Introduction

This chapter describes Sweden's refugee dispersal policy and analyses its outcomes. The explicit dispersal policy, often referred to as the ‘Sweden-wide’ or ‘All-of-Sweden’ policy, began in 1985 and, in principle, is still guiding the settlement of new refugees in Sweden, despite the fact that a policy change in 1994 turned out to strongly affect its basic prerequisites. By the end of December 2000, only 137 out of 289 municipalities had made agreements with the Swedish Migration Board to engage in the local reception of refugees for 2001. (In 1991, the number of municipalities was twice as high, at 277 out of 289.)

This chapter also examines the background factors that resulted in the formulation of this policy. Therefore, postwar immigration to Sweden and the major political decisions that were developed to cope with this immigration are summarised. The first part of this chapter is based on compilations by Jonas Widgren (1980) and Maria Appelqvist (1999, 2000), and on reports from several state commissions that have analysed immigration issues over the years (for example SOU 1982:49, 1996:55).

The second part of the chapter outlines the ‘Sweden-wide’ policy of refugee reception and is divided into three sections. The first deals with the policy's first and more radical dispersal phase. The second focuses on the effects of a modification introduced in 1994. The third section describes the main tasks of the two state boards involved in the reception of refugees, namely the Migration Board and the Swedish Integration Board (SIB).

The policy's effects on the settlement pattern is analysed in the third part of the chapter, while in the fourth part an attempt is made to evaluate the dispersal policy and to suggest improvements to the programme. The evaluation and discussion draw upon earlier research (Andersson, 1996, 1997, 1998; Sandberg, 1998) and several evaluations undertaken by state commissions and different state boards, such as the Swedish Migration Board (SIV) and the Swedish National Audit Office (Riksrevisionsverket).

This chapter is based on secondary sources – research reports, public investigations, local evaluations, statistics – as well as interviews and correspondence with key individuals at the SIV (Migration Board) since 1 July 2000), the Swedish Integration Board (SIB), municipalities, and nongovernmental organisations (NGOs). A huge corpus of written documentation exists, published in Swedish, and which is concerned with immigration, refugee and integration issues. Only a fraction of this literature is referred to in this chapter.