Den här studien undersöker två separata, men relaterade, frågor om naturalisering bland utrikes födda i Danmark, Norge och Sverige. Avsikten är såväl att belysa likheter som skillnader mellan de skandinaviska länderna vad gäller bestämningsfaktorerna för och konsekvenserna av naturalisering. I den första delen ställer vi frågan om varför utrikesfödda personer blir medborgare i ett nytt land. Detta gör vi genom att undersöka i vilken grad utrikes födda personer erhåller medborgarskap och i vilken utsträckning kontextuella faktorer i ursprungs- och destinationslandet påverkar individens benägenhet att naturalisera. I rapportens andra del ställer vi istället frågan om huruvida förvärvet av det nya medborgarskapet påverkar utrikesföddas ekonomiska integration. Data för studien är både på individ- och landnivå, det vill säga på kontextuell nivå. Våra individdata består av registerdata från respektive lands statistiska centralbyrå, där individer kontinuerligt följs under sin vistelse i respektive land, från mitten av 1980-talet och framöver. Resultaten visar, å ena sidan, tydliga skillnader i naturaliseringsfrekvens mellan Danmark, Norge och Sverige. I Sverige observeras en högre naturaliseringsfrekvens för samtliga grupper av ursprungsländer än i Norge och Danmark. Med undantag för utrikesfödda från Västeuropa och Norden, har Norge en högre naturaliseringsgrad för samtliga grupper migranter än Danmark har. Å andra sidan visar resultaten i alla tre länder att personer från Norden och Västeuropa har en relativt låg benägenhet att bli naturaliserade i sitt nya hemland medan Asien, Afrika och Östeuropa, har en mycket högre naturaliseringsgrad. Individer från Latinamerika placerar sig någonstans i mitten. Granskningen av kontextuella faktorer – som rör såväl sociala och ekonomiska förhållanden samt naturaliseringsregelverk i både ursprungslandet och destinationslandet – visar att skillnader mellan ursprungslandets och destinationslandets ekonomiska utveckling har ett genomgående samband med människors benägenhet att söka medborgarskap i det nya landet. Om en migrant kommer från ett land med en lägre ekonomisk utvecklingsnivå, är sannolikheten för naturalisering i Sverige, Norge och Danmark högre. Ett annat mönster som dock enbart framgår i Sverige är att migranter vars hemländer tillåter dubbelt medborgarskap mer eller mindre genomgående observeras med en förhöjd sannolikhet att naturaliseras. Att detta mönster enbart kan observeras i Sverige tolkas som ett resultat av att det formella förbud mot dubbelt medborgarskap som före 2001 existerade i Sverige tillämpades i mycket liten utsträckning. Detta till skillnad från Norge och Danmark som har sådana förbud som också efterlevs. I detta samband är det vidare en viktig observation att den nya lagstiftning som ägde laga kraft i Sverige 2001, som innebar ett formellt tillåtande av dubbelt medborgarskap, hade en överlag positiv effekt på migranters naturaliseringsgrad. I synnerhet är detta fallet för migranter från länder som typiskt kännetecknas av en låg naturaliseringsgrad. Analysen visar även att personer från mer ofria länder söker medborgarskap Bevelander, Helgertz, Bratsberg, Tegunimataka vi i sitt nya land i högre grad än andra. Även i Sverige finns detta samband, om än mindre tydligt. Vad gäller analysen av medborgarskapets effekter på sysselsättning och inkomster, är det främst bland migranter från länder som överlag präglas av sämre arbetsmarknadsintegration i Danmark, Norge och Sverige, där ett samband mellan naturalisering och bättre integration på arbetsmarknaden kan observeras. Naturaliserade individer från dessa länder är klart bättre integrerade på arbetsmarknaden än vad de icke-naturaliserade är. Det är dock endast i ett fåtal fall där det förbättrade utfallet på arbetsmarknaden direkt kan kopplas till naturaliseringstillfället. Därför finns det skäl att avstå från att dra slutsatsen att det finns ett kausalt orsakssamband mellan naturalisering och förbättrad arbetsmarknadsintegration för migrantgruppen i stort. Analysen har dock indikerat vissa undantag till denna mer generella slutsats, i Sveriges fall bland mer marginaliserade grupper på arbetsmarknaden. Den avslutande delen av rapporten diskuterar resultaten både i förhållande till tidigare nationella och internationella studier och i förhållande till dagens medborgarskapslagstiftningar i Danmark, Norge och Sverige.

