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What Indians should consider before moving to Sweden

After figures showing that more Indians are leaving Sweden than immigrating here went viral last week, we asked The Local's Indian readers for their tips on what Indians should know before moving here. Here's what they said.

Published: 26 August 2024 15:50 CEST
What Indians should consider before moving to Sweden
Sweden offers a more relaxed way of life, according to many of The Local's Indian readers – for better or worse. Photo: Fredrik Sandberg/TT

Indians have been one of Sweden’s biggest groups of new immigrants in recent years, but recent statistics suggest that the tide is turning.

Even so, two-thirds of more than 80 respondents told a survey by The Local that they would recommend Sweden to fellow Indians.

Moving to a new country is however always an individual choice, so readers also shared some factors that may help you decide whether Sweden is the place for you.

Cost of living and salaries

As anyone living in Sweden has undoubtedly noticed in recent years, the cost of living here is high, and it’s only got higher over the past few years.

For Indians who may be looking to put away money into savings during their career, this can cause issues.

“Don’t expect that your ambitions and performance will reflect on take-home salary,” said a research engineer in Norrbotten, who wished to remain anonymous.

“Salary increments are next to negligible as a whole. It is more the social structure which one has to relish, which is odd when one comes from India where own savings is a big part of everyone’s life.”

Despite this, the country “works well for people who are planning to live here for the very long term,” a 33-year-old software engineer from Gothenburg wrote.

Work

Despite lower salaries, the better work-life balance, as well as other benefits included in salary, like annual leave, parental leave and insurance, often make up for it.

“Sweden is not a country for high savings or a luxurious life,” a reader named Adarsh told The Local, while adding that there are often “hidden benefits in salary”, like generous annual leave and insurance.

HIDDEN BENEFITS:

“In contrast to the limited vacation days in India, I enjoy at least 33 days of paid vacation annually in Sweden, which helps in recharging and maintaining a healthy work-life balance,” added Dilip Elavazhagan, a senior IT cloud specialist in Stockholm.

Neil Pradhan, a data scientist also working in Stockholm, described the work-life balance in Sweden as “enviable”.

“As an Indian living in Sweden for six years, I have experienced both the advantages and challenges that come with moving to a new country. Sweden offers an enviable work-life balance, a close connection to nature, and excellent infrastructure for physical activities, all of which contribute to a high quality of life. The respect for personal space and freedom to make one’s own decisions without societal pressure is refreshing, as is the generally flat organisational structure that fosters inclusivity and collaboration,” he said.

Having said that, it’s not always easy to get a job in Sweden in the first place, especially when it comes to accompanying spouses, and some readers raised concerns of discrimination against non-Swedish speakers.

READ MORE:

“If you come to India with your spouse, getting a job will be another full time job for you,” a 28-year-old design engineer from Gothenburg said. “Fasten your seatbelts. If you add a child to it, then the burden to provide will be to a point where you question your decision to move to a new country with dependents.”

Climate

Sweden’s climate was mentioned both as a positive and a negative for many survey respondents, with the weather and the winters commonly listed as a drawback.

“The long, cold winters and limited daylight can be challenging for those accustomed to warmer climates,” an anonymous respondent said, although Indian readers have also told us previously that they “love” the Swedish winter weather.

Other readers, like one 42-year-old IT engineer from Gothenburg, praised the country for its “pollution free environment” providing a “better living environment for kids”.

“Noise and pollution is something which impacts you when you travel back home,” wrote a female IoT analyst based in Gothenburg.

“Clean air is a big positive in Sweden,” 30-year-old Sachin, based in Stockholm, said. “In India it has only gotten worse in big cities.”

Education

The Swedish education system was also mentioned as having both benefits and drawbacks, with respondents praising the fact that it is free, while adding that there can be issues with accessing quality education, as well as education in English.

“If you have kids, research the Swedish education system and how it differs from India,” a software architect from Stockholm wrote. You can find the answers to some common questions about the Swedish school system under our ‘schools’ tag.

A 34-year-old data scientist, also based in Stockholm, said that the academic level is not always as good in Sweden as it is in India.

