Sweden and migration
Sweden has a long history of migration. Get the bigger picture here.
Migration started early in Sweden. During the Middle Ages, Germans from merchant trading communities were the largest immigrant group.
Roma people started immigrating as early as the 1500s, while Walloons – French-speaking people from Belgium – came to Sweden in the late 1600s as the country’s iron industry began to develop.
Other key immigrant groups were Jews, who started arriving in the 1700s, alongside French artists and many others. Once brick buildings started popping up all over the country, Italian workers skilled in bricklaying and stuccowork also started moving in.
The great emigration
Then, from 1850 up until the 1930s, came ‘the great emigration’. Around 1.5 million native Swedes left the country.
They went primarily to the Americas and Australia – to escape poverty and religious persecution, and to seek a better life for themselves and their families. That figure equals 20 per cent of the men and 15 per cent of the women born at the end of the 1800s.
The peak year of the great emigration was 1887, when more than 50,000 people left Sweden.
Top reasons for leaving Sweden during the great emigration:
- poverty
- religious persecution
- a lack of belief in the future
- political constraints
- a longing for adventure and ’gold fever’
Read more about the great emigration at Statistics Sweden.
Total population of Sweden today (automatically updated):
10,587,710 people
Immigration after World War II
Ever since World War II Sweden has been a country of immigration. Many people have come for work.
Migrants from Germany and other Nordic and Baltic countries made up the bulk of post-war immigrants. While many Germans and Scandinavians returned home after the war, many immigrants from the Baltics remained.
The next set of migrants during these decades were workers from Finland, Italy, Greece, the former Yugoslavia, other Balkan countries and Türkiye who came looking for job opportunities once World War II was over.
Many work migrants returned to their countries after a few years of work in Sweden.
After World War II, people from many different countries came to work in Sweden. Photo: Tore Burnäs/Stockholms stadsmuseum/CC-BY
In 1967, the city of Stockholm opened an 'Immigrant Service' office, an information desk for people who had moved to Sweden. Photo: Lars Groth/Stockholms stadsarkiv/CC-BY
This is the Stockholm suburb of Tensta in 1971, part of a public housing programme between 1965 and 1974 called the Million Programme. Sweden's bigger cities had to provide housing for all the people moving there, both from the Swedish countryside and from other countries. Photo: Lennart af Petersens/Stockholms stadsmuseum/CC-BY-NC-ND
After World War II, people from many different countries came to work in Sweden. Photo: Tore Burnäs/Stockholms stadsmuseum/CC-BY
In 1967, the city of Stockholm opened an 'Immigrant Service' office, an information desk for people who had moved to Sweden. Photo: Lars Groth/Stockholms stadsarkiv/CC-BY
This is the Stockholm suburb of Tensta in 1971, part of a public housing programme between 1965 and 1974 called the Million Programme. Sweden's bigger cities had to provide housing for all the people moving there, both from the Swedish countryside and from other countries. Photo: Lennart af Petersens/Stockholms stadsmuseum/CC-BY-NC-ND
After World War II, people from many different countries came to work in Sweden. Photo: Tore Burnäs/Stockholms stadsmuseum/CC-BY
In 1967, the city of Stockholm opened an 'Immigrant Service' office, an information desk for people who had moved to Sweden. Photo: Lars Groth/Stockholms stadsarkiv/CC-BY
This is the Stockholm suburb of Tensta in 1971, part of a public housing programme between 1965 and 1974 called the Million Programme. Sweden's bigger cities had to provide housing for all the people moving there, both from the Swedish countryside and from other countries. Photo: Lennart af Petersens/Stockholms stadsmuseum/CC-BY-NC-ND
The 1980–1990s – more people seeking asylum
In the 1980s Sweden saw a rise of asylum seekers, with high immigration from countries like Iran and Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Türkiye, Eritrea and Somalia, as well as South American countries.