Three decades ago, Sweden extended municipal and provincial voting privileges to non-citizen residents on the grounds that this would increase political influence, interest and self-esteem among this group of immigrants. Three decades later, in the political and public debate, electoral participation on the part of immigrants is perceived as being substantially lower than for native-born citizens. As a result, questions have arisen regarding the degree to which this may be symptomatic of a larger integration issue. The aim of this paper is to explore the determinants of voting in municipal elections for immigrants—both naturalised and non-citizens, in Sweden, by controlling for a number of socio-economic and demographic and immigrant specific characteristics. More specifically, using cohort analysis, the idea is to study the impact of time spent in the country on the voting behaviour of immigrants, foreign citizens and naturalised over time. Two unique sets of data were used in the research. The 2002, 2006 and 2010 electoral surveys (participation study) all contain information about individual electoral participation in municipal elections. This information is matched to registry data from Statistics Sweden, which also contains information relating to every Swedish resident. From these two sources of information, a database is created that matches voting to individual characteristics. This study analyses 60 thousand immigrants of which 43 thousand are non-citizens. After controlling for demographic and socioeconomic characteristics, the results show that the acquisition of citizenship makes a real difference in the voting odds. Immigrants who obtain citizenship are far more likely to vote than those who do not. Country of birth also makes a difference: Compared to immigrants from the Nordic countries, Europeans and North American immigrants are equal or less likely to vote, whereas immigrants from Asia, Africa and Latin America are more likely to vote. Finally, immigrants’ odds of voting increase as their length of stay in the country does.

The considerable diversity among Sweden's immigrants reflects a humanitarian migration policy. Refugees have arrived in the country since the 1970s and 1980s, with their countries of origin shifting according to the ethnic and political conflicts of any given period. Sweden is also a longstanding magnet for labor migration from surrounding Scandinavia, and has attracted mobile EU citizens since its entry into the European Union in 1995—and especially following the EU enlargements of 2004 and 2007. Sweden's immigration flows continue to change today, as policy reforms in 2008 allowed employers to bring non-EU labor migrants to the country for the first time in decades. This report assesses how new immigrants to Sweden fare in the country's labor market. It shows that employment rates during newcomers’ initial years in Sweden are relatively depressed for low-educated refugees and migrants who come based on family ties, in comparison to natives and labor migrants from EU countries. Since Sweden's refugees and family arrivals are not selected through employment-related criteria, they are likely to lack locally in-demand skills and are often out of work in the years immediately after arrival. The obstacles these groups face can be exacerbated by certain features of Sweden’s labor market, such as high minimum wages, a relatively small pool of low-skilled jobs, and stringent employment protection for permanent work.

This paper uses the Canadian 2006 Census and the Swedish 2006 register data to analyse the citizenship effect on the relative earnings of immigrants, using instrumental variable regression to control for citizenship acquisition. We ask: ‘Is there a citizenship effect and if any, in which country is it that we find the largest effect and for which immigrant groups?’ We add one further dimension, asking if the size of the co-immigrant population in the municipality has an effect on earnings. We find that the impact of citizenship acquisition is substantial in both Canada and Sweden. However, the place of birth of immigrants is important. In most cases, immigrant women in Sweden enjoy a higher citizenship premium than is the case for immigrant women in Canada. Amongst men the picture is more mixed. Most European groups receive a larger citizenship premium in Canada as compared to Sweden. Being in a city with more immigrants of the same background is better for earnings in Sweden than in Canada. However, being in a city with a lot of immigrants (regardless of origin) is better in Canada as compared to Sweden.

