Sweden’s Temporary Asylum Law and the Indefinite Statelessness of Refugees

• This paper explores the law and policy related to the identification, assessment, and recording of the statelessness of refugees in the Swedish asylum procedure. It considers the gaps in law and policy that can lead to a stateless refugee remaining in a prolonged, or potentially, indefinite stateless situation and the impacts of the temporary asylum law introduced in 2016. The temporary law can be seen to undermine useful legislation that saw many stateless refugees receiving citizenship after four years. However, the new State discourse introduced full-time employment or completion of education as a requirement to acquire permanent residence, a prerequisite for citizenship. Therefore, these can be seen as new naturalisation criteria for certain migrants, which could mark a shift from Sweden’s previous trend towards increasingly liberal access to citizenship since the 1950s.

Keyword

Sweden

statelessness

Refugees

Temporary asylum law

Indefinite

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

art (subject category)