The Russian invasion of Ukraine and other crises have reactivated national membership issues in the Baltic Sea region. This article analyses recent policy shifts in Sweden and Finland, highlighting a move toward increased conditionality and deportability. In both countries, migration is increasingly framed through security—linked to domestic crime, geopolitical tensions, and the threat from Russia. Sweden’s reforms include abolishing permanent residency for certain groups and introducing “good conduct” requirements, while Finland has enacted emergency border laws and proposed a number of restrictions that will make access to secure residency harder. The study underscores how securitization enables restrictive membership policies. 

Since 2007, Scandinavia has emerged as a new destination for Romanian Roma engaging in circular migration for begging and street work. Using policy documents from parliamentary debates in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, survey data on Romanian migrants in Stockholm, Oslo, and Copenhagen, and qualitative fieldwork in Scandinavia and Romania, this article explores the dynamic relationship between Scandinavian policy responses and migrant selection and adaptations. First, we demonstrate how the Scandinavian countries differ in their approach to migration for begging as a policy problem, resulting in different contexts of reception. Second, we show that these different contexts of reception have given rise to differences in the selection and adaptations of migrant beggars and street workers in each of the three capital cities. Third, we hypothesize that the relationship between policy responses and migrant adaptations should be conceptualized as a process of cumulative causation, where pre-existing policy differences are reinforced through positive feedback.

With the case of Sweden as its focus, this article contributes to the research on state–Islam relations in Europe. From a comparative European perspective, it demonstrates that Sweden departs from what is generally presented as the common pattern when it comes to when, how and why state-Islam relations were first established. Previous theorising on this topic, primarily connected with Jonathan Laurence’s seminal work on state–Islam relations in Europe, argues that such relations follow two phases, namely (1) Embassy Islam (1960–1990) and (2) the institutionalisation of domestic relations with (national) Muslim Councils (1990-onwards). Our conclusion, however, is that Sweden skipped the first phase and went directly to the second in the mid-1970s. This, we argue, can be explained as the (unplanned) result of a general change in church–state relations in Sweden.

Family migration constitutes by far the largest form of entry into countries with established democracies. Yet, it remains widely neglected in the literature on public attitudes. One of the key challenges in researching this topic is its inherent complexity. Family migration involves not only the claims of outsiders seeking entry, but also those of insiders wishing to reunite with family members. To address both dimensions simultaneously, we designed a conjoint survey experiment using an innovative dyadic approach. Respondents were presented with hypothetical cases of aspiring family migrants, alongside their respective family members already residing in the destination country. Key attributes, such as financial resources and types of family relationships, were randomized for each pair. We conducted the survey with 5,000 respondents across France, Germany, Italy, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. Our results suggest that respondents pay close attention to the characteristics of the incoming family migrant, such as language skills, while also being concerned with the economic resources of the family member already residing in the destination country. These findings indicate that research on public attitudes cannot treat family reunification as just one among many immigration motives. Study designs must also systematically account for the status of the family member already living in the destination country.

The present article investigates how begging performed by citizens of new EU-member states in Eastern Europe was debated in parliaments in Denmark, Sweden and Norway during the period 2007–2017. The empirical analysis shows significant cross-country divergences: In Denmark, efforts targeted controlling migration, either directly or indirectly, via various deterrence strategies. In Sweden, the emphasis was rather on alleviating social needs while migrants reside in the country and trying to decrease their incentives to migrate in the first place by ameliorating conditions in sending countries. In Norway, one predominant framing revolved around the issue of human trafficking of beggars. Despite substantial differences, the analyses show a gradual shift in a similar direction in all three countries. While a social frame was initially more commonly understood as the appropriate way to approach begging, over time a criminal frame has gained ground in all three countries. The article argues that this development must be understood in light of marginalized intra-EU migrants’ legal status as both insiders and outsiders in the Scandinavian welfare states. Due to these individuals’ “in-between status”, neither conventional social policy nor immigration control measures are perceived as available, making policymakers more prone to turn to criminal policy tools.