Abstract
Within the EU, the so-called “refugee crisis” has been predominantly dealt with as an ill-timed and untenable financial burden. Since the 2007–08 financial crisis, the overarching objective of policy initiatives by EU-governments has been to keep public expenditure firmly under control. Thus, Sweden’s decision to grant permanent residence to all Syrians seeking asylum in 2013 seemed to represent a paradigmatic exception, pointing to the possibility of combining a humanitarian approach in the “long summer of migration” with generous welfare provisions. At the end of 2015, however, Sweden reversed its asylum policy, reducing its intake of refugees to the EU-mandated minimum. The main political parties embraced the mainstream view that an open-door refugee policy is not only detrimental to the welfare state, but could possibly trigger a “system breakdown”. In this article, we challenge this widely accepted narrative by arguing that the sustainability of the Swedish welfare state has not been undermined by refugee migration but rather by the Swedish government’s unbending adherence to austerity politics. Austerity politics have weakened the Swedish welfare state’s socially integrative functions and prevented the implementation of a more ambitious growth agenda, harvesting a potentially dynamic interplay of expansionary economic policies and a humanitarian asylum policy.
Highlights
Sweden experienced an immediate drop in GDP growth during 2008 and 2009 in the aftermath of the global financial crisis, but fully recovered from the downturn more quickly than other EU countries without endangering public finances as well as managing to keep the government debt-to-GDP ratio at a comparatively low level of about 40 percent (Erixon, 2015; Stenfors, 2016)
Due to its favourable economic and financial situation, together with its strong tradition of refugee protection dating as far back as the early-1970s, Sweden conveyed the impression of being the best-equipped EU country to cope with the “long summer of migration” in 2015 (Kasparek & Speer, 2015); a period that came to be known by the Euro-centric label “the refugee crisis”
He appealed to the population to accept, “patiently”, the increase in social expenditure resulting from the expected rise in refugee migration, alluding to the need for compensatory spending cuts in other policy areas
Summary
Sweden experienced an immediate drop in GDP growth during 2008 and 2009 in the aftermath of the global financial crisis, but fully recovered from the downturn more quickly than other EU countries without endangering public finances as well as managing to keep the government debt-to-GDP ratio at a comparatively low level of about 40 percent (Erixon, 2015; Stenfors, 2016). In the Social Inclusion, 2018, Volume 6, Issue 1, Pages 199–207 same speech, Reinfeldt presaged that the unprecedented humanitarian effort could pose a major challenge for the financial sustainability of the welfare state. He appealed to the population to accept, “patiently”, the increase in social expenditure resulting from the expected rise in refugee migration, alluding to the need for compensatory spending cuts in other policy areas. The only way for non-relocated refugees to change their status from temporary to permanent became that of obtaining financial self-sufficiency through employment-related income The aim of this repressive package of regulations was to make Sweden a less attractive destination for asylum seekers and refugees. We discuss possible future developments of what remains of the Swedish model in the context of the upcoming national elections scheduled for September 2018
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