Debunking the myth about ‘refugees’ that have vacationed in country they ‘fled’ from

You may have noticed in the past few days that the following headline is making its rounds on social media again: “Sweden: 79% of ‘refugees’ have vacationed in country they ‘fled’ from.” The origins of the statement can be traced back to a Swedish news article published in the online newspaper Bulletin in 2022 (the link to the article can be found in the right page margin). On behalf of Bulletin, a company called Novus conducted a survey in August 2022, asking specific questions to 1,050 foreign-born individuals in Sweden. According to Bulletin, the survey showed that 85% of foreign-born individuals had visited their home country as a vacation destination at least once. Among those who arrived as family reunification migrants, 92% had travelled back to their home country as a vacation destination, while this figure was 79% for those who had come to Sweden as refugees.

As it falls within Delmi’s mandate to contribute to the debate on migration with research-based evidence and facts, we would like to remind the public of some of these facts, in relation to this headline:

Of the 1,050 foreign-born individuals who answered the survey, it is unclear how many individuals within the sample population had come to Sweden as refugees. Within the 85% of foreign-born individuals in Sweden that had answered that they had visited their home country as a vacation destination at least once, there might only be, for example, 5 individuals who came to Sweden as refugees. 4 out of 5 of them would have to have answered yes to the question to land a result of around 79%. Hence, the number of individuals who came as refugees within the population sample matters for how we should interpret the result and its larger generalizability.
Following on from the previous point, it is also unclear what is meant in the article by someone coming to Sweden as a refugee and ‘claiming that they are a refugee’ in this context- have they been granted refugee status after having arrived in the country, did they come to Sweden as resettlement refugees, or is the term instead used as a popular media term, decoupled from its legal meaning? According to Chapter 4 in the Swedish Aliens Act, asylum-seekers who are granted protection can be granted a.) refugee status, or b.) status as a ‘person otherwise in need of protection.’ Although both statuses result in residence permits that are founded on protection needs and those having obtained these statuses are often referred to as refugees in the media, according to the Swedish Aliens Act, a refugee is someone who has been granted refugee status. It should also be noted that a person can be granted a residence permit due to ‘exceptionally distressing circumstances.’ It is also unclear if they are also included in the sample population.
The type of protection status that you are granted dictates specific terms and conditions and can be revoked. The article is correct in that a refugee status in Sweden can be revoked if it is found that the individual with refugee status no longer needs international protection from their home country, or have provided false information about their need for protection. If an individual with refugee status visits their home country that they have been granted protection from, it can thus be interpreted by the Swedish Migration Agency that the person is no longer in need of international protection, and their status as a refugee can be revoked.
Just as we do not know what type of protection status the individuals in the survey were granted (if any), we do not either know if they were previously granted a protection status and have, with time, become Swedish citizens. The article does state that the interview was conducted in Swedish, and that the political conditions in the countries of origin may have changed with time. A Syrian who is granted refugee status in Sweden during the height of the Syrian civil war, and then visits Syria with their refugee status during the war, can be interpreted as a legally different scenario to a Chilean who was granted refugee status in the 1970s in Sweden, and has now returned to visit Chile as a Swedish citizen. Hence, we do not know if the individuals interviewed visited their home countries whilst obtaining a Swedish residence permit based on a refugee status (as the spin-off headlines seem to insinuate), or whether they applied for asylum in Sweden and received a protection status, became Swedish citizens, and visited their home countries when it was deemed safe to do so.

We at Delmi would therefore like to stress the importance of unpacking headlines- including the way in which statistics are presented and terminology is used.

Photography: https://unsplash.com/@philipmyr