“Children’s education is standardised and consistent across Sweden,” he said. “While sports and extracurricular activities are great, the academic level is poor compared to the good schools in the cities of India. Higher level university education on the other hand is very good in Sweden.”

“Private education in English is very expensive,” a 46-year-old reader based in Stockholm, who moved to Sweden five years ago, added. “The other option is bilingual schools.”

Family

Respondents with children were quick to praise Sweden as a great country for families, although there are drawbacks when it comes to visits from family back home.

“Recommending Sweden to fellow Indians, particularly families, is well-founded due to its supportive family policies, high-quality education system, and safe, healthy living environment,” said Kuhelee Chandel, a researcher and lecturer in Gävle who lives in Sweden with her 11-year-old.

“Sweden offers generous parental leave, affordable childcare, and free education,” she added. “The healthcare system is inclusive and comprehensive, ensuring well-being for all family members. Additionally, the emphasis on outdoor living and the overall safety and stability make Sweden an ideal place for raising children in a nurturing and enriching environment. These factors make Sweden a top choice for Indian families considering a move abroad.”

On the other hand, it’s not always easy to be so far from home, especially considering the fact that it’s so hard for parents in India to get visas to visit their children and grandchildren in Sweden.

“Being far away from family is hard for Indians. The Schengen visa is expensive, hard to apply for and is only given for a limited time,” said Avinash, a senior scientist at AstraZeneca in Mölndal. 

“My mother has visited me in Germany three times and gone back to India within the stipulated time causing no problems,” he added. “Yet, she has to produce all the documents to visit me one more time. There is no path towards a longer visa (for example USA’s ten-year visitor visa option) which makes it unattractive for Indians.”

One respondent, based in Gothenburg, went as far as to say that the government risks losing out on top talent if they don’t provide some sort of visa for visiting parents.

“There are cases where the Swedish Migration Agency denies parents a visa for the short or long term,” he said. “That gives a strong negative message to the Indian community, because for Indians their family is not complete without their parents. We don’t leave them alone in their old age as is done in Sweden.”

“If Sweden would like to attract top talents then they must think about this aspect, otherwise you will see more and more departing Indians. Indians are a great asset to the Swedish economy and if the Swedish government does not consider this a priority then it is going to be difficult for Indians to stay.”

Property

As The Local has reported before, it’s not easy for immigrants to find affordable rentals in Sweden, and the situation is no different for Indians coming to live in the country.

“There is a general shortage of apartments,” wrote 35-year-old Rahul Arora. “The queue for first-hand contracts is huge. Most apartments are tiny with only one toilet. In India, it is common to have an attached toilet with every bedroom.”

“The rental market in Sweden is extremely complicated and outright unfair towards newcomers in the country,” wrote Avinash, the Indian quoted above who is based in Mölndal. 

“For an Indian who has just moved to the country, they won’t be sure about living here for a long time for the first couple of years and therefore would want to rent rather than buy a property. First-hand rentals are nearly impossible to get in the big cities (which is where the jobs for Indians are) and second-hand rentals are way too uncertain. My friend was asked to leave within two months of getting his rental contract. People are paying over 40-50 percent of their monthly income on these rental apartments they find on Blocket or Samtrygg.”

FINDING A HOME:

“If you want to buy a house as a family then it’s better to both have jobs so that you can live a comfortable life (financially). You are at the mercy of interest rates,” senior application architect Harsha Aithal added.

Cultural differences

Culturally, Swedes and Indians are definitely different.

“Sweden has a more individualistic culture, whereas India is more collectivist. Understand the local customs, norms, and values,” one respondent, a software architect in Stockholm, said.

A number of respondents added that “loneliness” was a big issue, with PhD student Sanjay Sukumar describing the country as an “introvert’s paradise”.

MAKING FRIENDS:

“The conflict-avoidance attitude, cold weather and reserved people in Sweden are definitely cons as compared to India,” researcher Bharat Mehta added. “Debating and arguing is part of everyday life in India like negotiating with fruit vendors and arguing for a better workplace environment.”

