The European country that has cut asylum claims by reversing liberal policies in ten-year migrant crackdown amid wave of gang crime and lack of integration

In 2014, Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt pleaded with his nation to ‘open your hearts’ to refugees arriving the country.

Reinfeldt took a careful tone as he asked the Swedish people to ‘have patience with what is about to happen’, acknowledging concern over the rising numbers of people seeking asylum, mainly from war-torn Syria and Afghanistan.

‘When people flee to Sweden in very large numbers, it creates friction in Swedish society because a lot more come than we have planned for’, he recognised, adding that such movements would carry ‘substantial costs’ affecting public finances.

Reinfeldt’s speech made a moral case for wider integration, an argument widely espoused by moderate parties. But voters were largely uninspired. A month later, his liberal-conservative coalition lost the election.

A decade on, Sweden’s Moderate government has recalibrated its message.

Today, the government boasts of achieving ‘net negative immigration’, winning support from the hard right for audacious policies that encourage ‘snitching’ on undocumented workers and championing a reversal that has seen accepted asylum applications drop to a forty-year low.

The government has sought to introduce mandatory language and integration tests for anyone seeking citizenship, made it easier to revoke residency permits and in some cases confined those not qualifying for residency to special centres. 

The change reflects a wider shift in European priorities, with moderates hoping to fend off the rise of far right populism by coopting their narratives on migration. Sweden’s government, forced to reconcile with a wave of gang crime and poorly implemented integration policies, has shown one of the most stunning reversals on asylum, abandoning its moral arguments for cold hard statistics.

Migrants, mainly from Syria and Iraq, walk at the E45 freeway from Padborg, on the Danish-German border, heading north to try to get to Sweden on September 9, 2015

Three teenagers were sentenced after a man was murdered while eating dinner at a restaurant south of Stockholm, with the 17-year-old who is believed to have fired the fatal shot handed a jail term

Counter-protesters throw stones in the park Sveaparken in Orebro, south-centre Sweden on April 15, 2022, where Danish far-right party Stram Kurs had permission for a square meeting on Good Friday 

Sweden welcomed 163,000 asylum seekers in 2015, joining Germany and its Scandinavian neighbours in a unified moral response to the ‘migrant crisis’. Per capita, it was the highest number of any EU country at the time.

Many of those refugees, often from Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq, settled in public housing blocks built through the 1960s and 1970s to address a wider shortage of quality, affordable housing.

All of Sweden’s municipalities were obligated to accept refugees. But the country underwent a process of de facto segregation as Swedes moved out of the public housing clusters and asylum seekers moved in.

This presented a challenge. Liberal-minded Swedes argued that accepting refugees was the right thing to do. The country was wealthy and had the means to accommodate people fleeing persecution and war. 

But a lack of consolidated policy on how to integrate these communities saw vulnerable groups ultimately presented as a strain on public resources. Areas housing large numbers of refugees became associated with high levels of crime and unemployment. The government has responded in recent years by seeking evidence of language ability and integration before qualifying for citizenship.

Tensta, a suburb of Stockholm, exemplified the challenges of integration. 

The district was built to address a housing crisis in the latter half of the 20th century. In 2018, 90 per cent of residents were from a foreign background. Four in five people lived on welfare benefits or low incomes, and violence was rife.

‘As in many other immigrant suburbs, Tensta’s youth are often caught between two worlds: the traditions of their parents who immigrated to Sweden and modern Swedish culture,’ assessed Interpeace in its ‘Voices from Tensta’ report, noting the challenges of integration.

‘Navigating the complexities of being a young person, an immigrant and a Swede is not easy for many of them. Despite the challenges of forming their identity, young people from Tensta have developed a strong bond with their district. They spoke passionately about Tensta as a multicultural and community-based area.’

But with limited opportunities for work or education, people moving to the region appear more vulnerable to being exploited by criminals or being recruited into a life of crime. 

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Locals allege gangs have opportunistically moved in to extort protection money from residents, bringing drugs and gun crime to the area. In 2016, 16 people were killed in the district, mostly in drug-related conflicts.

As one Redditor put it in 2020, responding to ‘Is Tensta safe to live in?’: ‘One one hand, it is one of the worst neighbourhoods in Sweden. On the other hand, by International standards that’s still pretty ok.’

The rising influence of gangs, endemic in areas blighted by poverty, has seen an uptick in violence and spurred demand for a tougher line on crime.

Police say gangs have started using social media platforms as ‘digital marketplaces’ to openly recruit children, some as young as 11, to commit murders and bombings.

Inexperienced teenagers, seen as expendable by the gangs, are easier for police to catch than those ordering the shootings.

Mafia groups abroad have called the country a ‘haven’ for their activities, while crime groups have infiltrated business sectors and found ways to smuggle military-grade weapons into the country.

In 2023, 53 people were killed in shootings across Sweden, home to around 10.5 million people. In 2022, that figure stood at 62 – and Stockholm’s per-capita murder rate was roughly 30 times that of London’s.

