Indians moving to Sweden have by far outnumbered Indians leaving every single year in at least the past two decades, according to number-crunchers Statistics Sweden’s population statistics of immigrants and emigrants.

But the first half of 2024 suggests that the trend may be broken.

A total of 2,837 Indian-born people left Sweden between January and June – a 171 percent increase on the same period last year, which makes Indians by a large margin the biggest group of emigrated foreigners, ahead of people born in Iraq, China and Syria.

According to figures provided to The Local by Statistics Sweden, this is the first time since at least 1998 (as far back as the agency was able to retrieve figures for us) that Sweden has had a negative net migration of Indians in the first six months of the year.

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Robin Sukhia, secretary-general and CEO of the Sweden-India Business Council, cautioned against drawing too quick conclusions based on these figures alone.

“We do not believe there is any special reason to this right now, likely have to wait for a full year assessment. Could be a combination of several factors from concluded studies, margins of error, high costs in Sweden last few years, lack of service apartments and accommodation in general. Difficult to know,” he told The Local in an email.

Indians remain one of Sweden’s largest group of new immigrants in 2024, behind only Ukrainians (although the huge increase in Ukrainians is largely administrative, as people who fled in 2022 as a result of the war could only formally become “residents” this year).

A total of 2,461 Indian-born people moved to Sweden between January and June 2024, down from 3,681 in the same period last year. But if we exclude the pandemic years of 2020 and 2021, Indian immigration to Sweden is at its lowest level since 2017.

Prior to this, Indian immigration had been on an uninterrupted climb since 2009, following strengthening diplomatic ties and the Nordic country’s drive to attract highly-skilled students, researchers and labour migrants to plug skills gaps in especially the tech sector.

But despite the Swedish government’s pledge to attract international talent, tech layoffs and tougher work permit rules are creating new hurdles for immigrants.

As The Local has previously reported, the number of work permits awarded to highly qualified immigrants fell 20 percent in the first half of 2024 compared to the same period last year. First-time work permits to Indian citizens fell 30 percent in the same timeframe.

Emigration in general almost doubled in 2024, although much of that is due to the Swedish Tax Agency’s efforts to improve the population register, so not all of the people registered as leaving Sweden in 2024 actually left then, some may have left earlier (this may of course include Indians). Most of these people were registered as emigrating to an unknown country.

Are you from India and have left or are thinking of leaving Sweden? We'd be keen to hear your thoughts. If you would like to share your reasons with The Local, please email our editorial team at news@thelocal.se. 

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Article by Emma Löfgren with additional research by Richard Orange and Becky Waterton.