eastern Mediterranean Route. It includes two countries beyond the EU, Turkey and Iraq, which have played an important role as source and transit countries of refugees, the transit countries of Greece, Italy and Poland, and the destination countries of Austria, Germany, Sweden,…
2021
The word “refugees” will always be stuck to us: Music, children, and postmigration experiences at the Simrishamn Kulturskola in Sweden
This dissertation centers on the stories and perspectives of young refugees from Syria and Afghanistan enrolled in Sweden’s municipal music-and-arts school, or kulturskola, programs. Kulturskolor are voluntary music and arts programs regulated by Sweden’s local municipalities. These music-and-arts schools were established in the 1930s and 1940s, corresponding with the rise of Sweden’s welfare state system. There are schools in nearly…
2021
The end(s) of inclusion: ungrounding globalization and ‘the migrant’ in dialogue with hospitality
This article reassesses globalization in light of research, policy, and reforms directed towards ‘the migrant’ during times of crisis. In dialogue with Derrida's discussion of hospitality, the article questions the grounds that figure ‘the migrant’ as a metonym for globalization's dangers–as excess mobility menacing the foundational sovereignty of nation-states. With Sweden as a point of reference, the article interrelates three…
2021
Holocaust education and the Palestinian cause: young Palestinian people in Sweden, and their perceptions of Holocaust education
The paper investigates the experiences, perceptions and responses of immigrants with a Palestinian background in relation to learning about the Holocaust and the Palestinian cause in Swedish schools and visiting Holocaust sites. Data were collected from 50 immigrant students using audio-recorded and open-structured interviews. The results indicate that most informants had learned about the Holocaust in various classes, through readings,…
2021
‘The teacher makes us feel like we are a family’: students from refugee backgrounds’ perceptions of physical education in Swedish schools
Background: Over the past five decades, the number of people from refugee backgrounds in developed countries has been on the constant rise. Although the field of refugee and forced migration studies in relation to education and sport has grown considerably in recent years, very little is known about refugee-background students’ perceptions of Physical Education (PE). Purpose: The aim of this…
2021
Policy and leadership discourses in Sweden’s Art and Music Schools: the inclusion of refugee children
Sweden’s Art and Music Schools (SAMS) have assumed some responsibility for facilitating refugee children’s social inclusion. This article investigates how the inclusion of refugee children in SAMS is introduced by leaders as well as how the theme is constructed and addressed as a topic in policy documents (related to the national policy process for SAMS). Two data sets constitute the…
2021
Strangers everywhere? Home and unhomeliness in newly arrived pupils’ narratives on exile
This article scrutinises the ways in which pupils who have experienced transnational migration construct ‘home’ and the unmaking of ‘home’. Researchers have argued that migrants’ perspectives on belonging are seldom granted scholarly attention. Here, we seek to redress this oversight by inquiring about the ways in which newly arrived migrants define their (un)homeliness in Sweden in the context of astate-sponsored…
2021
Temporality and space in highly skilled migrants’ experiences of education and work in the rural north of Sweden
The aim of this article is to critically explore and analyse opportunities and obstacles faced by highly skilled migrants in rural areas seeking to re-enter their profession, focusing on the lived experiences of migrants residing in northern Sweden. Analysis of their stories focusing on intersections of temporal and spatial positionings reveal different lived experiences and opportunities depending on migration regime…
2021
Schools’ and teachers’ roles and challenges in supporting the mental wellbeing of refugee youths: a qualitative study with Swedish teachers
Purpose: Resettled refugee youths are increasingly entering host-country school systems and are at risk of poor mental wellbeing. Schools and teachers are often expected to provide psychosocial support to youths with refugee backgrounds, but the teachers’ views on this expectation are poorly understood. We investigated the question: What do Swedish teachers believe is the role of (1) schools and (2)…
2021
Cartographers of their Futures: The Formation of Occupational Aspirations of Highly Educated Refugees in Malmö and Munich
The article engages with occupational aspirations of highly educated refugees with the aim to explore how their social positions of being highly educated and a refugee inform their aspirations. It does so by drawing on semi-structured interviews with 30 highly educated refugees living in Malmö and Munich. Findings show how highly educated refugees’ occupational aspirations are informed by their educational…
2021
Theorising policy and practice in refugee education: Conceptualising ‘safety’, ‘belonging’, ‘success’ and ‘participatory parity’ in England and Sweden
Across the world, children are forced to leave their homes for far-flung destinations. This global phenomenon has particular impact in Europe, where there are now more child refugees than since World War II. Education plays an important role for children with extraordinary experiences seeking to build meaningful lives in their new context. This article offers a new theoretical approach to…
2021