Among others, many Chileans chose to come to Sweden following the refugee waves caused by Augusto Pinochet’s regime during 1973–1990. Relatively few returned to Chile after Pinochet was ousted from power in 1990. Today, Sweden is home to the third largest Chilean community outside of Chile, after Argentina and the US, some 45,000 people.
During the Iran–Iraq War that lasted from 1980 to 1989, nearly 7,000 people from Iraq and 27,000 Iranians were granted residence permits in Sweden as refugees according to the Geneva Convention. The 2003 invasion of Iraq led to yet another wave of Iraqis migrating to Sweden.
In the 1990s the wars in the Balkans caused substantial immigration from former Yugoslavia to Sweden. Over 100,000 Bosnians and 3,600 Kosovo Albanians were granted asylum.
From the 2000s – increasing work migration
When Sweden joined the Schengen co-operation in 2001, this meant open borders to other European Union (EU) member states and an influx of other EU citizens into the country.
About 29,000 people from countries outside of the EU and the European Economic Area (EEA) also moved to Sweden for work during the 2000s.
Today, Sweden’s startup and technology industry means a lot of foreign workers – especially in the ICT field – come to the country looking for job opportunities, making ‘work’ the top reason for moving to Sweden.
The five main reasons for migrating to Sweden:
- Work
Swedish companies are looking for talent and a lot of foreign workers are moving to Sweden for work.
Read more about obtaining a work permit. - Family
People migrating to reunite with close family members remain one of the largest immigrant groups into the country, according to statistics from the Swedish Migration Agency. - EU/EEA
EU/EEA citizens who work, study or can support themselves automatically have a right of residence and can live in Sweden without a residence permit. Citizens of non-EU/EAA countries or residents of another EU/EEA country and their family members, as well as Swiss citizens, can apply for a residence permit via the 'EU/EEA' connection. - Studies
Many move to Sweden to further their studies. Most international students in Sweden are usually from Europe, followed by Asia and North America.
Studyinsweden.se has more about studying in Sweden. - Asylum
Sweden has signed the UN Refugee Convention, which means that the country has agreed to examine and grant asylum to people recognised as refugees according to the Convention.
Immigration from war zones
Sweden has a long history of receiving refugees from active war zones.
In 2015, more than 160,000 people sought asylum in Sweden, an unprecedented number. This peak was mainly due to the Syrian Civil War, but a large share of people also came from Afghanistan and Iraq. More than one in five were children who arrived without parents or another legal guardian. From 2014 to 2018 Syrians made up the single largest immigrant group coming to Sweden each year.
After 2015 there was a big drop in asylum applications, partly due to changes to Sweden’s migration policy.
In 2024, the largest immigration group was people born in Ukraine, a result of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Another big immigration group is returning Swedes – that is, people who have once emigrated and then choose to return.
Emigration
Emigration from Sweden has been relatively high over the years, and mostly growing since World War II. The first year to beat the emigration record from 1887 – the peak year of the Great Emigration – was 2011. Admittedly, the 51,000 emigrants of 2011 made up a much smaller part of the population than the ones in 1887. And this time they mostly emigrated to neighbouring Norway, Denmark and other European countries, but also to the US and China.
Global migration
Current estimates indicate that there are more than 280 million international migrants in the world. That’s people who, for various reasons, have moved to a different country than they were born in.
In 2018, Sweden and all other UN countries adopted a world-first global migration agreement, which aims to improve the possibilities of legal migration and facilitate for countries that receive migrants.
In Sweden there are around 2 million people who were born in another country, or about every fifth person. One of the most common reasons to move to Sweden, apart from work, is to reunite with family.
As mentioned above, Sweden has signed the UN Refugee Convention, which means that the country has vowed to examine and grant asylum to people recognised as refugees according to the Convention. Most refugees apply for asylum, and it’s the Swedish Migration Agency that handles all asylum applications.*
The Swedish Migration Agency has more information and statistics on migration to Sweden.
*The Dublin Regulation states that a refugee who comes to Europe must apply for asylum in the first safe country she/he arrives in.
