Current Issues in Migration Research

Diversity and Inclusion Data

2026-04-23T08:54:48+00:00

Over the past five decades, Sweden—and Malmö in particular—has undergone extensive demographic change driven by sustained immigration, resulting in increasing diversity and, in Malmö, a context in which people without a migration background now constitute a numerical minority. This transformation has generated a level of demographic complexity that is best captured by the concept of superdiversity, which emphasizes variation within groups and the interaction of multiple social, legal, and socioeconomic variables in shaping inequality, stratification, and belonging. Understanding these processes depends critically on data. While Sweden’s population registers provide unparalleled longitudinal coverage of socioeconomic outcomes, they cannot capture subjective identities, lived experiences, or intersecting forms of discrimination. The Diversity and Inclusion Survey makes a unique methodological contribution through its systematic collection of voluntary self‑identification data, enabling multidimensional analysis of inclusion and exclusion. By complementing register data, the survey also contributes theoretically by facilitating more precise empirical analyses of superdiversity, inclusion, and the changing contours of the social mainstream in contemporary Sweden.

Families Across Borders

2026-04-14T15:53:49+00:00

This exploratory study examines transnational family (TNF) relations in Malmö and offers one of the first quantitative insights into this phenomenon in Sweden. Despite data limitations, the findings point to several important patterns. Nearly half of all respondents report having family members abroad, indicating that transnational ties constitute a substantial part of Malmö’s family landscape. These ties are most common among the foreign‑born population but are also present among second‑generation and Swedish‑born residents, suggesting that TNF relations extend beyond migration-driven family separation. Almost one third of Malmö residents maintain frequent cross‑border contact, which, in light of existing research, likely involves emotional and practical caregiving. The data further suggests a temporal dimension: more recent arrivals report higher levels of transnational ties than long‑term residents. Taken together, the results demonstrate that transnational family life is widespread, varied, and significant in Malmö, underscoring the need for further, especially longitudinal, research.

Everyone Has the Same Access to Healthcare?

2026-04-22T15:00:42+00:00

People experience different challenges impacting their health. Existing research shows that varying experiences of the healthcare system increases with demographic diversity, with gender, education, citizenship status, and many other factors determining outcomes. That has consequences also for peoples’ trust levels in society. Conducting a pilot of the Diversity Survey in Malmö, as a superdiverse city in Southern Sweden, allowed us to build on this existing work. The results confirmed an association between unmet healthcare needs and key demographic factors but also whether people felt at home in the city. As seen elsewhere, people are more likely to seek help when they trust the healthcare system. Despite Malmö having a very international population, when seeking healthcare information people trust Swedish government websites, healthcare professionals, and friends and family over the foreign and/or Swedish media, as well as the internet. That indicates the importance of public authorities in connecting a diverse society towards improved healthcare access.

When Language Feels Like Home

2026-04-21T18:50:22+00:00

Speaking multiple languages is part of many people’s everyday life. Multilingualism influences how people relate to the world and emotionally attach to places. This attachment might also be affected by experiences of discrimination. While the link between multilingualism and belonging as well as that between multilingualism and discrimination has been studied previously, we do not know how multilingualism and experiences of discrimination interact and relate to feelings of belonging. Based on the 2025 Diversity and Inclusion survey, this paper examines the complex relationship between language proficiency, multilingual identity and linguistic racism. Specifically, we ask how multilingualism and experiences of discrimination influence the sense of place belonging among migrants and their children in the superdiverse city of Malmö, Sweden. The findings highlight that while speaking Swedish at home strongly correlates with feeling at home in Sweden, experiences of discrimination and lower language proficiency significantly undermine this sense of place belonging.

Voting Patterns in Malmö’s 2022 Local Election

2026-04-21T10:32:09+00:00

This study maps electoral turnout in the superdiverse city of Malmö, Sweden. It examines the extent to which sociodemographic characteristics, together with sociopsychological and attitudinal factors—including language proficiency, sense of belonging to the city, and trust in others—relate to political participation in Swedish local elections. Key results indicate that turnout is higher among older voters, women, the highly educated, and Swedish citizens; that for immigrants, it varies by region of birth, and increases with years of residence. Moreover, differences in turnout by religious identification are observed, with nativity status playing a key moderating role. The results further show higher levels of trust among voters towards people of other backgrounds, while non-voters report lower social distance towards neighbours of other ethnicities and religions, implying inconsistent patterns across these two measures. Finally, voters report a stronger sense of belonging to the city and higher levels of language proficiency than non-voters.

Beyond Migration Background

2026-04-23T09:01:17+00:00

Sweden’s reliance on country of birth as the primary measure of inequality reflects a universalist ideology but obscures important dynamics of exclusion that are better captured by considering race and religion alongside migration background. Using new diversity and equality data from Malmö, the study shows that country of birth best explains generational and structural aspects of integration, while race is the strongest predictor of discrimination and social recognition, and religion—particularly Muslim identity—adds an additional layer of symbolic exclusion. The findings demonstrate that migration background alone provides an incomplete picture of inequality, supporting the need for multidimensional, carefully designed equality data to better understand and address exclusion.