Research projects about migration and integration

Labour market integration of foreign-born persons is a key challenge both for integration policies and for the organising of future working-life.

Read more about the project: Changing roles, emerging networks. Local governments as employer, procurer and entrepreneur in labour market integration

Project leader: Patrik Zapata
Period: 2020-2023
Seat of learning: University of Gothenburg

Labour market integration of foreign-born persons is a key challenge both for integration policies and for the organising of future working-life. A large number of local labour market integration initiatives have been developed from bottom-up in recent years, led by municipalities in collaboration with public organizations, companies and non-profits; a phenomenon that is still understudied.

Read more about the project: Managing the Unreliability of Migration Control: A Study of Biometrics and EU Information Technology Systems in Sweden

Project leader: Anna Bredström, PhD, Associate Professor External link.
Period: 2020–2024
Seat of learning: Linköping University

The project aims to generate knowledge about deaf adult refugees’ language situation. The integration of this group is strongly linked to their varied linguistic background, which is further complicated by the fact that many of these refugees are language delayed due to having had no or limited access to any language during childhood, seriously affecting their communicative abilities.

Read more about the project: The multilingual situation of deaf refugees in Sweden

Project leader: Ingela Holmström
Period: 2020-2023
Seat of learning: Stockholm University

Read more about the project: Staging Migration. Rhetoric, representation and reception in Swedish children’s theatre

Project leader: Anna Lund
Period: 2020-2023
Seat of learning: Stockholms University

This project deals with a critical dimension of the intensification and deepening of circular migration, namely the expansion of what we term “migrant preparatory training,” vocational education in the deployment of low-skilled documented international labor migrants from sending to receiving countries.

Read more about the project: Migrant Preparatory Training and the Shaping Circular Migration between Ethiopia and the Gulf States

Project leader: Johan Lindquist
Period: 2020-2022
Seat of learning: Stockholm University

This project investigates the role of the second generation, the children of migrants, in what one might call the global struggle for democracy. Authoritarianism is, alongside armed conflict, a key factor for forced migration, and non-democratic regimes increasingly seek to stifle dissent not only within but increasingly also across borders.

Read more about the project: Transnational lives in the shadow of repression: Diaspora youth and the struggle for democracy

Project leader: Camilla Orjuela
Period: 2020-2022
Seat of learning: University of Gothenburg

The management of migrants and refugees is one of the key challenges facing the EU today. Since the ‘refugee crisis’ of 2015-16, the EU has been redesigning its policy frameworks to better regulate migrants before they reach Europe itself.

Read more about the project: Outsourcing migration control: Externalizing EU borders to Africa

Project leader: Joakim Berndtsson
Period: 2020-2022
Seat of learning: University of Gothenburg

The research project examines the role of lived religion for social mobility and integration among three religious migrant groups in Sweden: Muslims, Buddhists, and Christians. Limited social mobility and segregation bring about a number of negative consequences for society and individuals such as health-related issues, social isolation, inequality, unemployment, and increased segregation.

Read more about the project: Lived religion and social mobility among migrants in Sweden

Project leader: Daniel Enstedt External link.
Period: 2020-2024
Seat of learning: Göteborgs universitet

This project takes a multidimensional perspective on integration, following the evolution of its structural, cultural, social and psychological dimensions for young people over time (ages 14-22).

Read more about the project: Integration of youth in Sweden in a multidimensional perspective (SEMI)

Project leader: Jan O. Jonsson External link.
Period: 2019–2023
Seat of learning: Institute for Futures Studies

The project aims to bring new knowledge about the policies and actions of states and organizations concerning large-scale immigration of refugees and victims of war and other catastrophes, in this case the surviving remnant of European Jewry after the Holocaust.

Read more about the project: The rehabilitation and integration of the Holocaust survivors in Sweden

Project leader: Pontus Rudberg
Period: 2020–2023
Seat of learning: Uppsala University

The project fills a gap in current scholarship by approaching civil society responses to integration across multiple domains in Sweden’s so called ‘vulnerable areas’, linking these to the local context of vulnerability, to superdiversity, to formal and informal variants of civil society and variants of social capital.

Read more about the project: Rethinking Integration: a comparative mixed methods study of civil society action in vulnerable superdiverse neighbourhoods in Sweden

Project leader: Gabriella Elgenius
Period: 2020-23
Seat of learning: University of Gothenburg

The overall goal for the project is to contribute to improved care for migrants from the Middle East and Somalia by increasing the knowledge of how value conflicts and cultural change are to be managed in the health care sector.

Read more about the project: Migration and equity in sexual and reproductive health: The importance of dynamics in cultural and social values for improving practice through co-production

Project leader: Birgitta Essén
Period: 2019–2024
Seat of learning: Uppsala universitet

Understanding public discourse is essential for managing reactions to modern migration and integrating the newly arrived. In the wake of digitalization, much of the public sentiment, agenda setting, and political framing of societal developments has moved to social-media platforms, publicly-accessible newspaper repositories, and machine-readable archives of parliamentary speeches and party manifestos.

Read more about the project: Mining for Meaning: The Dynamics of Public Discourse on Migration

Project leader: Marc Keuschnigg
Period: 2019 - 2024
Seat of learning: Linköping University

The overall aim of this project is to investigate how urban communities address the pressures of refugee migration by examining governance approaches to these challenges. It contains two research streams: one on the political institutions shaping refugee-host population interactions, and the second on social institutions governing these interactions.

Read more about the project: Refugee Migration and Cities: Social Institutions, Political Governance and Integration in Jordan, Turkey and Sweden (SIPGI)

Project leader: Andrea Spehar
Period: 2019-2024
Seat of learning: University of Gothenburg

Immigrant subgroups are defined as refugees and other immigrants from different countries. Temporal and inter-country (Sweden versus Norway) differences in the mentioned associations will also be studied

Read more about the project: Suicidal behaviour and health care – are there differences between refugees, other migrants and Swedish-born individuals?

Project leader: Ellenor Mittendorfer-Rutz
Period: 2017-2020
Seat of learning: Karolinska institutet

This project studies three aspects of family formation that are determinants of immigrant welfare: partnership status, intermarriage, and the timing of parenthood.

Read more about the project: The family formation of immigrants who arrive as children

Project leader: Ben Wilson
Period: 2018-2022
Seat of learning: Department of Sociology, Stockholm University

The current project describes, analyses and discusses a hitherto under-researched area of recently arrived students’ schooling: their linguistic and academic development and social inclusion in upper secondary school.

Read more about the project: Recently arrived students in Swedish upper secondary school – a multidisciplinary study on language development, disciplinary literacy and social inclusion

Project leader: Päivi Juvonen
Project period: 2018-2021
Seat of learning: Linnaeus University

Social unrest all over the world has led to that many people have had to flee their countries and that immigration to Western Europe has increased. At the same time, right-wing populist parties and politicians have reaped success.

Read more about the project: Polarized democracy. The impact of threat on anti-immigrant sentiments in western Europe

Project leader: Emma Renström (fd. Bäck) External link.
Period: 2018 - 2021
Seat of learning: University of Gothenburg

Refugee youth have often experienced trauma and are at significant risk of developing mental health problems such as symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), anxiety and depression that can continue years after resettlement.

Read more about the project: Evaluation of the Teaching Recovery Techniques community-based intervention for refugee youth experiencing post-traumatic stress symptoms

Project leader: Professor Anna Sarkadi
Period: 2018-2021
Seat of learning: Uppsala University