Sweden election highlights anti-migrant shift in Sjobo

Sweden's general election on Sunday is putting renewed attention on Sjobo, a southern municipality where residents voted almost 40 years ago against accepting refugees and where anti-migrant politics now has strong support.

In a September 1988 referendum, almost 68 percent of voters in Sjobo opposed taking in refugees after Sweden asked the municipality, then home to about 15,400 people, to accept around 15 people under a national strategy to distribute refugees more evenly.

The vote caused a national controversy at the time. Today, the far-right Sweden Democrats, a key parliamentary ally of Sweden's minority right-wing government, are polling second nationwide in the final days before the election. The party won 43 percent of votes in Sjobo in the 2022 general election.

Bengt Lundgren, an 89-year-old pensioner who plans to vote for the Sweden Democrats, told AFP that Sjobo residents had been “right” in the stance they took.

The 1988 referendum divided the municipality. Charlotte Ramel, now a municipal councillor, said her mother led the camp that supported accepting refugees and was threatened, while her home was vandalised. Ramel said Sjobo has changed “enormously” and now meets its obligations for welcoming new arrivals, taking in more than some other towns in the region.

Sweden has tightened immigration policy since the 2015 migrant crisis, when it accepted large numbers of asylum seekers. The current right-wing minority government, in power since 2022, has reduced numbers further under an agreement that gives the Sweden Democrats influence over policy in return for parliamentary support.

About 20 percent of Sweden's population was born abroad, according to 2025 data from Statistics Sweden. A report published this year by the Swedish Institute for Futures Studies said around half of Swedes want fewer refugees, while public opinion remains in favour of labour immigration.

The Sweden Democrats, led by Jimmie Akesson, have made reducing immigration a top priority and are now focusing on “re-migration”, including deportations or incentives for immigrants to return to their home countries.

Edmir Mehmeti, a 24-year-old Moderate Party candidate from Sjobo whose family arrived from Kosovo in 1998, said he supports restrictive immigration policy. He said calls for lower migration and more deportations are no longer controversial in Sweden and described them as “quite good politics”.