It is Örebro municipality and Karlskoga municipality that surveyed people with at least two years of post-secondary education without Swedish citizenship, but with a residence permit.
After about three years, the evaluation shows that about a third of the participants in the project have gone on to work – and about the same number have gone on to education that will then lead to work, often at university level.
– Eight out of ten have entered an industry that matches their skills and education, says Khaled Haj Taha, sub-project manager.
The highly educated fare worse
– Often the highly educated feel worse mentally when they come here because they have fallen down the social ladder. You come from a well-paid job, nice home with several cars, then you come to Sweden and then all that disappears, says Per Wassgren who is the project manager.
He continues:
– I think that the authorities think that the highly educated foreign-born can manage and that it is the low-educated foreign-born that we must focus on. But it turns out it’s a little more difficult than that.