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Swedish Reception of Unaccompanied Refugee Children—Promoting Integration?

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Abstract

In this article we describe and analyse the Swedish reception of unaccompanied refugee children and efforts to promote their integration into Swedish society. We identify the actors involved in the reception and promotion of the children’s integration and investigate their efforts through the lens of social ecological systems theory. We show that reception is fraught with challenges that concern lack of interconnections between actors, lack of an articulated political vision of integration and absence of systematic evaluations and long-term follow-ups of how the reception affects integration.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by The European Refugee Fund (grant number E85-288).

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Correspondence to Malin E. Wimelius.

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This research was approved by the Regional Ethical Review Board (2012-454-31Ö) at Umeå University. All interviews and focus group discussions were based on informed consent.

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Wimelius, M.E., Eriksson, M., Isaksson, J. et al. Swedish Reception of Unaccompanied Refugee Children—Promoting Integration?. Int. Migration & Integration 18, 143–157 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12134-016-0472-2

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