In Sweden, there are two main options for people with a refugee background who have been granted a residence permit; either they are offered state-funded accommodation, or they arrange their own accommodation through their network or contacts.
Together with Jennifer Shaneberger, a political scientist at the University of Kentucky, Kristoffer Jutvik, researcher at REMESO, Linköping University, has investigated how the different forms of accommodation have affected migrants’ employment, income and quality of life. Shaneberger and Jutvik based their study on the type of accommodation people have when they first arrive in a municipality.
“We follow these individuals over time and look at how their income develops and whether or not they find a job. We wanted to investigate the situation on a larger scale,” says Kristoffer Jutvik.
People who choose where to live find jobs
Whilst few previous studies have focused on differences between types of accommodation, there are strong views in the political arena about what asylum seekers’ accommodation should look like. In particular, private accommodation has been criticised; there is a perception that it leads to segregation and overcrowded homes.
“Our study shows that people who arrange their own accommodation are, on average, more likely to be working and to have higher incomes than those placed in state-provided accommodation. Furthermore, the quality of the accommodation they have arranged themselves is no worse than that of state-funded housing, contrary to what is often assumed in the political debate,” says Kristoffer Jutvik.
The findings in this part of the study are based on survey responses from around 3,400 people from the ‘Bevara de berördas röst’ (‘Preserve the voices of those affected’) database. The survey asks questions that generate answers to matters that are difficult to ascertain from register data, such as how many square metres a person lives in or whether they have a fixed-term tenancy agreement.
The findings are interesting because there has been a lack of data on how people who have arranged their own accommodation live; who they live with, what their living arrangements are like, and what their circumstances are.
Kristoffer Jutvik also notes that perceptions of the various forms of accommodation have changed over time. When the law on independent living was introduced in the early 1990s, the aim was to make it easier for people to integrate economically.
“Now the political rhetoric is almost the opposite.”
In practice, those who advocated independent living seem to have been proven right.
“Our study provides examples of this. We have analysed data from 16,000 people from Syria and Iraq. Around 64 per cent had their own accommodation when they were granted a residence permit, and that group has experienced a more favourable economic trajectory than those who were provided with state-provided accommodation.”
Is the group you studied representative of the refugee population as a whole?
“The group of asylum seekers from Syria and Iraq accounts for nearly 70 per cent of asylum-related immigration in 2016. The number of asylum seekers from Syria in particular was high during this period, so this finding is significant. Of course, there is a possibility that other smaller migrant groups not included in the study might face different circumstances.”
Equal income levels when choosing one’s place of residence
The study does not indicate whether settlement occurs within a migrant group and may lead to isolation within their own networks. However, Jutvik and Shaneberger have investigated how the findings hold up in areas facing socio-economic challenges
“Local authorities were given the opportunity to list such areas. We compare income levels between people living in their own homes in these listed areas and in the unlisted areas, and we see that income levels are the same between them. This is interesting because, in political rhetoric, it is often portrayed as though self-arranged housing is primarily a problem in particularly vulnerable areas.”
This perception has led to asylum seekers who choose to settle in areas classified as particularly vulnerable having their daily allowance withdrawn. Now, the option to arrange one’s own accommodation is being abolished entirely, and all asylum seekers will be placed in so-called reception and return centres in six locations across the country, where the Swedish Migration Agency is in the process of centralising the asylum procedure.
Based on your research, what do you think is important to bear in mind?
“For those people who are able to choose where to live, this option appears to be beneficial for labour market integration.”
