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Half of Swedish residents want reduced immigration

TT/The Local
TT/The Local - [email protected]
Half of Swedish residents want reduced immigration
A group of immigrant students learn Swedish at a Swedish for Immigrants class. Photo: Fredrik Sandberg / TT

Just over half of the Swedish population want reduced immigration or a total stop to immigration, according to a new report by the Pew Research Centre, a think tank in the USA.

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In the study, participants in 27 different countries were asked to choose whether they thought that their home country should receive: more immigrants, around the same amount of immigrants as it currently does, or fewer/no immigrants.

A total of 52 percent of the 989 Swedes who took part chose the third alternative. A third (33 percent) said the level of immigration should remain the same, while 14 percent would prefer an increase in immigration.

Across all the countries included in the study, a median of 45 percent chose the third option of fewer or no immigrants, putting Sweden slightly above average.

Greece, Hungary and Italy were the European countries most negative towards immigration, the study showed. In those cases, 82, 72, and 71 percent of the respective participants said their country should receive fewer or no immigrants.

In Sweden, fewer than one in five of the people surveyed (18 percent) said they thought that emigration away from their country was a big or very big problem -- the lowest proportion in all the countries surveyed. That figure was much higher in Spain, at 88 percent, and Hungary, at 80 percent.

The study was carried out in May and June this year.

IN DEPTH: The shifting sands of Sweden's immigration debate

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