Academics say teen deportations scare away foreign talent

The Swedish Association of University Researchers and Teachers (SULF) has raised concerns that rules that require the expulsion of foreign teenagers once they reach the age of 18 even if their parents have residence permits will impact negatively upon Sweden’s image as a desirable destination for international researchers and doctoral students.

Comments by SULF’s head negotiator, Robert Andersson, which accuse the government of sending a “double message” about wanting to attract foreign researchers to Swedish universities yet scaring them away with its migration policy, have been published in multiple media outlets.

It follows a recent report by University World News tracking the positive response from the higher education sector to recently proposed legislative amendments that will make it easier for international researchers and doctoral students to study and work in Sweden.

According to Andersson, many foreign SULF members are currently contacting the association and wondering if they can stay in Sweden. “It’s a double message from politics,” Andersson said.

In an opinion piece published in Dagens Nyheter on 17 February, Chief Medical Officer Davood Javid wrote: “Swedish healthcare is heavily dependent on international expertise. At the same time, countries like Germany, the Netherlands and Canada are often perceived as more open and predictable by foreign doctors.”

Families split up

Javid wrote: “For years I have spoken warmly about Sweden to my international medical colleagues. Come here! I have said. But I can no longer do that, when I know that their families can have to split up when the children turn 18. At the same time, I notice the concern among colleagues who live here, they are thinking of taking their expertise to other countries.”

Li Ljungberg, an expert on foreign talent attraction at the Technology Industries of Sweden, told Sweden Radio, the proposal represented a “clear risk” of “splitting families, and it doesn’t match how global talent mobility works today”.

On 18 February, Sweden’s top migration court ruled that the teen deportations are legal, as reported by Sweden Radio.

However, not everyone agrees. Professor Ludvig Beckman, who recently resigned his seat on the Swedish Migration Board's ethics council over the issue, according to Dagens Nyheter, argues the policy violates the country’s constitution.

“It is mainly because of these expulsions, which have run amok and received a lot of attention recently. I feel I don't want to sit around and legitimise this anymore,” Beckman, professor of political science at Stockholm University, told Dagens Nyheter, characterising the policy as “inhuman”.

Beckman served on the ethics council as one of six members and had an appointment until June 2027. He said the expulsions violate the first chapter of the constitution, which states: “Public power shall be exercised with respect for the freedom and dignity of the individual.”

Raise the general age limit

SULF said under the new rules, 18-year-olds could be deported even if their parents have residence permits.

“This applies particularly to people who have residence permits for doctoral studies, researchers and holders of an EU Blue Card, (a permit granted to people in highly skilled jobs who earn at least SEK52,000 [US$5,700] per month).

“Under the current rules, unlike others who have come to Sweden to work, (and who can bring children up to the age of 21), the children of people in these situations are only granted residence permits if they are under the age of 18.

This is despite the fact that in most cases the teenagers have grown up in Sweden.

SULF said the problem "remains even if the parents have been granted permanent residence”.

To remedy the situation, SULF has called for a general age limit of 21 be introduced, which would bring Sweden into line with limits applying to EU/EEA citizens and Swiss citizens working in Sweden.

According to Andersson, in addition to teenage expulsions, other aspects of Swedish migration policy are affecting foreign academics, particularly young researchers with short-term positions, following the introduction in 2021 of stricter requirements for permanent residence permits.

“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.”

While Andersson admitted that “other measures are moving in the right direction”, including a pending proposal to make it easier to grant permanent residence permits to foreign doctoral students and researchers, such proposals could be “ineffective when other measures counteract them”.

Human rights concerns

On 19 February Human Rights Watch (HRW) highlighted the issue by reporting on the cases, among others, of Ayla (21), Jomana (18) and Ilya (19), all of whom came to Sweden as children at different ages and under different circumstances.

“Today they face the same reality: all have been ordered to leave the country alone while their families remain,” write Christina Abdulahad, senior coordinator of advocacy, and Susanné Seong-eun Bergsten, officer in the Women's Rights Division of HRW.

They argue that these cases “stem from Sweden’s increasingly restrictive migration policy, under which young people who turn 18 before obtaining permanent residency are no longer considered part of their parents’ family unit”.

According to Abdulahad and Seong-eun Bergsten, young people cannot be deported from Sweden if they have permanent residency. However, many children spend years in the country on temporary permits.

“Combined with long processing times and increasingly restrictive policies including stricter family reunification rules, higher income requirements, and narrowed humanitarian protection such as limits on ‘particularly distressing circumstances’ – the safeguards that keep families together have weakened.

“As a result, some ‘age out’ at 18 and lose their right to remain in the country, as they can no longer claim residency based on ties to their parents,” they write.

They note that Sweden is a party to both the European Convention on Human Rights and the Convention on the Rights of the Child, in terms of which failing to prioritise the best interest of the child and to protect the private and family lives of children and young adults within the context of immigration is a “violation of the country’s international legal obligations”.

They call for Sweden to halt deportations that separate young adults from their families and ensure children’s asylum and family reunification cases are processed without delays and for the government to create “clear pathways to residency reflecting the years individuals have spent in Sweden, including schooling and community ties”.

Political parties intervene

Meanwhile, Swedish political parties have also called for legal changes preventing the deportations.

On 20 February, All things Nordic reported that on 4 February three opposition parties – the Centre Party (Centerpartiet), the Green Party (Miljöpartiet) and the Left Party (Vänsterpartiet) – called for a rapid legal change aimed at stopping the forced removal of young migrants who are “often well integrated into Swedish society”.

On the same day, in a signal of how out of kilter the current policy may be with most citizens, a Dagens Nyheter editorial noted that when SD voters [right-wing Sweden Democrats] think the deportations have gone too far – then migration policy has become extreme.

Meanwhile Sweden Herald reported on 15 February that the Center Party has called on the director-general of the Swedish Migration Agency to answer questions before the Social Insurance Committee on the reason behind delays in the processing of “It is not reasonable treatment of a human being,” Niels Paarup-Petersen of the Center Party told Aftonbladet in relation to reported delays by the agency in making decisions relating to permanent residence applications by children.

In an opinion piece in Dagens Industri on 17 February, Paarup-Petersen and Anders Ådahl from the Center Party argued that current government policy was chasing international talent away from Sweden.

“Highly educated and competent people who can choose from all the countries in the world do not want to move to a country that wants to deport their children when they turn 18. Anyone who has children understands that. And the government should be able to understand that too. The signal the government is sending out to international competence is clear: Don’t come here,” they wrote.

Constantly changing system

Topias Tolonen-Weckström, former chairperson of the Doctoral Committee at the Swedish National Union of Students and PhD student in mathematics at Uppsala University, told University World News it remained unclear to him whether the recent deportations of teenagers were the result of a “deliberate policy choice” or the “unwanted outcomes of the scattered migration legislation in Sweden”.

“For doctoral researchers, such outcomes are a strong signal that it’s not feasible to stay in Sweden, which is contrary to the outspoken goals of the current government. In particular, the current migration system is both difficult to understand and changing constantly, which makes planning one's research career difficult,” he said.

“Precarity of being an international young researcher in Sweden does not need additional hurdles of confusing migration legislation, where there clearly is a mismatch between the outspoken intended outcomes and the actual policies being implemented,” Tolonen-Weckström said.