Sweden Now Has Net Emigration

More people will leave Sweden than arrive in 2024, a major turnaround for the country, which was once the most enthusiastic adopter of mass migration in Europe, and which experienced all the social unrest that seems to inevitably come with it.

The Swedish government has hailed its new anti-mass migration policies, as migrants start leaving the country in larger numbers, meaning it now has net emigration for the first time in over 50 years. The government’s Migration Minister, Maria Malmer Stenergard, has announced that “Sweden has stopped being an asylum immigration country” on the back of the latest figures.

This change is, in part, due to considerably fewer asylum seekers coming to Sweden this year and more migrants leaving Sweden. In a remarkable development unthinkable only a couple of years ago, a thousand more Iraqis left than arrived in 2023, over a thousand more Somalis left than arrived, and 500 more Syrians left than arrived.

The number of people leaving Sweden has increased by 60 per cent.

According to a Ministry of Justice statement based on Migration Agency data, Sweden will receive the lowest number of asylum seekers in 2024 of any year since 1997. Illustrating just how far these have fallen, there were 85,000 asylum applications in 2016, and just 5,600 so far in 2024, with new applications already running 27 per cent lower this year than in 2023, which itself had represented a record low year.

While these figures are relatively small and only represent baby steps towards the greater goal, which Minister Stenergard discussed, net migration being minus 5,700 in 2024 and being driven by former migrants departing is consequential for the country of just ten million people.

This change is not down to wider European trends, either, which makes Sweden’s achievement even more impressive. The government’s data pack makes clear that overall asylum seekers in the European Union remain very high, but “in Sweden, the decline continues from an already historically low level,”  demonstrating Sweden has succeeded in the new government’s mission to make the country less attractive to mass migration.

Indeed, in 2015, Sweden took 13 per cent of all asylum seekers in the EU. In 2024, it is predicted to take just one percent.

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The Swedish government says that it has implemented “stricter asylum legislation” through combating what it calls the “shadow society”—the black market that allows illegal migrants to thrive—increasing returns and repatriations, cracking down on low-skill migration, revoking more residence permits for those who abuse Sweden’s hospitality, making chain migration harder, and requiring migrants to integrate.

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