Research project Education and Employment Careers of Refugee Youth

The number of unaccompanied children applying for asylum in the EU has been increasing remarkably during the past several years and Sweden has been receiving the largest number of asylum applications by this group when compared to all other EU countries. Most of these children have received refugee status over the years and now has a residence permit in Sweden.

A very important question is what happens in the process of establishing in the Swedish society.  We will investigate the factors that facilitate or hinder how this group establish themselves in Sweden mainly in the areas of education and employment careers. We will analyze the role of length of asylum procedures, the different forms of accommodation placement that are specific to this group, place of residence in Sweden, age at arrival as well as health and parental reunification.

This group shares elements that make them a cohesive group both with regard to their unique legal status but also due to their lack of a familial system at a crucial developmental period of their life in a new culture. No other countries have both a high quality detailed data availability as Sweden and an equally large group of unaccompanied children. Thus, this project will provide new knowledge that is of great interest nationally and internationally.

This is the most exposed and fragile feature of migratory flows to the EU and our goal is that our results will help improve the situation of this group not only in Sweden but also in other destination countries and lead to further comparative cross country studies that improves both data availability and policies in this area.