The ongoing Eurozone crisis frequently makes front-page news, but aspects of its deeper implications are more rarely discussed in media. In Crisis and Migration the authors analyse the current situation and its effects on politics and migration. In case studies they show how the economic downturn affects daily life on a local, national, and European level. The authors reflect on the crisis from mutually rewarding micro-to-macro perspectives. Their focus is geared away from the crisis as an acute phenomenon – instead they investigate it as a potential symptom of a chronic decline of the EU in relation to other regions. It is imperative to address the long-term consequences of the development and that scholars engage in that critical discussion. Alongside its senior authors, Crisis and Migration features contributors of a new generation of scholars who are likely to be prominent in the field in years to come. The book is vital reading for researchers in migration and European studies, policymakers, and journalists.

The ongoing Eurozone crisis frequently makes front-page news, but aspects of its deeper implications are more rarely discussed in media. In Crisis and Migration the authors analyse the current situation and its effects on politics and migration. In case studies they show how the economic downturn affects daily life on a local, national, and European level. The authors reflect on the crisis from mutually rewarding micro-to-macro perspectives. Their focus is geared away from the crisis as an acute phenomenon – instead they investigate it as a potential symptom of a chronic decline of the EU in relation to other regions. It is imperative to address the long-term consequences of the development and that scholars engage in that critical discussion. Alongside its senior authors, Crisis and Migration features contributors of a new generation of scholars who are likely to be prominent in the field in years to come. The book is vital reading for researchers in migration and European studies, policymakers, and journalists.

This is a draft chapter for the Handbook on Economics of International Migration (Eds. B. R. Chiswick and P. W. Miller) and deals with the political incorporation of immigrants in host societies. Political incorporation is discussed with regard to the regulation of legal status, rights, opportunities, and acquisition of citizenship. We give examples of the legal regulation and policies from several countries in the world, showing thereby the diversity of approaches to political incorporation but also similarities to the regulation of access to residence, rights, and citizenship. We highlight changes in this regard since the Second World War and discuss more recent trends. Moreover, we discuss different factors explaining the variation in incorporation policies. Also, this chapter traces different dimensions of political participation of immigrants, and, finally, we address the expected effects on wider integration of citizenship acquisition.

The determinants and consequences of the naturalization of immigrants is a hot topic in the political debate in Europe. This article compares the effect of naturalization on the income attainment of immigrants in two Scandinavian countries, Denmark and Sweden, using longitudinal register data from 1986 and onward. Sweden is characterized by low obstacles to naturalization, and existing studies provide inconclusive evidence regarding the impact of naturalization on labor market outcomes. Denmark is instead characterized by higher barriers to naturalization, as well as a virtual inexistence of previous studies on the topic. Results, obtained through individual fixed-effect regression analysis, suggest similar effects in both countries. A consistent naturalization premium is detected for immigrants of Asian and African descent, but not for any other immigrant group. The similarity across contexts arguably questions the use of more stringent naturalization laws to promote the economic integration of immigrants.

This paper assesses the employment and earnings trajectories of refugee and family reunion category immigrants in Canada and Sweden using two national level sources of data. The Canadian Immigration Database (IMDB) is a file that links the intake record of post-1979 immigrants with annual taxation records. The 2007 Swedish Register Data includes information on all legal permanent residents. Using standard regression methods, we compare labour force outcomes of age–sex–schooling–place of birth cohorts looking specifically at non-economic (family reunion and refugee intake) immigrants from Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan and the former Yugoslavia. We find that the employment and earning trajectories of the selected non-economic migrant groups are quite similar in the two host countries, although earnings are higher in Canada than in Sweden.

Over the last decades, Sweden has liberalized its citizenship policy by reducing the required number of years of residency to 5 years for foreign citizens and only 2 years for Nordic citizens. Dual citizenship has been allowed since 2001. During the same period, immigration patterns by country of birth changed substantially, with an increasing number of immigrants arriving from non-western countries. Furthermore, immigrants were settling in larger cities as opposed to smaller towns as was the case before. Interestingly, the employment integration of immigrants has declined gradually, and in 2006, the employment rate for foreign-born individuals is substantially lower compared with the native-born. The aim of this paper is to explore the link between citizenship and employment probabilities for immigrants in Sweden, controlling for a range of demographic, human capital, and municipal characteristics such as city and co-ethnic population size. The information we employ for this analysis consists of register data on the whole population of Sweden held by Statistics Sweden for the year 2006. The basic register, STATIV, includes demographic, socio-economic, and immigrant specific information. In this paper, we used instrumental variable regression to examine the “clean” impact of citizenship acquisition and the size of the co-immigrant population on the probability of being employed. In contrast to Scott (2008), we find that citizenship acquisition has a positive impact for a number of immigrant groups. This is particularly the case for non-EU/non-North American immigrants. In terms of intake class, refugees appear to experience substantial gains from citizenship acquisition (this is not, however, the case for immigrants entering as family class). We find that the impact of the co-immigrant population is particularly important for immigrants from Asia and Africa. These are also the countries that have the lowest employment rate.