Despite this, he would still encourage other Indians to make the move.

“Even though Sweden and Swedes sound culturally opposite to India, the whole idea is to be open-minded if you are planning to leave India,” he said. “This, to multicultural and multilingual Indians would be relatively easy in my opinion! If you open your mind, Sweden is a beautiful country with nice (albeit reserved) people, a working public system and better overall quality of life.”

Thank you to everyone who replied to our survey. We received more than 80 responses so weren’t able to include them all, but we tried to pick a representative sample. If you would like to add your own thoughts to the conversation, please feel free to do so in the comments below.

If you have any future ideas, feedback or questions about life in Sweden for The Local’s editorial team, you’re always welcome to email [email protected]. 

Member comments

  1. wide ranges of opinions, but i would be very curious to know how many acquired swedish citizenship before returning back to india ? having said that. still hands down best decision ever for me to move to sweden

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INDIANS IN SWEDEN

‘Best time of my life’: Indian dads push countrymen to take Swedish parental leave

Two Indian fathers who have embraced Sweden's generous system of parental leave told The Local how it changed their relationship with their children and why other fathers should take it too.

Published: 27 August 2024 13:33 CEST
'Best time of my life': Indian dads push countrymen to take Swedish parental leave

Sundarrajan Santhanagopalan, from Chennai, is an evangelist for Swedish-style parental leave.

For him, the seven months he spent looking after his son strengthened his bond with the child and helped him integrate into Swedish society.

So, when he looks at the ten or so Indian families he knows well in Gothenburg, and sees that not one of the other fathers has done the same, he wants to try to change that. 

“I had quite a great experience with my first one, my son is now almost five,” he said. “I wish people had a more relaxed approach towards this and trusted the system, rather than only trusting themselves. I wish that one day I could enjoy parental leave with one of the other Indian fathers who is also taking care of a child and, you know, we could go for a stroll with the children or something like that.” 

Jignesh Sindha, another Indian father who took four months’ leave as the main carer, says that he feels grateful to have been able to take advantage of Sweden’s generous system, so that he could take his son out into undisturbed nature. 

“I think it was the best time of my life,” he said. “From the day I started it, I would take him out into nature and then spend two or three hours in these kinds of places, then come home and cook for him, feed him and make him sleep.” 

He also wishes more Indian fathers took leave. 

“I have a daughter, and when she gets married, if she does not get the opportunity to work, it will be hurtful to me. It’s very much needed that she gets equal opportunity to be an excellent doctor, and fulfill her ambitions, and not only be a homemaker. I’m not talking about feminism, but about equal opportunities. This system should be there. It should provide you that chance.” 

Sweden boasts one of the most generous systems of parental leave in the world, brought in 50 years ago this year. Couples get 480 days of leave to share between them, 390 days of which are based on their salaries, and three months of which are dedicated, use-it-or-lose-it, for each parent (they’re often called the “daddy months”, although in theory they could be claimed by the mother).

READ ALSO:

In practice, fathers take on average around 30 percent of parental leave and mothers 70 percent.

Later this year, Sundarrajan plans to do it all over again, taking a further five months off to care for his five-month-old daughter. 

“I am looking forward to taking parental leave for the daughter, my second one, hoping to start in November. Our plan is that she goes back to her work in two months, and then I go off for like, five or six months.” 

READ ALSO:

Jignesh Sindha enjoys the cherry blossom with his daughter. Photo: Private

The initial decision to take parental leave more than four years ago came partly because of circumstance. Sundarrajan and his wife arrived in Sweden and the priority was to give his wife a chance to look for and find a job, so he took leave to allow her to do so. 

But he thinks he was also influenced by his own father back in Chennai, who himself stopped work some months to look after the children to enable his mother to find a job.  

“Once she found a job, they could run the race again, so that’s where I take my inspiration from. Not many fathers I’ve known have taken unpaid vacations in India just to spend time with their kid.” 

OPINION:

Both men believe the time they spent as the main carer for their baby has had a lasting impact on the relationship. 

