Who Gets In and Why?: The Swedish Experience with Demand Driven Labour Migration – Some Preliminary Results

Abstract

In 2008, the Swedish government liberalised the labour migration policy to a demand driven model without labour market tests. This article analyses the effects of the policy change on the labour migration inflow. The migrants consist of three major categories including those moving to: skilled jobs as computer specialists and engineers, low-skilled jobs in the private service sector and seasonal work in the berry picking industry. The article shows that the new model has produced a labour migration inflow that is better explained by the access of employers and migrants to transnational networks rather than actual demand for labour