Labour market integration of ethnic minority women is central for economic integration, as they may experience a double disadvantage: both as a woman and as a migrant. This presumed double disadvantage has recently become the focus of both Dutch integration and emancipation policy. To test several assumptions underlying this, we analyse to what extent labour market participation of different groups of women and the hours they work are influenced by human capital and household characteristics. Our results show some remarkable differences in employment patterns. Controlling for educational level, partnership and the presence of children, it was found that native women more often work in part-time jobs than ethnic minority women. For native Dutch women, the number of children influences both the employment decision and the number of hours worked, whereas for ethnic minority women, this only effects full-time employment.

Recent research suggests that self-employment among immigrants is due to a combination of multiple situational, cultural and institutional factors, all acting together. Using multilevel regression and unique data on the entire population of Sweden for the year 2007, this study attempts to quantify the relative importance for the self-employed of embeddedness in ethnic contexts (country of birth) and regional business and public regulatory frameworks (labour market areas). This information indicates whether the layers under consideration are valid constructs of the surroundings that influence individual self-employment. The results show that 10% (women) and 8% (men) of the total variation in individual differences in self-employment can be attributed to the country of birth. When labour market areas are included in the analyses, the share of the total variation increases to 14% for women and 12% for men. The results show that the ethnic context and the economic environment play a minor role in understanding individual differences in self-employment levels. The results can have important implications when planning interventions or other actions focusing on self-employment as public measures to promote self-employment often are based on geographic areas and ethnic contexts.

