by Emese Kovács

The Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 triggered the largest forced displacement in Europe since the Second World War. Within weeks, millions of Ukrainians sought refuge across the continent, and the European Union invoked its Temporary Protection Directive for the first time. For Scandinavia, this influx represented a decisive test case for migration regimes and welfare institutions. The region’s experience of the 2015 crisis—with its long-term impact on national politics, public attitudes, and asylum systems—created a sharp point of comparison.[1]

Unlike 2015, however, the Ukrainian crisis was initially met with a language of solidarity. Political leaders across Sweden, Norway, and Denmark declared their support for Ukraine and deployed protection mechanisms far more rapidly than in previous crises. Yet solidarity was bounded by familiar structural constraints. The Scandinavian countries framed protection as temporary, restricted rights in various ways, and sought to deter long-term settlement.[2] The Ukrainian case therefore reveals not only the adaptability of Scandinavian institutions but also their enduring reluctance to reconfigure migration regimes around permanence.

For decades, Scandinavia displayed a distinctive pattern: Sweden as the region’s humanitarian outlier, Denmark as the restrictive pioneer, and Norway oscillating in between. This spectrum shaped both institutional design and political rhetoric. Over time, however, the three states have converged toward more selective and temporary forms of inclusion, reflecting wider European trends toward deterrence and conditionality.[3]

Paradigm shift in Sweden

Sweden has long been identified as the most humanitarian of the Scandinavian states, historically granting generous asylum rights and permanent residence to large numbers of refugees.[4] The experience of 2015, however, reshaped this image. Subsequent reforms introduced temporary permits, limited family reunification, and tightened access to welfare benefits. By the early 2020s, these restrictive tendencies had been institutionalized in the Tidö Agreement, aligning Sweden more closely with Denmark than at any time in its modern migration history.[5]

For Ukrainians, Sweden offered temporary protection under the EU directive, but under particularly restrictive terms. For the first three years, beneficiaries were not permitted to register in the national population register, a condition that effectively barred them from full access to health care, social benefits, and integration programmes. Instead, they were only eligible for the limited subsistence-level allowance normally provided to asylum seekers. This arrangement was later revised: since 2024, Ukrainians can register after one year of residence. Yet even with this change, they remain ineligible for the same level of financial support as refugees of other nationalities, leaving them structurally disadvantaged in welfare access compared to earlier protection groups.[6] At the same time, Sweden showed selective generosity by permitting Ukrainians to live with friends or relatives without losing benefits – a possibility denied to other asylum groups in recent reforms.[7] This combination of exclusions and flexibilities illustrates Sweden’s new migration model: rhetorical solidarity paired with institutionalized deterrence, producing precariousness even for a group widely perceived as “deserving”.[8]

Norway’s U-turn

Norway initially responded to the Ukrainian crisis with notable openness. In 2022 Ukrainians were granted swift registration, generous benefits, and access to integration measures. A special arrangement, MAMOT (midlertidig alternativ mottaksplassering, ‘temporary alternative reception placement’), enabled those residing in private or municipal housing to obtain state support outside reception centres, a flexibility that remained unavailable to other asylum groups.[9] Yet as numbers rose, political consensus began to fracture. From mid-2023, the government reduced benefit levels, tightened settlement rules, and introduced new restrictions on travel back to Ukraine. In October 2024, it designated parts of western Ukraine as “safe,” thereby excluding applicants from those regions from protection.[10] The Norwegian case illustrates how political will for solidarity can erode under pressure. While the rhetoric of support for Ukraine remained strong, the legal and institutional framework shifted toward deterrence and temporariness,[11] revealing the resilience of restrictive paradigms.

