Einar H. Dyvik
Research expert covering Nordics and global data for society, economy, and politics
Migration in Sweden - statistics & facts
For several hundred years, Sweden was a country with a higher rate of emigration than immigration. This was particularly the case during the 19th and early 20th century, when a large number of Swedes emigrated to North America due to poverty and famine in Sweden. However, during the interwar period, Sweden changed from being an emigrant country to an immigrant country. Up until the 1970s, there were mainly labor migrants arriving in the Nordic country, but gradually, there were more refugees and asylum seekers arriving. For instance, a high number of refugees from the former Yugoslav countries arrived in Sweden during the Yugoslav War in the 1990s. However, the number of immigrants to Sweden peaked in 2016 with the high number of Syrian refugees arriving in Europe that and the previous year. Sweden was the European country that accepted the second highest number of refugees during the first half of the 2010s.