“Whenever I had trouble, at this age, I called my mom first, not my papa, because mom has taken care care of me in the first three, four years,” Jignesh said. “Now, when I’m with my child, I see that when he wakes up in bed, he says, ‘Papa, Papa, where are you? Where are you?’ I don’t remember ever having done that.”

“I try to do my best to educate people, make them aware of the benefits I enjoy aside from money, the sort of bond it creates,” Sundarrajan said. “I think that’s pretty valuable.” 

Like Jignesh, Sundarrajan also took advantage of Sweden’s parks and large expanses of nature, but he also took advantage of all the support offered by the local municipality, particularly Öppna Förskolan, literally “the open preschool”, drop-in centres where new parents and their children can meet, get support, and pass the time.

“We went to the Öppna Förskolan. It just gives you the community, the ability to blend in and also helps you understand how Swedes handle a child and what they do in their leave. How they kill the time. We would also look at the Göteborg.se website for anything that’s happening, like a state-run activity, and then we would just take our child.”

Even without the paid leave and support, it is much easier for a father to take care of a young child in a Swedish city than in an overcrowded, polluted Indian one, he believes. 

“I can take my daughter outside or when she wants to sleep, but they can’t do the same in India. So it’s also the culture that surrounds Sweden that promotes or encourages the ability to take such vacations.” 

When they talk to friends and relatives outside of Sweden about taking time off, they report mixed reactions. 

“There are two groups who react differently,” laughs Jignesh. “There are people from villages who are more patriarchal and they think ‘why you are doing this?’ And there is another type of person with a professional setup in the cities, and they think it is amazing. ‘I really want that kind of life, do you know of any jobs in Sweden?’.” 

“We have cousins in the US and UK, and I have a very close friend who is currently expecting in Ireland, and I can only tell tell you how much they envy this benefit, because it’s so relaxing,” Sundarrajan agrees. “They can take leave, but it’s not paid so much, it’s not so extravagant.”

READ ALSO:

The two fathers believe that the fact that, even with a system as generous as Sweden’s, most Indian men don’t take leave, is partly down to the career anxiety they’ve brought with them from India’s more hierarchical, competitive workplaces, and partly simply due to a wish to make and save as much money in Sweden as possible. 

“I believe it’s the job aspect: you just think that you’re losing the race,” Sundarrajan says. “I know that if I go on parental leave in November and come back at the end of March, I know that the leverage that I have, the domain expertise I have in the product that I’m working on, is going to lag six months, and that’s a huge thing to catch up with in the fast-evolving software industry that we are working in. So that’s the insecurity you need to overcome.” 

“This would be devastating if you were in India,” Jignesh agrees. “In those companies, if you go for nine months, many of your contacts are gone. People have changed jobs, and the work has gone far ahead. In India, ladies usually cannot join back easily. They have difficulties. There are repercussions.” 

While the same can be true in Sweden, he continues, there’s much more understanding here of people returning from leave and help to get them back up to speed. 

“When you go back after four to five months, the train has moved on quite a lot, so it makes it difficult. But I think that’s not only for me. It’s for everybody. It is well-accepted in the work culture, so the manager knows that those who come back will take some time. It is not that there is a big impact on your appraisals or anything. So that is really amazing.” 

But he conceded that he had still felt worried himself. 

“You feel that pressure a little bit because you feel a little left out. Maybe that’s an effect from India that I am carrying, because fathers from Sweden, they don’t care.” 

The other deterrent for Indian fathers is financial, particularly if the mother has not found a job in Sweden. 

“Historically, the examples that I have been set is people moving to the US and then coming back, like, billionaires,” Sundarrajan says. “So there is an expectation that, if you go outside of India, you get rich quickly.” 

He said that he and his wife had weighed up the impact of reducing his salary to the maximum day parental leave payment of 1,218 kronor a day. 

“We know that we are earning relatively less than if we had worked, and so we could save less. But then what’s the trade off? And then we weighed it out, and we chose the memories that we can make with our child.” 

Are you a father who has either used parental leave in Sweden or decided not to? Please tell us about it in the comments below. 

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