New migration law set to ‘drive foreign researchers away’

The Swedish Association of University Teachers and Researchers (SULF) has told the government that stricter requirements for permanent residence permits in the proposed new migration act may make it more difficult for Sweden to retain foreign researchers. This may be an unintentional consequence of the proposed law.

On 15 September 2020, the parliamentary migration committee presented its proposal for a new ‘long-term, sustainable migration policy’.

The proposal was circulated for consultation to key stakeholders, including SULF, with a deadline to comment by 10 January. The proposal and responses are now being reviewed by the government, before it submits a bill with proposals for legislative amendments to parliament, which will then decide on the matter. The new law will be effective as of 20 July 2021.

SULF, in its comments, writes that the latest available statistics show that 40% of newly-admitted doctoral students in Sweden in 2019 had an international background.

And among those having a temporary position or in a recruitment position as a postdoc or associate lecturer at the higher education institutions, the proportion having an international background was 73%.

“It is hence decisive for future skills retainment both at our higher education institutions and for business that many of these will decide to stay in Sweden. A large number of these people are coming from countries outside the EU-EEA and are therefore in need of a residence permit,” Git Claesson Pipping and Robert Andersson, SULF director and chief negotiator respectively, argue in the comments to the policy proposals.

“It is therefore important that there are good options to qualify for a permanent residence permit and in the continuation of this towards citizenship, and that the legislation around this is transparent and predictable.

“For doctoral students possibilities for getting permanent residence permits have already been introduced, even if there are some problems with the adaptations of the regulations,” they said.

Migration committee’s proposal

Under today’s rules, a doctoral candidate or researcher can qualify for a permanent residence permit in Sweden after four years. The migration committee’s proposal is to introduce requirements regarding means of financial support, as well as a certain level of knowledge of Swedish language and society, for anyone applying for a permanent residence permit.

These proposed changes would add to the difficulties for many researchers who wish to stay longer in Sweden.

“The damage that this could cause to Sweden’s attractiveness to researchers is highlighted by SULF in its formal response to the government’s consultation paper on the proposal, and this view is shared by the Swedish Migration Agency and the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise. If the proposed new requirements are to be introduced, SULF believes that this must be done well in advance,” SULF said in a statement.

“Foreign doctoral candidates and postdocs have previously emphasised that a heavy workload can be an obstacle to their ambition to learn Swedish. Stricter migration rules would therefore make higher education institutions’ support for their foreign staff even more important, and SULF has therefore called for funding to be provided for this,” they added.

“Higher education institutions need to both offer education and allow time for studies,” Robert Andersson said. “Perhaps a Swedish language course could be included in the doctoral programme.”

Scholarship-holders don’t qualify

The way that the migration committee has formulated the requirements regarding means of financial support means that scholarship-funded applicants would not qualify, nor would people who receive unemployment benefit, and SULF is critical of this.

“As is already well known, there is a large number of employees on fixed-term contracts within higher education, which means that periods of involuntary unemployment between jobs are common,” according to Universitetsläraren – the SULF magazine, which has previously also revealed that at least 20% of postdocs are funded by scholarships.

SULF’s preferred choice is to end the use of scholarships as a means of financial support for doctoral students. “If that doesn’t happen, SULF wants to see scholarship recipients exempted from the requirements regarding financial support, or at least be given plenty of time to fulfil the requirements after the end of the scholarship period,” Andersson said.

He sees no improvements for researchers in the migration committee’s proposal, but the government has also set up a committee to conduct a review of labour immigration, and this will include an examination of expulsion of highly-qualified people for purely bureaucratic reasons or due to mistakes in their applications.

“This might be more positive,” he says, “but some of it may clash with the contents of the migration committee’s proposal.”

The European Migration Network in 2018 published a report on how to recruit and retain international students in Sweden, reporting that in 2015-16 the proportion of international graduating students that remained in Sweden upon graduation was as low as 7%.

Migration expert Bernd Parusel, commenting on behalf of the European Migration Network, told University World News that its study shows that the attractiveness of Sweden as a destination, and the capacity to retain students and researchers, depend on a range of different factors, which include the conditions, requirements and procedures for residence permits.

“It is therefore logical that if new or additional requirements for residence permits are introduced, which at least some students and researchers might find difficult to fulfil, then Sweden’s attractiveness and retention capacity is more likely to decrease than increase. The parliamentary migration committee actually says this itself, in the impact assessment chapter of its final report.”

Professor Sylvia Schwaag Serger from the department of economic history at Lund University who was international director of Vinnova, the Swedish government innovation agency, commented to University World News: “The Swedish economy and research enterprise need global talent more than ever. In 2017 more than half of first-year PhD students in natural sciences and technology came from abroad to do their doctoral studies at our universities. For those who wish to stay, we should make it easier not harder than it is today.

“Often lack of adequate and available language training options hinder PhD students from learning Swedish during their studies. Universities and the government should work more on addressing this bottleneck rather than making Sweden less attractive for internationally mobile researchers.”