Immigration and immigration policy

In the nineteenth century, Sweden was a country of emigration, and as late as 1930 the number of persons leaving the country exceeded the number entering. Not until after the Second World War were large numbers of foreign citizens employed in Sweden, and immigration did not assume major proportions until the end of the 1960s.

Sweden is today one of the world's “rich” nations, but only a century ago it occupied a position similar to that of some of the more advanced of today's “developing” countries. Industrialization started later than in continental Europe and the economy was characterized by a heavy reliance on agriculture, with people living primarily in rural areas. This was the background to the great migration to America.

The first emigrants to America included those who in the 1840s opposed the religious control of the Swedish state church. The economically motivated migration, which began in the 1890s and continued with varying degrees of intensity until the 1920s, far surpassed the more limited movements of earlier times. Approximately one million people emigrated from a total population of only around five million. Perhaps an even greater number of persons would have left had they been able to do so. Nearly everyone had relatives or friends who had emigrated, and letters to travel agents in Gothenburg show that the general interest in emigration was very strong. It is reasonable to assume that at some point most people considered leaving.