Evaluation of a school-based intervention to promote mental health of refugee youth in Sweden (The RefugeesWellSchool Trial): study protocol for a cluster randomized controlled trial
Background: Sweden is home to a large and growing population of refugee youths who may be at risk of mental health problems such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Thus, there is a need for interventions that address mental health problems in these populations. Schools have been identified as an ideal setting for delivering such interventions as they offer a non-stigmatizing…
2021
Improving access to the labour market for refugees in Sweden: Key findings and recommendations
Sweden is often singled out as having comparatively inclusive integration policy measures for migrants in general and refugees and their families in particular. Still, the employment gap between the native born and foreign born is among the largest among OECD countries, and the situation for refugees is especially difficult. Persistently high unemployment rates among refugees and their families have prompted…
2020
Integration into the Labour Market and Skills Training of Migrants in Sweden
Sweden ratified the UN convention of refugees in 1954; the right of asylum was fully implemented in the new Foreigner Act of 1954 (SFS 1954:193). The new act enabled permanent residency (bosättningstillstånd) and the equal status of foreigners on the labour market was emphasised in the preparatory work (see government bill, Prop. 1953:41). For a long time, refugee immigration was…
2020
The role of civil society organisations in labour market integration of young immigrants in Sweden: An analysis of the organisation Right To Play
During the year of 2015 and the large migration wave that hit Europe, many unaccompanied young refugees came to Sweden. For this particular group, the challenge is to become integrated to the labour market in order to receive a permanent residency permit in Sweden after they graduate their upper secondary education. Over the past few years, it has become more…
2020
An overview of refugee education in Europe
The overview of refugee children education in Europe we provide in this book is part of the Erasmus + project “ITIRE: Improving teaching to improve refugee children education”. Following the unprecedented flow of forced migrants to Europe in 2015, several countries have adopted measures to facilitate the enrolment of refugee children in the educational system. These actions have produced a…
2020
Norway
Belgium
Luxembourg
Intervention
Romania
Monaco
Switzerland
Bosnia
Czechia
Human rights
Croatia
Germany
Estonia
Sweden
Finland
Italy
Macedonia
Austria
Poland
Slovenia
Portugal
United Kingdom
Serbia
Slovakia
Caregivers
Netherlands
Lithuania
English
Ireland
Hungary
France
Greece
Bulgaria
Access & participation
Spain
Latvia
Türkiye
Denmark
Cyprus
Malta
Iceland
Albania
Let the Right One in: Sports Leaders’ Shared Experiences of Including Refugee Girls and Boys in Sports Clubs
This study investigated how gender and sports capital are expressed in sports leaders’ talk about sports for young people with a refugee background. Empirical data were derived from four focus group interviews representing 21 sports club leaders in Sweden. The leaders defined boys and girls as distinct groups but also as groups within which there are differences. Compared with the…
2020
Integration Policies, Practices & Experiences: Sweden Country Report
This report explores the Swedish integration policies and practices as well as their implementation as experienced by newcomers. Integration refers to the permanent settlement period that sets in after the acquisition of a permanent residence permit, or when one starts mentally adapting to the host society. Through a multilevel governance approach, it highlights how legal, political, and institutional integration frameworks…
2020
Integration Policies,Trends, Problems and Challenges: An Integrated Report of 9 Country Cases
This report provides a snapshot for some of the primary findings, trends and challenges with regard to immigrant integration that have been studied in nine country cases, based on research conducted within the framework of the Horizon2020 RESPOND project. These countries are Sweden, Germany, Italy, Greece, Austria, Poland, the UK, Turkey and Iraq. All nine country reports study integration in…
2020
The role of education on integration policies: A comparison of Sweden, Germany and Turkey after the Syrian refugee crisis
This study aims to produce a comparative research on integration policies of Sweden, Germany, and Turkey that host remarkable number of Syrians after the crisis in Syria which is considered as the biggest humanitarian and refugee crisis of our time. This study mainly examines main integration areas and tools used by Sweden, Germany and Turkey to deal with unexpected number…
2020
Digital media in refugees’ everyday life and integration: A case study on the highly educated Syrian refugees in Scania
This thesis sets the goal to contribute to the field of diaspora studies from media and communication studies perspective by focusing on the neglected migrant group of highly educated refugees and their media use. This thesis aims to explore how highly educated refugees utilize digital media in their everyday life after their migration. It also investigates how digital media use…
2020
A place called home: the meaning(s) of popular education for newly arrived refugees
In this article, we direct our focus on some of the recent activities undertaken by popular education institutions in Sweden in relation to the refugee challenge in 2015. The aim is to analyse how these popular education activities are shaped as specific communities of practice, through the ways they are described by those who organised these, and what meaning newly…
2020