Time in Limbo & Education: Duration of Temporary Status and the Educational Outcomes for Children of Refugees in Sweden

Frankseco Yorke , Stockholm University

In Sweden, refugee children complete compulsory schooling while navigating a patchwork of legal statuses; from asylum seeker and temporary resident to permanent resident and, eventually, citizen. Prolonged periods of uncertainty, often described as “time in limbo,” may affect not only their parents’ integration but also children’s sense of belonging, stability, and educational engagement. This study investigates how the cumulative duration of temporary or uncertain legal status before obtaining permanent residence or citizenship influences school outcomes for foreign-born children who arrived in Sweden as asylum seekers and completed compulsory schooling by 2022. Using Sweden’s linked population registers, we identify all children who arrived as minors with refugee parents and construct annual legal-status trajectories from arrival through completion of compulsory schooling. We estimate how longer exposure to non-permanent statuses relates to final grades at age sixteen, controlling for parental education, income, country of origin, family structure, year of arrival, and neighbourhood characteristics. We also exploit Sweden's refugee policy reform that replaced the automatic granting of permanent residence upon approval of refugee status with the granting of temporary permits instead. By comparing cohorts who completed schooling under the pre-reform (permanent-first) and post-reform (temporary-first) systems, we assess whether immediate access to permanent residence yielded different educational outcomes than prolonged waiting under temporary status. This study underscores that legal uncertainty is not confined to adults: refugee children, too, experience “limbo,” and as they grow older, awareness of their precarious status may directly shape their educational trajectories.

See extended abstract

 Presented in Session 46. Migrant Populations, Legal Trajectories and Civic Stratification