From rights to duties? Welfare and citizenship for immigrants and refugees in Scandinavia

OECD’s annual International Migration Outlook for 2007 (OECD 2007) reveals that the Scandinavian countries are placed at the very bottom of a scale that measures integration of immigrants in the labour market – together with the Netherlands.2 Sweden performs worst of all. Concurrently, the Migrant Integration Policy Index3 (British Council 2007) places Sweden at the very top among 28 European states when it concerns integration policies, i.e. the formal extension of rights to immigrants.