There is a complex and dynamic relationship between the definition of immigration policy and the way organizational questions within the policy field are resolved. The field spans several political sectors and is generally characterized by multilevel complexity, a high degree of unpredictability and a number of politically sensitive considerations. As I will argue in this paper, these characteristics are particularly valid in the Swedish case due to its popularity as a destination country for refugees, its relatively generous asylum policies and its unique resettlement policies.
Swedish local government introduction for refugees started in 1985. The shared, and blurred, responsibility between central and local government agencies within this area has been debated ever since. In December 2010, the recently re-elected Swedish right-wing government launched the so called Introduction Reform, presenting it as “the most important immigration policy reform in Sweden in three decades”. The main difference compared to the earlier system was that the responsibility for all introduction measures during the first two years was transferred from the local government to the central government in the form of the Public Employment Service. Other central government agencies, such as the Migration Board and the County Administrative Boards, were also given new tasks, while the “only” remaining, formal role of the municipalities was to provide housing during the introduction phase.
The aim of this paper is to analyze the initiation and implementation of the Introduction Reform with a specific focus on issues of political accountability and coordination in the central-local government relation. What did the government want to achieve with the reform? What kind of problems have surfaced during the implementation of the reform? And how much has actually been changed compared to the previous system?
