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Policies for refugees’ settlement, housing, and employment are usually not formulated or analyzed in relation to each other. This study aims to address the dialectical relationship among settlement, housing, and labor market activation policies for refugees. To do this, we draw on Benson’s (see Benson 1977; 1983) conceptualization of the dialectical perspective and its four interconnected principles (social construction/production, context, contradiction, and praxis) and employ this approach at two critical moments when Swedish policies on housing and employment for refugees were significantly reorganized. Overall, the organization of the settlement and inclusion of refugees in terms of housing and employment produces intentional and unintentional contradictions with several possible outcomes. The actual outcomes show that some contradictions and paradoxes among the various spheres and geographical levels have not been resolved by state policy reorganization (decentralization or centralization).

Migration policy in the Nordic welfare states is increasingly marked by restrictiveness. Although research has studied the consequences of this policy trend, there is limited knowledge about how it affects stress levels and the well-being of migrants. In this study, we examine the impact of a policy change implemented in Sweden in 2016 that resulted in the swift abandonment of permanent residence. To conduct our research, we use survey data to compare differences in self-stated levels of stress and well-being among those granted permanent residence status according to the pre-2016 policy and those granted temporary residence according to the new policy. Our findings indicate a significant difference in well-being between the two groups, with those granted temporary residence permits experiencing lower levels of well-being as well as more stress related to their own and their family members’ status. Importantly, we conclude that a lower sense of well-being is correlated with higher levels of stress connected to residence status. These results have important implications for evaluating the impact of the new migration policy in Sweden and assessing similar policy trends in other contexts.

Alla behöver någonstans att bo. Bostaden är så central för vår välfärd att vi ser den som en mänsklig rättighet. Bostadsfrågan skär in i flera olika politikområden och kan diskuteras från vitt skilda utgångspunkter. Var – och hur – vi bor påverkar i hög grad vårt handlingsutrymme och våra framtidsutsikter. De ojämlika förutsättningarna på bostadsmarknaden är en av de tydligaste klassmarkörerna i dagens Sverige.

I antologin "Allas rätt till bostad" analyserar 28 bostads- och urbanforskare från olika akademiska discipliner svensk bostadspolitik, dess förutsättningar, historiska utveckling och konkreta resultat. En socialt medveten bostadspolitik behöver inte minst förhålla sig till den växande ojämlikheten i det svenska samhället. Men den bostadspolitik som har förts, med privatiseringar och vinstkrav även på offentligt ägda bolag, har tvärtom fått klyftorna att växa. Hyresrätten är till exempel idag klart missgynnad jämfört med bostadsägandet. Antologins texter diskuterar också – bland mycket annat – den betydelse bostadsbidraget, besittningsskyddet, byggindustrin och barnkonventionen kan ha i ett vidare bostadspolitiskt perspektiv.Bostadspolitiken är en ödesfråga för många människor och för ett demokratiskt samhälle. Antologin visar att  det krävs mer debatt och politisk fantasi och större rättvisa i bostadsfrågan än vi ser i dag.

The dramatic event that the great migration in the summer of 2015 entailed changed the migration policies of various countries. Substantial amendments were hastily made in a policy field in which already tense state-local relations struggled to manage coordination, responsibilities, and funding. Sweden, recognized as a final host country of the massive flows of refugees and asylum-seekers, was no exception. In Sweden, autonomy in terms of local refugee reception was circumvented in 2016. Municipalities' remaining discretion is above all concentrated to one of the most crucial spheres of refugee reception: the outline of local housing policies. We argue that housing may be perceived as a tool of resilience that local governments may use to maintain far-reaching influence over the settlement of migrants with a refugee background by selecting restrictive or generous policy options. In this paper, we conduct a theoretically grounded analysis of local housing policy for refugees among Swedish municipalities. To capture the intrinsic dynamic, we propose a generic typology applying the dimension of either a liberal or a restrictive housing policy and relate it to theoretical notions of refugee policy as characterized by either a rights-based or a more restrictive approach. Our findings show that local governments in Sweden pursue a wide array of policy stances that appear to be correlated with factors originating from prior experiences of refugee reception, conditions in the labor and housing markets, and political circumstances. Based on this, we argue that local housing policy has offered municipalities a tool to exert a form of intentional, or unintentional, migration control despite national efforts to impose a more just system of refugee reception.

The report brings together results and experiences from previous research and exchanges between the consortium partners.