Some overall conclusions

  • Even before the full scale war in 2022, poverty in Ukraine was widespread and the threat from Russia entailed great insecurity for many years. Data from Gallup World Poll (GWP), from the summer of 2021, show that more than one in three adults (35 percent) wanted to move permanently to another country if possible.
  • Over a third have stated that they want to move to Germany, followed by Poland and Italy with 15 and 11 percent respectively. The majority want to live in an EU country.
  • About 2.5 percent state that they want to move to Sweden, which means that we end up in ninth place in the EU.
  • About 12 million Ukrainians wanted to move to another country in the survey conducted just a few months before the war began. The situation in Ukraine is changing rapidly, but if we assume that 12 million leave Ukraine to seek protection in an EU country and that 2.5 percent of them seek refuge in Sweden, 300,000 Ukrainians would come to here. This is a higher forecast than what the Swedish Migration Agency has predicted.

About the authors 

Mikael Elinder, Senior Lecturer/Associate Professor at Department of Economics, Uppsala University, affiliated researcher at the Research Institute of Industrial Economics (IFN) and Uppsala Center for Fiscal Studies (UCFS).

Oscar Erixson, Ph.D. in Economics, researcher at Institute for Housing and Urban Research, affiliated researcher at Urban Lab and Uppsala Center for Fiscal Studies (UCFS).

Olle Hammar, Ph.D. in Economics, researcher at the Research Institute of Industrial Economics (IFN) and the Institute for Futures Studies, affiliated researcher at Uppsala Immigration Lab and Uppsala Center for Fiscal Studies (UCFS).

Delmi Policy Brief 2022:3 is published on March 23, 2022. 

Photo: Kevin Bückert from Unsplash