This report deals with the integration of individuals originating from the six non-western immigrant countries of Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Somalia, Turkey and Vietnam and their descendants in Sweden in the ten-year period 1998-2008. The central aim of the report is to analyse the integration patterns of these groups in three important areas: demographic behaviour, educational enrolment and labour market integration. This research has three objectives. The first is to determine when the groups came into being and how they have developed, with a focus on key features of population change, i.e. the overall growth, components of growth and age-sex-structure shifts. The second objective is to analyse two specific aspects: the groups’ integration and participation in the educational system, i.e. educational enrolment, and their integration patterns in the labour market, with a main focus on employment and unemployment. In order to provide a bridge between the analyses of population change and integration, compositions of the groups by selected traits, such as immigrant generation and duration of residence, are also examined. The third objective is to study, where feasible, the impact of selected public policies and practices, particularly those pertaining to immigration and integration. Over the last six decades the size of Sweden’s immigrant population (immigrants and their descendants) has steadily increased. Migration flows into the country have been associated with societal phenomena such as labour demand in the growing economy, family reunions and refugee streams due to wars and political conflicts. Although earlier migration streams appear to have integrated relatively well, concern about the current streams is high on the political agenda. It is thought that more in-depth knowledge about the integration patterns of the demographic, educational and labour market domains could lead to improved integration policies. In 2010, almost one fifth of Sweden’s population consisted of immigrants or descendants of immigrants. To be more exact, 14.7 per cent of the country’s 9,415,570 inhabitants are immigrants in Sweden. Descendants of immigrants amount to 412,960 persons, or 4.4 per cent of the total population. In other words, immigrants from the countries that are in focus in this report and their descendants constitute 20 per cent of the immigrant population in Sweden, with individuals from Iraq making up the largest immigrant group and people from Pakistan the smallest. Since the end of the 1960s Sweden has made use of a number of integration strategies to accommodate immigrants into several areas of society. Of these, Swedish language proficiency and integration into the economic domain have been the most important. According to The Migrant Integration Policy Index (2007), Sweden scores very highly when it comes to granting immigrants access to and rights in the labour market. To summarise the most important results and at the same time return to the first objective of this study, namely the demographic integration in the period 1998-2008, we can see that all six immigrant groups have grown. In particular, the Iraqi and Somali groups have experienced a substantial increase in number. For Iran, Iraq, Somalia and Vietnam the growth is due to both net migration and an increasing number of descendants. For Pakistan, the main reason for the increase is net migration. Overall, the population growth in Sweden in this period is mainly a result of net migration and higher birth rates among immigrants and to a somewhat lower degree their descendants. As might be expected, “older” immigrant groups that have been in Sweden for a longer period of time have more descendants than “younger” immigrant groups. Iran, Turkey and Vietnam can be depicted as “older” groups and Iraq, Pakistan and Somalia as “younger” ones. With the exception of Iran, all the immigrant groups show a higher crude birth rate than that for native Swedes. The immigrant groups are still younger than the native population and have a far lower crude death rate than natives. In general, immigrants are married to individuals from the same group, whereas their descendants tend to be married to natives or individuals from other immigrant groups. The total fertility rate is higher among most of the immigrant groups compared to that for natives. Again, Iranian women are the exception, where descendants show a lower fertility rate than their immigrant parents. The second objective of the study – to analyse two specific aspects of the integration of the groups – includes participation in the educational system, i.e. educational enrolment, and integration patterns in the labour market, with a focus on employment and unemployment. When it comes to enrolment in education, the immigrant groups show a variation. Iraqi and Iranian men and women, as well as males from Pakistan and females from Vietnam, match the enrolment levels of native men and women in the age group 16-19. Moreover, the descendants of immigrants generally show a higher enrolment level than their immigrant counterparts. A positive development is visible over time. Both immigrants and descendants have higher enrolment levels in education at the end of the period compared to the beginning, i.e. 2008 versus 1998. However, Somali men and women have a lower enrolment level at the end of the period compared to the start. Major migration to Sweden and difficulties of entering the regular educational system could be reasons for this result. Descendant females show a higher enrolment level than descendant males. The pattern is similar for immigrants, but at a lower level. For higher education, the results indicate a gender gap with more female than male students. The employment integration of individuals in the core labour market ages of 25-54 is relatively low. However, a positive trend is visible over time. Both females and males from the six immigrant groups have higher employment rates at the end of the period. The gender gap shows that males have higher employment levels than females. The largest gap is detected for Pakistan and Turkey. The employment rates for young immigrants aged 16-24 are lower than those for natives. For women we see no positive development over time, but for males an increasing employment rate is visible. Male and female descendants in this age group have lower employment rates than natives, but higher employment rates than their immigrant counterparts. Following the cohort of 25-39 year-old immigrants over time from 1998 to 2003 to 2008, increasing employment levels can be observed for both females and males. The exceptions are Pakistani and Somali males, which show no increasing employment levels between 2003 and 2008. The unemployment rate for both immigrant females and males drops during the ten-year period, with the exception of Iraqi and Somali immigrants. Female youth unemployment also drops over time for most immigrant groups, again with the exception of Somali immigrants. For males, youth unemployment also decreases. The exceptions here are Iraqi, Somali and native males. Descendant unemployment levels are mainly in parity with or lower than native levels. Inactivity is higher for all immigrant groups compared to natives. However, the inactivity rate drops substantially over the period. With regard to the third objective of the study – to provide insights into the impact of selected public policies and practices, particularly those pertaining to immigration and integration on the chosen aspects of change and integration – we can highlight the following issues. No particular integration policy aimed at immigrant groups deals with demographic aspects. The observed change in the demographic behaviour of the descendants of the six immigrant groups, albeit to differing degrees, is voluntary and shows an adaption to the behaviour of the population in general. Integration policies have a strong focus on educational and labour market integration in Sweden. In addition to the general positive economic business cycle, the economic integration of six immigrant groups and their descendents shows a gradual positive development. Integration policies aimed at immigrants and education policies aimed at the population in general have also had an effect on the successive larger educational enrolment of immigrants and their descendents.