Restrictive policy with exceptions in Denmark

Denmark has long been known for its restrictive approach to asylum, emphasizing temporary permits, limited welfare benefits, and a strong focus on return.[12] Its political discourse consistently frames migration as a challenge to national cohesion and welfare sustainability. Against this background, the Danish response to Ukrainians was remarkable: in March 2022, the parliament passed a special law granting temporary residence to Ukrainian nationals.[13] This law created an exceptional channel that bypassed the ordinary asylum system, offering broader rights and faster access to housing and welfare than normally granted to refugees. Importantly, however, the exceptionalism was carefully circumscribed. Third-country nationals residing in Ukraine were excluded, and the temporary nature of the status was emphasized at every stage. Denmark also promoted private hosting arrangements and provided compensation to households that sheltered Ukrainians, creating a system that combined civic solidarity with state regulation.[14] While more generous than its baseline asylum model, the Danish approach nonetheless reinforced the underlying paradigm of temporariness and selectivity. The special law was presented as a one-off exception, not as a precedent for broader reform.

Integration challenges in Scandinavia

Large-scale surveys and interviews with Ukrainians highlight how different regulatory approaches in Sweden, Denmark, and Norway translated into everyday life. The NOR-RETIN survey[15], conducted in 2024–25 among more than 3,300 Ukrainians in the Nordic countries, found unusually high educational attainment, with over 60 percent holding tertiary qualifications, far above earlier refugee cohorts. Despite this, entry into the labor market remained challenging across all three countries. In Sweden, initial exclusion from the national population register left many without structured language courses or job training, forcing some to rely on informal or undeclared work. Nearly one in five reported difficulties covering basic expenses, and interviewees voiced frustration at being treated as “asylum seekers on minimal allowance” despite their willingness to contribute. Denmark deliberately keeps benefit levels low to encourage rapid labor market entry, often into precarious or short-term jobs. Ukrainian refugees described the pressure to accept any available work as stressful and mismatched to their qualifications. Norway, by contrast, initially provided generous support, but later restrictions and language barriers limited opportunities for long-term stability.

Perhaps the most striking finding is that a majority of Ukrainians in Scandinavia no longer expect to return home, even after the war. Instead, many envision long-term settlement in their host countries. This expectation diverges sharply from the temporary frameworks established by host governments. The result is a deep structural contradiction: while refugees attempt to integrate, national institutions remain oriented toward temporariness and eventual repatriation.

Strains on the welfare state

The Scandinavian responses highlight the tension between humanitarian solidarity and welfare state sustainability. On the one hand, the rapid mobilization of protection mechanisms and the involvement of municipalities, civil society, and private households demonstrated the resilience of Scandinavian welfare institutions. On the other hand, structural limitations—housing shortages, fiscal pressures, and political contestation—exposed the fragility of solidarity when confronted with the prospect of permanence.[16] Ideologically, the Ukrainian crisis reinforced a dual logic in Scandinavian migration regimes. Cultural proximity and shared European identity made Ukrainians more acceptable than other refugee groups. Yet even “desirable” refugees were not fully integrated into welfare structures. Temporariness remained the organizing principle, illustrating the enduring power of restrictive paradigms.

Solidarity under Constraints

The Ukrainian refugee crisis has illuminated both the strengths and the limits of Scandinavian welfare states. On one side, the speed of the response, the extension of collective protection, and the mobilization of local communities demonstrated capacity and genuine humanitarian commitment. On the other side, the insistence on temporariness, the narrowing of eligibility, and the selective access to welfare revealed structural barriers that continue to shape refugee policies in Scandinavia.

What emerges is a model of “constrained solidarity”: rapid protection in emergencies, but resistance to institutional adaptation for long-term settlement. Such a model may meet short-term political needs, yet risks producing integration challenges in the future. For refugees, the absence of secure pathways undermines their ability to rebuild lives. For host societies, the gap between temporary frameworks and permanent realities may foster marginalization and strain welfare systems.

The central question, then, is whether Scandinavian states can move beyond constrained solidarity toward a durable model of integration that balances support for Ukraine, respect for refugees’ aspirations, and preservation of national welfare institutions. The answer will determine whether the Ukrainian crisis becomes a turning point in European refugee governance or merely another episode in the recurring tension between openness and restriction.