Population figures
Total country population
10,673,670
Forcibly displaced population
Refugees (under UNHCR's mandate):
223,204
Asylum-seekers:
9,448
IDPs (of concern to UNHCR):
0
Other people in need of international protection:
0
Other
Statelessness persons
1,714
Host community
0
Others of concern to UNHCR
0
Country context
Sweden is located in Northern Europe on the Scandinavian Peninsula, bordered by Norway to the west and north, Finland to the northeast, and the Baltic Sea and Gulf of Bothnia to the east. Refugees and asylum-seekers in Sweden originate from a diverse range of countries, including Syria, Afghanistan, Somalia and Ukraine. They reside predominantly in urban centres such as Stockholm, Gothenburg and Malmö, accommodated in reception facilities during application processing and thereafter integrating into municipal housing and private rental markets. Persons granted subsidiary or temporary protection similarly live in urban settings, accessing labour-market inclusion and social-welfare schemes on par with recognized refugees.
International protection in Sweden is governed by the Aliens Act (Utlänningslagen), which consolidated refugee-status determination, subsidiary protection and temporary protection into domestic law. A significant reform in July 2021 shifted beneficiaries of international protection from permanent to time-limited residence permits—typically three years for refugees and shorter terms for subsidiary protection recipients—while introducing a pathway to permanent status upon renewal.
...In response to regional displacement, Sweden transposed the EU Temporary Protection Directive into Chapter 21 of the Aliens Act, granting immediate entitlement to residence permits, work authorization and access to social services for persons covered by the Directive, notably those arriving from Ukraine under temporary protection. This mechanism operates alongside standard asylum procedures, ensuring expedited access to rights without requiring individual refugee-status interviews for qualifying nationals.
Statelessness is not addressed through a dedicated status-determination procedure in national law. Although Sweden acceded to both the 1954 Convention Relating to the Status of Stateless Persons and the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness, the Aliens Act and ancillary regulations lack an explicit definition or process for identifying statelessness. In practice, the Swedish Migration Agency may identify stateless persons during asylum, residence-permit or naturalization procedures, guided by administrative instructions issued in 2023 to align with the 1954 Convention’s definition. However, no separate legal pathway grants residence or travel documentation solely on the basis of statelessness, and affected individuals obtain residence permits under general immigration categories without specific appeal rights related to statelessness status.
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