Forskningen om etniskt företagande har ökat internationellt och efter hand också i Sverige. Motivet är både teoretiskt och praktiskt. Man vill förklara de skillnader som finns mellan olika etniska gruppers företagande t ex beträffande drivkrafter för företagandet. Man vill också visa möjligheterna till integration genom egenföretagande t ex genom att peka på hinder för företagandet som bör undanröjas. En viktig fråga, som också är en huvudfråga i denna artikel, är vilka faktorer som har betydelse för den individuella benägenheten att vara egenföretagare. Det är en fråga som ofta tar sin utgångspunkt i de skillnader som finns mellan olika etniska gruppers andel egenföretagare.

The employment integration of immigrants and in particular refugees in Swedish society has been the subject of many debates and constitutes one of the major political challenges faced in the last two decades. Like in many European countries, refugees are more likely to be unemployed, have temporary jobs and lower income. Most studies of immigrant economic integration have been undertaken at the national level, taking into account place of birth, but not by admission status. This study focuses on the employment integration by admission status by looking at the outcomes for resettled refugees, asylum claimants (asylum-seekers who may subsequently obtain a residence permit), and immigrants who arrive via family reunion migration. Using logistic regression methods we estimate the probability of having a job after controlling for a set of personal and immigrant intake characteristics as well as contextual factors. The results of the analysis indicate that family reunion immigrants have a faster employment attachment than asylum claimants which in turn have faster employment integration than resettled refugees in the Swedish labour market. The understanding of the results of the analysis is that selection processes (self-selection as well as selection through policy mechanisms) and networks are important factors explaining the employment integration of immigrants.

In September 2010 the anti-immigration party, the Sweden Democrats (SD), crossed the electoral threshold to the Swedish parliament (Riksdagen) for the first time with 5.7 percent of the total votes. The aim of this article is to analyze the effect of the media exposure on fluctuations in opinion polls for political parties; i.e. the media effect. In particular to what extent this can explain the electoral fortunes of the SD. We correlate the number of articles published in the print media with the results of the SD opinion polls as well as the opinion poll results of all the other parliamentary parties during a 48 month period, from the month after the 2006 elections (October 2006) up to September 2010. Our results show that the media effect is more important for the SD compared to the other parliamentary parties, similar in size. The media effect also differs between the six newspapers put into scrutiny in this study, the leading daily Dagens Nyheter (DN) had a considerably stronger effect on the opinion fluctuations, compared to the other five newspapers. To conclude, media exposure sometimes matters, especially for 'new parties', but neither to the same degree everywhere nor at the same time. Ultimately, our findings show that the threshold of relevance does not perfectly match with the crossing of the electoral threshold to the national parliament, as suggested in the literature to explain the electoral fortunes of new anti-immigration parties prior to their entry into parliament.

Three decades ago, Sweden extended municipal and provincial voting privileges to non-citizen residents arguing that it would increase political influence, interest and self-esteem among foreign citizens. The aim of this paper is to explore the act of voting as a measure of social inclusion by comparing voting propensities of immigrants (people born outside Sweden), their descendants (born in Sweden) and native Swedish citizens (those who have citizenship through jus sanguine) while controlling for a range of socio-economic, demographic characteristics, contextual factors and a set of “hard” and “soft” social inclusion related variables. In particular we focus on the impact of citizenship acquisition -- does the symbolic act of attaining citizenship result in increased voting participation on the part of Swedish residents who are not citizens by birth. We use the Swedish 2006 electoral survey matched to registry data from Statistics Sweden to assess the correlates of voting by Swedish-born and immigrant residents. Using instrumental variable regressions we estimate the impact of citizenship acquisition. We find that acquisition of citizenship makes a real difference to the probability of voting. Immigrants who naturalise are in general far more likely to vote than those who do not.

This article investigates the effect of human capital on the employment acquisition of foreign-born men and women in Sweden. Besides categorizing different levels of education, a distinction is made between type of education, general and vocational, and where education is obtained, home or host country. The data used is based on register data for the year 2003 held by Statistics Sweden. The population under consideration is the total population subdivided by the following countries of birth: Sweden, Former Yugoslavia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Poland, Romania, Chile, Germany, Iraq, Iran, and Lebanon. The analysis shows that foreign-born individuals have a higher probability of employment with a vocational and host country education as opposed to a general and home country education.

