The aim of Sweden’s refugee settlement policy is that refugees should be offered an initial place of dwelling in a municipality with available accommodation and a good labour market within commuting distance. Refugees risk long-run unemployment, if initially placed in a municipality with bad labour market opportunities (see Edin et al., 2004 and Åslund et al., 2006). It is therefore important to know to what extent the state of a municipality’s labour market (and not only availability of apartments) drives the willingness to receive refugees. No such study has previously been con- ducted. This paper thus aims to bridge this gap in the research by analyzing data between 2006-2010 for all 290 Swedish municipalities and their contracts with the Swedish central government regarding refugee reception. The main findings are, when accounting for municipality-fixed effects, that neither unemployment nor available apartments affect the probability of signing a contract. Additional govern- ment grants, on the other hand, has a positive effect on the likelihood of signing a contract. Among municipalities which do sign contracts, the agreed number of refu- gees is negatively affected by higher municipality unemployment and positively affected by additional available apartments.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:uu-156557 |
| Date | January 2011 |
| Creators | Lind, Patrik |
| Publisher | Uppsala universitet, Nationalekonomiska institutionen |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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