This policy brief fills an existing knowledge gap by summarising three studies by Wimark (2025) on the asylum determination of individuals who invoke sexual orientation and gender identity as grounds for asylum. The studies are based on 3,588 randomly selected asylum decisions from the Swedish Migration Agency (2020) and combine descriptive statistics with logistic regression models to examine how the likelihood of being granted asylum varies across different grounds for asylum and which factors influence recognition rates.

Key conclusions and recommendations 

  • Strengthen preparedness in the asylum reception system for HBTQI persons by starting from an assumption of vulnerability and counteracting demographic imbalances. This requires targeted information for women and non-binary persons, increased competence among case officers, as well as strengthened psychosocial support and adapted accommodation solutions. The aim is to ensure equal treatment in asylum determination and reduce systematic vulnerability within the asylum system.
  • Reduce reliance on HBTQI asylum seekers’ organisational or activist engagement in the assessment process in order to ensure equal treatment. The asylum process should not presuppose links to civil society as an indicator of sexual orientation, but instead strengthen internal support structures and broaden external forms of support. The purpose is to ensure legally secure assessments regardless of visibility or social networks.
  • Broaden the evidentiary basis in asylum determination by reducing reliance on emotional expression and instead making a comprehensive assessment of multiple circumstances in the asylum narrative. Emotions should neither be regarded as necessary nor decisive for credibility, and in cases relying on internal evidence, the benefit of the doubt should be considered.
  • Explore alternative assessment methods for internal asylum grounds that better capture processes of identity formation and self-discovery than current credibility models. Current practice, influenced by criminal-law evidentiary principles, risks disadvantaging such cases. Methods such as scenario analysis can make underlying assumptions visible, reduce subjectivity, and lead to more legally secure decisions.

The policy brief’s author is Thomas Wimark, Associate Professor of Human Geography at Uppsala University.  

The policy brief was published on 22 May 2026.

Photo: Stavrialena Gontzou via Unsplash.