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SWEDISH CITIZENSHIP

How many people got Swedish citizenship in 2022 and where were they from?

Just under 90,000 people became Swedish citizens in 2022. Which countries were most people from and how does this compare to previous years?

How many people got Swedish citizenship in 2022 and where were they from?
Swedish passports. Photo: Henrik Montgomery/TT

Last year, the number of new Swedish citizens reached 89,967 – an increase on 2021. This figure includes secondary applicants – children who were granted citizenship in a joint application with their parent – as well as people whose application was rejected by the Migration Agency but approved by an appeals court.

The Migration Agency received a total of 88,968 applications in 2022 (not including secondary applicants), and 94,292 were processed, including applications received in previous years. Of these, 78,201 were approved, 13,230 were rejected, 572 were listed as “invalid” and 2,289 were in the “other” category.

This is also an increase on 2021, when 71,229 citizenship applications were approved.

The average time for an application to be processed, according to Migration Agency figures, had risen to 431 days, (356 in 2021 and 376 in 2020), with the median time for processing dropping to 256 days (compared to 330 in 2021 and 315 in 2020). An average of 83 percent of applications were successful.

“We’ve managed to change the trend and shorten the processing time for citizenship,” Migration Agency general director Mikael Ribbenvik said, referring to the drop in the median processing time.

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Of those who became Swedish citizens in 2022 (including children receiving citizenship alongside a parent), 21.7 percent came from Syria (19,501).

The next most common countries of origin for applicants in the top ten were Eritrea (8,500), Somalia (5,954), Afghanistan (5,623), Iraq (3,197), India (2,879), Poland (2,085), Iran (1,848), Turkey (1,678) and Thailand (1,541). This top ten is almost identical to last year, when Germany was in the top ten instead of Turkey.

In November 2022, Sweden had a population of 10,520,558 according to Statistics Sweden, meaning 2022’s new Swedish citizens represent less than one percent of the population.

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For members

QUALITY OF LIFE

How happy are people in Sweden compared to the rest of the world?

Sweden climbed two notches in the annual World Happiness Report, but is still behind its Danish and Finnish neighbours.

How happy are people in Sweden compared to the rest of the world?

The UN’s latest World Happiness Report puts Sweden fourth on its national happiness ranking.

Finland takes the title of world’s happiest nation, for the seventh year in a row.

Sweden has consistently ended up high on this kind of list for decades, thanks to relatively strong social support, affluence, and comparatively honest and accountable governments. Its fourth place is an improvement on last year, when it came in sixth.

The United States fell out of the top 20 for the first time since the report began in 2012, getting a ranking of 23. For context, Australia was 10th, Ireland 17th, the United Kingdom 20th, Germany 24th, France 27th, China 60th and India 126th, with Afghanistan in last place.

Nordic neighbours Denmark and Norway were 2nd and 7th respectively.

The findings are drawn from Gallup World Poll data and analysed by leading wellbeing scientists, according to the World Happiness Report website.

Experts use responses from people in 143 nations to rank the world’s “happiest” countries.

Rankings are based on a three-year average of each population’s average assessment of their quality of life.

The UN report then uses experts from a range of fields including economics, psychology and sociology to attempt to explain the variations across countries and over time.

Factors such as GDP, life expectancy, having someone to count on, a sense of freedom, generosity and perceptions of corruption are among those considered in the final report.

“We found some pretty striking results. There is a great variety among countries in the relative happiness of the younger, older, and in-between populations. Hence the global happiness rankings are quite different for the young and the old, to an extent that has changed a lot over the last dozen years,” Professor John F. Helliwell, a founding editor of the World Happiness Report, said on the report’s website.

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