How are asylum cases in Sweden assessed when individuals invoke sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression (LGBTIQ) as grounds for asylum, and which factors determine whether an application is granted or rejected? Despite the fact that LGBTQI cases are often at the center of legal and political debate, there has been a lack of representative studies examining how decisions are actually processed and justified by the Swedish Migration Agency. This policy brief summarizes three studies by Wimark (2025) on asylum assesments in Sweden and identifies which assessment criteria carry the greatest weight in practice.
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 approval rates.
The author of the policy brief is Thomas Wimark, Associate Professor of Human Geography at Uppsala University.
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