New research on housing-related relocation in Sweden and migration dynamics in Nordic rural municipalities

Renovations and tenant relocation in Sweden

In the article Renovictions in Sweden: investigating residential relocations due to renovations, published in International Journal of Housing Policy, Ida Borg, Jennie Gustafsson and Eva Andersson study how renovations in the rental sector affected tenants’ relocation patterns in Sweden between 1995 and 2019.

Using register data, the authors investigate two questions: whether low-income households are more likely to move when their building is renovated, and whether tenants in the private rental sector are more likely to relocate than those in the public rental sector.

The study finds that tenants often move around the time of renovation. However, the households most likely to stay in place are low-income households, which may indicate displacement lock-in, where financially vulnerable tenants are unable to move because of housing shortages and few available alternatives. The article also shows that tenants in the private rental sector are more likely to relocate than those in the public rental sector, suggesting that renovation strategies may differ between these two sectors.

Article link: https://doi.org/10.1080/19491247.2026.2668725

Migration and demographic change in Nordic rural municipalities

In Exploring Excess Migration in Nordic Rural Municipalities: Pre-Pandemic Trajectories and Pandemic-Era Disruption, published in Population, Space and Place, Linda Randall examines how the COVID-19 pandemic affected internal migration to Nordic rural municipalities, with a particular focus on places already experiencing population decline.

The article combines analysis of long-term population development before the pandemic with an examination of migration flows during the pandemic period. Using sequence analysis, Randall identifies the most common population trajectories across Nordic rural municipalities in the two decades before COVID-19. She then applies a measure of “excess migration” to assess which municipalities experienced higher-than-expected inflows of internal migrants after the pandemic began.

The findings show that rural municipalities followed diverse population paths before the pandemic. While population decline was the most common trend, many municipalities had stable populations and some even grew. The study also finds that most rural municipalities experienced higher-than-expected inflows during the pandemic, but the largest deviations from expectations were seen in municipalities with the least favourable population trajectories before the pandemic.

Article link: https://doi.org/10.1002/psp.70274'

About the researchers:

Ida Borg is a reseacher at the Department of Human Geography at Stockholm University.
Jennie Gustafsson is a post doc in Urban Studies at Malmö University.
Eva Andersson is professor at the Department of Human Geography at Stockholm University.
Linda Randall is a PhD Student at the Department of Human Geography at Stockholm University.