What do we know so far about Sweden’s plans to survey immigrants’ values?

When was the survey first proposed?

Sweden’s then-employment and integration minister, Mats Persson, announced plans to investigate immigrants’ values back in October 2024 in an interview with tabloid Aftonbladet.

He said at the time that the goal of the survey was to find out to what extent immigrants’ values match or deviate from what he called “liberal democratic values”.

In July 2025, Mohamsson, Sweden’s new education and integration minister, confirmed to Swedish broadsheet Dagens Nyheter (DN) that the government will be moving forward with those plans, which were in 2024 expected to cost around two million kronor.

What is the aim of the survey?

Both Mohamsson and Persson have said that the survey will be used to guide integration efforts going forward, although it’s not entirely clear what they mean by that.

Mohamsson told DN that she “is not ruling anything out”.

“It could be changes in schools, social orientation courses [for newly-arrived refugees], SFI classes,” she said.

She added that the point of the survey is “not to change people’s opinions.”

“It’s about upholding the values we have in Sweden. It would be strange if we said certain people didn’t need to have these values.”

When will it take place and how will it work?

According to Mohamsson, the survey will take place in the autumn of 2025. The World Values Survey research group will be responsible for carrying out the survey at a cost of five million kronor. It will interview around 3,000 people, half of whom have a Swedish background and the other half of whom have a “non-Western” background.

The World Values Survey has carried out similar surveys in Sweden before which showed that a lot of so-called nyanlända, a term usually used to refer to newly-arrived refugees, have differing views on topics like divorce, premarital sex, abortion and homosexuality than people born in Sweden. However, after ten years in the country, their views were much closer to those of the Swedes.

“Ten years is too long,” Mohamsson said. “That’s a whole generation of girls who can’t choose who they want to love or boys who can’t come out of the closet.”

Persson said back in 2024 that the survey will be anonymised, so it will not be possible to trace answers back to specific people, and that it will ideally take place every year.

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What do immigrants think about the survey?

When the government first announced plans to survey immigrants about their values, we asked The Local’s readers for their opinions. 

Almost half (48 percent) of the 75 people who answered our non-scientific survey thought that the government’s plans to survey foreigners’ values was a “good idea”, with 29.3 percent stating they thought it was a “bad idea”. The other respondents, 22.7 percent, answered “both good and bad / don’t know”.

You can read the full article presenting the results of our survey here.