Party politics and the Bosnian question: The Swedish decision to grant permanent residence

Abstract

In June 1993 the Swedish right-wing government took the decision to grant 40,000 Bosnian refugees permission to remain permanently in Sweden. The Swedish decision could be seen as being somewhat unique in a context where neighbouring countries (Denmark and Norway) were granting the same group of refugee protection on temporary basis, and where there was increasing debate throughout Europe about temporary protection. While there is a Swedish tradition of granting permanent residence to persons who have been accepted as refugees, question marks have been raised over this policy in the course of the 1990s. Moreover, Sweden's previous (social democratic) government had already established the principle of temporary protection as a model for future occasions. This article discusses the ideological considerations behind this controversial decision in the light of the contrary conceptions of the social democrats. The article draws on the results of a comparative study about the reception of Bosnian refugees in the Nordic countries. The study comprised informal discussions and formal interviews with ministers, civil servants and administrative officers in the Swedish Ministry of Immigration as well as analysis of 179 departmental documents in the ministries responsible for refugee and immigration policy during the 1990s.