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Off-piste: Brits in remote Swedish areas wary of Brexit path ahead

From Jokkmokk in the Arctic Circle to isolated forests on the edges of villages, plenty of Brits have opted for the quiet life in Sweden, settling in isolated areas away from the country's largest cities. While Brexit is a worry for some of these British citizens, it has also been an opportunity to exploit for some of the country's most remote regions.

Published: 15 February 2019 10:56 CET

Off-piste: Brits in remote Swedish areas wary of Brexit path ahead

Fritsla, Mark municipality. Photo: Mike Jefferson.

There are 86 British citizens living in the municipality of Mark, southeast of Gothenburg, according to data provided to The Local by Statistics Sweden. Two live in the village of Fritsla. Mike Jefferson is one of them.

Jefferson, 32, his Swedish wife Boel and their daughter settled in Fritsla, a village of just over 2,000 people near the Swedish textile hub of Borås, in 2016. They were lured by the calm, tranquility and quality of life.

“If you're not in the heart of the city you're surrounded by forests and lakes in Sweden,” Jefferson told The Local. “It has been absolutely lovely since day one.”

The home Mike Jefferson and his family bought in Fritsla. Photo: Mike Jefferson.

That is until the headache of a no-deal Brexit began to loom on Jefferson's horizon.

“I have to rely on Sweden and the EU to offer me any security. I've felt like a bargaining chip or completely ignored by my own government,” says Jefferson, who works as a business change management consultant helping large companies, like Volvo, implement technological overhauls.

Mike Jefferson with his wife and 4-year-old daughter near their home in Fritsla. Photo: Mike Jefferson.

“I'm not as worried now since the Swedish government have taken action to guarantee I can stay for the next year,” says Jefferson, who plans to apply for Swedish citizenship when he is eligible from September 2019.

Should the UK exit the EU without a deal on March 29th, British citizens resident in Sweden will have to apply for permits in order to continue living and working in the country. The government has said it will offer a one-year period during which Brits can remain in Sweden and apply for the permits without any change to their rights.

However, it is still not clear whether those permits would be regulated by new legislation or existing work permit rules, with Swedish business leaders warning that the latter would mean many Brits risk having their applications rejected.

Jefferson says low house prices and the fact that three or four lakes are within cycling distance of his home were key factors in moving to the Swedish countryside – reversing the predominant migration trend of young Swedes moving from rural areas to larger cities in search of work.

That trend has even led to remote Swedish municipalities proactively enticing Brits to take up residence in their territory.

The northeastern Swedish municipality of Skellefteå urgently needed to recruit teachers for new schools that are being built to cater to 7,000 people who are expected to move to the area in the next three to five years.

NorthVolt is building Europe's largest electric battery factory in Skellefteå. Large-scale production is scheduled to begin in 2020 on that project, according to the Skellefteå local government.

“We were the first kommun (municipality) to look outside Scandinavia for teachers,” Paul Connolly, a consultant to the local government in Skellefteå, and a regular contributor to The Local Sweden, said.

“We used the Brexit hook quite explicitly,” says Connolly. “We placed an ad in the Guardian. We said in the copy: 'If you want to still work in the EU…'”

Seven British teachers took up the invitation to move to Skellefteå on a one-year contract, he says, and three or four more are expected to follow in their footsteps soon.

Even further north, in the Arctic Circle, the municipality of Jokkmokk had already reached out to Brits before Brexit to try to tackle increasing depopulation as local residents head south looking for work and broader life opportunities.

David Carpenter launched the project Emigrate2Jokkmokk in 2011, with the support of the local government, with a view to luring international citizens to the area.

“Northern Swedes often do not see the beauty around them as people from other countries do. I think this is why they are not so active in promoting it as a destination to move to. We didn't have that problem. We could see the attraction of living here,” Carpenter told The Local Sweden in 2015. “So we decided to do something about it.”

Ten British citizens now live in Jokkmokk – total population just over 3,000 – according to Tomas Johansson of Statistics Sweden.

Funding for the Emigrate2Jokkmokk project was discontinued in 2016, Carpenter told The Local. A spokesman for the Jokkmokk municipality was not available for comment.

Many Brits however seem to concur with Carpenter about the attraction of living in Swedish rural areas.

“My time is taken up cutting grass in summer and cutting paths through snow in winter,” Frank Mitchell, 66 – who took early retirement to settle in a house in the forests outside Järlåsa, 45 minutes by car from Uppsala, with his Swedish wife – told The Local.

The view from Frank Mitchell's home outside Järlåsa. Photo: Frank Mitchell.

When Mitchell isn't immersed in the nature around his home, he gives private guitar and karate lessons in the nearby city of Uppsala.

But Mitchell is not in tune with Brexiters. “I think it is the biggest mistake that the UK has ever made,” Mitchell told The Local. “I worry about what will happen if there is a no-deal and more devaluation of the pound,” he adds, citing fears that his British pension could be further devalued in the future.

Mitchell secured permanent residency in 2018, however, and isn't planning on going anywhere. “I told my kids: the only way I'll be going back is in a box,” quips Mitchell.

This article is part of a broader series on Brits living in remote, rural areas in Europe. Read the debut in the series on The Local Italy below.

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'I feel exiled': How Brits in Europe are locked abroad with foreign partners

Europe is home to hundreds of thousands of British nationals, many of whom have foreign partners and children. But if they want to move to the UK to live and work it will soon become more difficult.

When it comes to getting a partner visa, the UK has some of the strictest rules in Europe. In addition to hefty fees and a healthcare surcharge, the Home Office requires British citizens and long-term residents who bring their foreign partner to the UK to have a minimum income showing they can support them without relying on the social security system.

