by A.P.
Swedish Professor of Economics Mats Hammarstedt has rejected claims that mass migration can be economically beneficial over the long term, citing problems of integration.
Professor Hammarstedt, who teaches at the Linnaeus University in Växjö and the Institute for Business Research, said that integration failures, particularly of asylum seekers, have contributed to a much higher unemployment rate among migrants over the long-term.
In an article for the Swedish publication Dagens Industri, Hammarstedt said: “The lack of integration of foreign-born people into the labour market is well documented and the situation has remained largely unchanged in recent decades.”
He added: “Every year, the public sector redistributes resources from domestic-born to foreign-born, and the long time it takes for refugee immigrants and their relatives to establish themselves in the labour market means that refugee immigration entails a cost to public finances even long after the refugees have immigrated to Sweden.”
The professor gave an example of unemployment rates for African and Asian migrants across nearly a decade, writing: “For people born in Africa and Asia (aged 15 to 75), unemployment in 2010 was 26 per cent and 24 per cent respectively. In 2019, the unemployment rate in these groups was almost exactly the same levels (26 per cent and 22 per cent respectively).”