Immigrants

The report provides a descriptive analysis of immigration to Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden and the situation for immigrants and their descendants living there. Furthermore, it looks at how immigrants and descendants are integrated into society, with a focus on their participation in education and working life.

From 1990 to 2022, family immigration was the most common reason for immigration among non-Nordic citizens, accounting for 35 percent of all immigration from outside the Nordic countries. Family immigration includes those who come to either reunite with family or establish a family.

This report presents results from Statistics Norway's survey of the population's attitudes towards immigrants and immigration, which was carried out in January-February 2024.

Norway has good statistics on statelessness but the statistics on this are very incomplete for most countries. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has taken an initiative to improve the statistics on statelessness, as well as for the other main target groups of the High Commissioner, namely refugees and internally displaced persons. Statistics Norway (SSB) has actively contributed to this effort.

At the beginning of 2024, there were just over 1600 stateless persons in Norway. This marks a halving from 2011 and 2018 when the number was at its highest recorded level. Most of the stateless individuals come from Palestine and Syria.

Norway has good data on statelessness in the National Population Register. At the turn of the year, 1,626 stateless persons lived in Norway, but the number varies significantly from year to year. This variation is due to fluctuating immigration of stateless individuals and the transition to Norwegian citizenship. Stateless individuals can become Norwegian citizens after three years. Most stateless individuals in Norway arrived as transfer refugees or asylum seekers, many of them with Palestinian background. In addition, a few stateless individuals are born in the country each year. The main problem for stateless persons living in Norway is lack of a passport.

Immigrants and their Norwegian-born children are highly heterogeneous and stand for an increasingly significant proportion of the Norwegian population. This publication presents a description of who they are and how they are doing.

Unaccompanied minor refugees are children and young people who arrived in Norway before turning 18 without their parents or anyone with parental responsibility for them, and who applied for asylum and were granted residence in Norway on this basis.

Norway has experienced a pronounced growth in immigration, especially after the EU enlargement in 2004. Immigrant women make up an increasingly large proportion of the population In Norway. At the beginning of 2023, there were 428 100 immigrant women, which is 16 per cent of all resident women.

Naturalisation may be interpreted as an indication of belonging and integration into the Norwegian society. There were 423 300 such naturalisations during the period we look at in this report, 1977 to 2021.

Resettlement refugees are people who have fled their home country and who have been transferred to a third country. At the beginning of 2023, there will be over 48 000 resettlement refugees in Norway. In this report, we provide a demographic description of this group of refugees, their participation and results in education, their connection to the labor market and an overview of their income and living conditions.

Attitudes towards immigrants and immigration have become increasingly positive during the last years, and the results from this year’s survey shows this continuing trend.

Family immigration rose significantly in 2021 compared to the previous year. However, the number of family immigrations did not rise as much as other types of immigration. Fewer persons came to establish family with persons without immigrant background compared to before the pandemic.

Labour immigrants add important expertise to Norwegian society and help to cover labour shortages. Norway has historically had labour immigration from far back in time. We take a closer look at labour immigrants from countries outside the European Economic Area (EEA) as well as their family members in this report.

Unaccompanied minor refugees are children and young people who arrived in Norway before turning 18 without their parents or anyone with parental responsibility for them, and who applied for asylum and were granted residence in Norway on this basis.

41 100 persons were granted Norwegian citizenship last year. This was the highest number in a single year ever. Swedes, Eritreans and Russians were the largest groups among those naturalised.

At the beginning of 2022, there were 819 400 immigrants in Norway. This is about 19300 more than the year before. In table 09817 it is possible to see the number of immigrants and their percentage of the total population in Norway by year from 2010-2022.

This project is a descriptive analysis of migration and integration based on Nordic comparative data for migration and integration, in the Nordic Council of Ministers table data base: https://www.nordicstatistics.org/.

Family migration has been the most important reason for immigration to Norway for non-Nordic citizens since 1990. Family migration largely follows other migration and must be seen in relation with immigration in general to Norway. In recent years, family migration to Norway has declined, which is partly due to fewer refugees arriving. The decline was particularly large in 2020. This was primarily a result of travel restrictions introduced during the corona pandemic.

Elderly immigrants are defined in this report as people aged 60 years or older, born abroad with two foreign-born parents and four foreign-born grandparents.

During the last years attitudes to immigrants and immigration have become increasingly positive. The results from this year’s survey show that this trend continues also this year.

Resettlement refugees are people who have fled their home country and who have been transferred to a third country.

Using Norwegian register data on migrant-background individuals born 1985 to 2001 who were either native born or who immigrated as children or teens, in combination with data from the World Marriage Database, we investigate how residential partner markets and marriage behavior in countries of origin shape partner choice and choice of union type in Norway

There were 19 700 naturalisations during 2020. This constituted an increase of 49 percent from 2019. The increase was most probably related to the change in the Nationality Act, which came into effect 1st of January 2020 and made holding multiple citizenships legal for all citizens.