The government of Sweden addresses ‘simplistic’ narratives on this issue with reference to a literature review, which found that low education and a lack of employment ‘seem to contribute to a higher level of crime among people with foreign background’.

‘Factors such as war traumas, mental illness and the level of crime, conflict and economic development in the country of origin might also be factors that contribute to explain some of the differences.’

People hold a banner ‘refugees welcome’ as they take part in a demonstration in solidarity with refugees seeking asylum in Europe after fleeing their home countries in Stockholm on September 12, 2015

The problem is complex and multifaceted.

Women from Afghanistan, for example, where the Taliban has banned secondary education for women and girls, will struggle to integrate into the Swedish job market, and development programmes have done little to alleviate the strain.

Ninety-five per cent of new jobs in the country required at least a secondary education, The Economist observed in its commentary in 2017. Without a structured plan to ensure these women are able to return to education, there is little hope for them to find true integration and acceptance.

A 2021 study, based on interviews with Afghan women who moved to Sweden as unaccompanied refugees, highlighted some of the other challenges: an inner conflict between wanting to integrate and feeling pressured to uphold home customs; the language barrier; and missing family and loneliness.

One said: ‘In my home country, girls can’t always go to school. I remember when I was a kid, I was always told that girls don’t have to go to school. But when I came to Sweden, I heard quite the opposite, that it is great that girls go to school and educate themselves.’

Another said: ‘I would like to tell other unaccompanied girls that they should study and not just settle for a job at, for example, the home care service. And they should not think too much about getting married.

‘There are plenty of opportunities in Sweden they should use. It’s important for girls who come to Sweden alone to study so that they can gain a high position in society.’

Teachers and social workers can make a world of difference in helping asylum seekers to integrate. But these lifelines are costly and finite.

Smoke billows from burning tires, pallets and fireworks during riots of Police with few hundred protesters in the Rosengard neighbourhood of Malmo, Sweden, 28 August 2020

The far right were among the first to capitalise on these issues, gaining ground by highlighting problems linked to immigration.

In turn, the Left and centre started to echo their fears. Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson conceded in August 2022 that Sweden didn’t need more ‘Somalitowns’ or ‘Little Italies’ – words that would have been unthinkable in the milieu of Fredrik Reinfeldt’s ‘open hearts’ campaign.

Months before, she had lamented how ‘segregation’ in such communities had created ‘parallel societies…living in different realities’.

Integration had been ‘too poor, at the same time as we have experienced very substantial levels of immigration’ she said, admitting ‘society has been too weak, resources for the police and social services have been too weak’. 

The political urgency changed with the 2022 election. Reforms came thick and fast after the Moderates formed a government by striking a deal with the Sweden Democrats, giving the conservative party significant influence over crime and immigration policies.

Family reunifications have been tightened, residency permits are more easily revoked, and asylum rights have been slashed to the bare minimum allowed under EU law.

Immigrants who do not qualify for residency are being urged to return home, with some placed under electronic surveillance or confined to special centres.

Sweden’s immigration policy has undergone a seismic shift, abandoning its once open-handed approach in favour of stricter rules and a focus on control.

The government is now steering away from traditional asylum status and pushing more migrants into the weaker ‘subsidiary protection’ category.

This status, unlike full asylum, requires renewal every 13 months and only extends beyond three years for those who can prove they are financially independent.

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The challenges of integration have moved the Overton window. Sooner than taking the expensive – and potentially vote-costing – route of crafting better policy, Left wing and centrist parties today have quietly dropped their moral arguments in favour of talk of a ‘strict migration policy’.

Migration Minister Johan Forssell, sharing how asylum-related residence permits had fallen to a 40-year low earlier this year, told The Times: ‘We are implementing what we describe as a paradigm shift in Swedish migration policy, and we are doing this with a very outspoken agenda that we want to limit the number of people seeking asylum here in Sweden’.

He explained that the move does not mean that the country does not like migrants, or understand the situation they face, but because it is ‘impossible’ to manage the task of integration when there is such a huge influx each year.

‘What happened during the refugee crisis was that all these very nice words, all this open-heart policy, met a very tough reality,’ Mr Forssell added.

Mr Forssell has made no apologies for the hardline approach and, speaking candidly, revealed that the goal is to return to a pre-1970s immigration model, prioritising skilled ‘guest workers’ and limiting asylum to only those with indisputable claims.

‘We’re going back to basics,’ he explained, adding that restricting family reunification has already delivered results.

The minister also said he wanted to introduce mandatory language and integration tests for anyone seeking Swedish citizenship.

For decades, Sweden was one of the most welcoming countries in Europe to migrants seeking refuge.

But the failure of successive governments to integrate migrant communities, and indeed to ward off the spectre of crime, has tarnished faith in the ‘open hearts’ compassion of the liberal middle ground.

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