A Better Life for the Children of Exile: Intergenerational Adaptation of the Descendants of Refugees

2026-07-22

More than 2.5 million refugees have been granted residence in Europe over the last ten years and their long-run adaptation is a fundamental societal challenge. Adaptation can only be evaluated over the long-run by making intergenerational comparisons between immigrants and their descendants, yet research has almost entirely overlooked this topic for refugees, not least because most countries lack both data and significant numbers of descendants of refugees. Prior studies focus on isolated domains of life and are limited by small-samples, methodological weaknesses, and a failure to compare the descendants of refugees and non-refugees. This proposal represents the first comprehensive intergenerational study of the descendants of refugees. My aim is to establish a new framework for the adaptation of refugee’s descendants across four domains of life: socio-economic status, health, family formation and residential context. I will use cutting-edge research methods to analyse longitudinal data for the whole population of Sweden from 1968-2019. Thanks to the unique combination of this comprehensive data, and Sweden’s long history as a refugee-receiving country, I will be able to make ground-breaking contributions: [1] To reveal the diverse nature of intergenerational adaptation for the second-generation children of refugees, and establish to what extent this is determined by their parents’ adaptation [2] To uncover the mechanisms of intergenerational adaptation for the second-generation children of refugees [3] To establish the nature and extent of intergenerational adaptation beyond the second generation, for third-generation grandchildren of refugees Answers to these questions have the potential to generate enormous gains in understanding, and establish a much-needed holistic evidence base concerning the long-run adaptation of the descendants of refugees. I will use Sweden as a laboratory to develop theories that can be generalised to other European countries.

Sweden

2026-02-15