Labour market integration of ethnic minority women is central for economic integration, as they may experience a double disadvantage: both as a woman and as a migrant. This presumed double disadvantage has recently become the focus of both Dutch integration and emancipation policy. To test several assumptions underlying this, we analyse to what extent labour market participation of different groups of women and the hours they work are influenced by human capital and household characteristics. Our results show some remarkable differences in employment patterns. Controlling for educational level, partnership and the presence of children, it was found that native women more often work in part-time jobs than ethnic minority women. For native Dutch women, the number of children influences both the employment decision and the number of hours worked, whereas for ethnic minority women, this only effects full-time employment.

Immigration to Sweden in the last three decades consists mainly of refugees and family reunion migrants. The increasing numbers of asylum seekers in the world together with a relatively liberal admission policy toward refugees and family reunion implied an increased population for Sweden due to net immigration. In the same period, various integration policies have been implemented to increase both labor market integration and political participation. Settlement policies toward newly arrived immigrants have been shifting over time according to the political and labor market context. Citizenship policies have over time changed and today include both the possibility of dual citizenship and the right to vote by noncitizens in local and provincial elections. Although intentions are good, both the employment integration and the voting participation by immigrants are substantially lower than for native Swedes and this questions the effectiveness of integration policies.

With the use of multiple regression technique, the principal objective of this study is to clarify and examine young people's attitudes towards Muslims, and the relationships between these attitudes and a large number of background factors. We use a representative sample of 9,498 non-Muslim youths between 15 and 19 years of age. The main results show that, when controlling for several background variables simultaneously, the country of birth, socio-economic background and school/programme factors all have an effect on the attitude towards Muslims. Moreover, socio-psychological factors, the relationship to friends and the perceptions of gender role patterns are found to be important. In addition, local factors like high levels of unemployment, high proportions of immigrants in a local environment also have an effect. No differences in the attitudes of boys and girls were found. Further, the study establishes a correlation between negative attitudes and right-wing populist seats in local government.

Higher-level skills are increasingly demanded by the knowledge-based economy. But with rising mobility and demographic change, it is no longer so simple to invest in a skilled workforce for the future. Actions are needed on a variety of fronts, including attracting and retaining talent, better integrating disadvantaged groups into the labour force, and upgrading the skills of low-paid workers. Much of the responsibility for these actions falls squarely on the shoulders of local policy makers. Drawing from a wide array of case studies, this book analyses best-practice local strategies for increasing workforce skills. And it also takes a close look at the opportunities and challenges presented by international migration. The in-depth case studies in this report range from Shanghai’s “Highland of Talent Strategy” to new “career ladders” which help immigrants escape low-skilled, low-paid employment in New York. National and local-level recommendations on local skills development are provided, for both OECD and non-OECD countries.

Sweden has resettled refugees in partnership with the UNHCR since 1950 and it is one of the countries that receives the largest number of resettled refugees every year. Despite this fact, our knowledge of the labour market integration of this particular category of refugees has been limited. This volume is an outcome of the project Labour Market Integration of Resettled Refugees in Sweden. It includes a mapping of the labour market integration of resettled refugees in Sweden and it covers different facets of the reception and integration of this group such as the institutional framework, the integration of resettled refugees from Bosnia and Vietnam, resettlement policy and its consequences, the health of refugees in the reception process, and the effects of admission status on immigrants’ access to the labour market. In addition, this book contains a more general chapter on resettlement in Canada to provide some contrast to the Swedish case.

Using the social capital literature as a base, we explore the impact of interaction with others on voter participation with particular emphasis on exploring the differences between Canadian-born majority and minority residents. We use the 2002 wave of the Equality Security Community survey to explore the relationship between voting and personal characteristics, work characteristics, social capital attributes and ethnic characteristics. We find that the odds of voting are largely a product of socio-demographic and social capital attributes. The impact of immigration and ethnicity is largely overridden. This suggests that it is not the minority attribute that impacts voting. Rather it is age, level of schooling and level of civic engagement which affects the probability of voting, both federal and provincial.