This mainly concerns cases where young people, even those who have grown up in Sweden, are threatened with deportation when they turn 18. This follows the government's abolition of the possibility of exceptions in particularly painful cases.
The so-called teenage expulsions are hitting foreign doctoral students and researchers hard, says Robert Andersson at the Swedish Association of University Teachers and Researchers, Sulf. He says many foreign members are currently contacting him to ask if they can stay in Sweden.
Just yesterday someone from a family from Great Britain got in touch because their children were not allowed to stay.
A large part of the Swedish research community is affected, he says.
It is often said that approximately 40 percent of all doctoral students are foreign, i.e. from outside the EU. It may be similar or even higher at the next stage of the academic career.
“Send your children away”
At the same time, government money is being spent trying to strengthen Swedish universities' position in the competition and attract researchers from other countries, Andersson points out.
Many people talk about making us attractive to top researchers from the US, given that Trump is wreaking havoc in academia there. But it will be difficult to attract them here if they discover that when their children turn 18 they have to choose to send their children away or move the whole family.
In addition to teenage expulsions, there are more parts of today's Swedish migration policy that are hitting foreign academics, according to Andersson. He says the problems began with the stricter requirements for permanent residence permits, introduced in 2021, which make it more difficult for young researchers with short-term positions.
More clouds of worry
New proposals are also feared to worsen the situation. For example, the so-called criminal investigation proposes that anyone who stays outside Sweden for a year would lose their permanent residence permit, which would make international exchanges more difficult, Robert Andersson says.
Other measures are moving in the right direction, he believes, including a pending proposal to make it easier to grant permanent residence permits to foreign doctoral students and researchers. But such proposals can be ineffective when other measures counteract them, he says:
No overall assessment has been made.