The minimum income up until now was set at £18,600 (€21,700), or £22,400 (€26,100) if the couple had one child, plus another £2,400 (€2,800) for each other child.

But these income requirements will rise steeply from April 11th 2024.

How it works: What Brits in Europe should know about UK’s new minimum income rules

From this date the minimum a British national or long-term resident will need to earn if they want to return home will increase to £29,000 (€33,800) and up to £38,000 (€44,313) by spring 2025, although there will no longer be an additional amount for accompanying children.

Alternatively, families need to prove they have at least £62,500 (€72,884) in cash, which from 11 April will increase to £88,500 (€103,207).

‘Family life has been destroyed’

To put this in context the Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford suggests that around 50 percent of UK employees earn less than the £29,000 threshold and 70 percent less than £38,700. The Observatory also says that while the number of people affected by the policy is small compared to the overall UK immigration (family visas represent 5 percent of all entry visas), the impacts on concerned families can be “very significant”.

The Migration Observatory notes that other European countries apply income thresholds to sponsor foreign partners. Spain, for instance, requires sponsors to have an annual income equal to the social security salary. In Denmark, sponsors must not have claimed social benefits in the three years before the application. But in Spain and the US, the partner’s foreign income also counts towards the threshold.

So what does this mean for mixed British and international families living in Europe who might want or even need to return to the UK to live?

Campaigners have complained that many Britons with foreign partners have simply been “locked abroad” or families have been separated while they try to meet the minimum income or savings requirement.

Reunite Families UK, a non-profit organisation supporting people affected by the UK spouse visa rules, says this policy causes distress, especially for children.

Some 65 percent of respondents in research carried out by the group said that their child received a diagnosis of a mental health condition due to the separation of their parents.

“Since its introduction, this policy has destroyed the family life of countless people and children,” Matteo Besana, Advocacy and Campaigns Manager at Reunite Families UK said.

“Women have been forced to become single parents to their children and live away from their partner and the father of their children only because they didn’t meet the threshold.

“As shown by our research on the mental health impact of the policy, these are scars that, particularly for children, will be carried for the rest of their lives,” Besana said.

The people most likely to be affected are women, who tend to earn less or not work because they took on caring responsibilities. Also heavily impacted are people under 30 and over 50 years of age, people living outside London and the Southeast of England where wages are higher, and those belonging to specific ethnicities, according to the Migration Observatory.

The Local spoke to two British women, in Italy and Sweden, struggling to return to the UK with their families because of these rules.

More savings needed

Sarah Douglas, who has been living in Italy since 2007, was planning to return to Scotland with her Italian husband and three children.

“It was always our long-term goal to move back to the UK after we had our children and once we’d have saved enough to buy a home in the UK,” she said.

“In hindsight, we should have gone after the Brexit referendum, but in the beginning it wasn’t clear what the final deal would be and I naively assumed that situations like mine would be taken into account and we would have the right to return… Once it did become clear, we were in the middle of the pandemic and it wasn’t the time to move,” she said.

Having stayed home to take care of the children, Sarah will find it hard to land a job near her family in Scotland that meets the minimum income required to sponsor a foreign partner for a UK visa.

Her husband, a computer programmer, has been trying to get an employment visa, “but most of them state that you must already have permission to work in the UK,” Sarah says. And applying for British citizenship is not an option for a non-UK resident spouse.

‘People need to be aware’

Sarah and her husband are trying to save as much as they can, an alternative to the income requirement, but the amount they need is rising to almost £90,000, meaning it may be a long time before they have enough to move home.

While the aim of the UK’s policy is to ensure families moving to the UK are not a burden on the taxpayer, the reality is that people arriving on a family visa are not able to claim any benefits from the UK government.

“They should judge the overall financial viability of the family unit, rather than just the earning potential of the sponsoring partner,” Sarah says.

“We could live well with my husband’s salary and he could work remotely. We are stable and financially secure, but because I don’t earn any money, they say we are not able to support ourselves.”

Sarah says that most of the British public are unaware of the minimum income requirement.

“People think if you are married, your husband is allowed to come to the UK, but when I say no, it doesn’t work like that, they are really surprised. A lot of people are not aware of how this could affect them,” she said.

Looking for a job from abroad

Another British women who lives in Sweden with her South African husband and two children and plans to move to the UK told The Local how the minimum income requirement had put them in a “precarious and stressful situation”.

The woman, who preferred to remain anonymous said: “After having the two children, I was very fortunate to find a research position and do my PhD, which is a salaried position in Scandinavia, and now that I finished, we are looking to leave.

“But I need a job in the UK to sponsor my husband, and as a new graduate with limited work experience, it is not easy. It is even more difficult when you are not in the country and I missed out on opportunities because they wanted an immediate start. I really don’t want to move without my whole family,” she said.

She says the UK’s policy is “gendered and geographically discriminatory” because it makes life harder for women and also harder for anyone who is planning to move to a part of the country that isn’t in London, where salaries are higher.

“I feel exiled from my country and separated from my family there,” she said.

Her husband, she argues, has his own company and could continue working remotely from the UK, earning well above the requirement. He would also pay taxes and national insurance while having to pay the healthcare surcharge, a form of double taxation, she argues. But that would not entitle him to a visa.

“Our house is on the market now. We have booked removal companies for the 6th of June. The dog is booked for his transport. I just think this policy is so out of touch with the modern world,” she said.

Reunite Families UK has called on the government to recognise the right for British or settled citizens to bring their close family members to the UK and scrap the minimum income requirement. Alternatively, the group says the rules should take into consideration the earning potential of both partners and consider “the best interests of children”.

A petition on the UK parliament website asks the government to reconsider the minimum income policy. If it reaches 100,000 signatures, it will have to be debated in parliament.

This article has been produced by Europe Street news.

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