Like Luisa, whom I interviewed recently for a story on how immigration laws are affecting even Swedes, I am married to a Swedish citizen and am mother to another, but I myself have only temporary residency status here.

As many of our readers know, being on a temporary family permit in Sweden means needing to renew it every two years and not being able to travel while you are waiting for renewal. Since you are only allowed to apply for renewal a few months before your permit expires, variable (and often long) waiting times at the Migration Agency can make travel planning quite challenging.

So when I got my positive renewal decision late last autumn, my husband and I immediately started planning a trip to Toronto for the following summer. We wanted to take our young daughter to visit her cousins and grandparents – I, of course, wanted to see family and friends too, but time is of more essence for a 4-year-old – and summer 2026 now looked to be a reliably safe travel window.

We're due to get on the plane (planes, really – it takes three to get from Umeå to Toronto) next Thursday, but at the end of July I was looking through my documents and had more than a moment of panic. I didn't have a valid Swedish residency card.

When I'd received the decision letter last autumn, my husband and I were so relieved that it had come through fairly quickly that we didn't look further than the letter. We'd both assumed, we realised very belatedly, that an updated card would be sent automatically. After all, the Migration Agency had all my information, including the photo from my previous card, taken only a year and a half earlier.

Of course I should have checked, double-checked, and triple-checked. Especially given what I have since learned through my work at The Local, nothing can be 'reasonably assumed' when it comes to laws and bureaucracy for foreign-born people in Sweden.

But work is work, and my life....well, as much as it is obviously connected to my job (which I probably wouldn't have even gotten if I hadn't been a foreigner in Sweden), a key part of doing a job like this is, I find, doing my best to leave work at work. Otherwise, it would be far too easy for reporting on deportation horror stories and xenophobic rhetoric from leading politicians to lead to pervasive anxiety.

So at the end of last month, I found myself staring at a Swedish residency card with a 2025 expiry date and nothing to take its place. A few hours later, I was holding a numbered ticket at a statens servicecenter (National Government Service Centre), practising deep breathing while my 4-year-old asked me constant questions about her pyssel book. 

When my number was called, I was (again) photographed and fingerprinted – and assured, by a very nice agent (who seemed, based on his accent while speaking Swedish, to be of immigrant background himself) that my new card would arrive within two weeks – ten days before our trip.

Two weeks later, no card had arrived. I went back to the statens servicecenter – without the 4-year-old this time, and instead spending my queue time working on my phone and running through key Swedish vocabulary in my head. 

The agent (a different one this time) was again very nice – kind and understanding and helpful – which really makes such a difference in these situations, even when the news isn't good: the Migration Agency was just about to send me an email saying that the card had been returned to them as undeliverable.

Why this happened is a completely mystery. We confirmed that the address they had for me was correct. It's the same address I've been living at since moving to Sweden in May of 2024 – the same addresses to which other Migrationsverket documents have been delivered without a problem.

My best hope, I was told, was to officially (i.e. by responding to the email they sent) write to the Migration Agency asking for the card to be sent to the Umeå service office instead, and give them my date of travel.

So I did, and so I wait. If the card doesn't arrive in time, I will still go on the trip, but with the fear of being detained at the border on the way back hanging over my head.

Even in that case, I do think that the odds are I will get back into Sweden without too much trouble. I do, after all, have a valid permit, with its accompanying legal right to live in Sweden, registered in 'the system,' just not the physical card.

But I can't separate from work enough to un-know what I've learned from too many reported stories: these days, for foreign-born people in Sweden, the odds are too often not in our favour.

What have we been writing about this week?

Our big story this week was my colleague Richard breaking the news – based on his careful work going through documents obtained from Migrationsverket through an FOI request – that teen deportations from Sweden were actually much more widespread than reported in Swedish media.

This was also the week of a two-day special session of Swedish parliament. In the lead-up to the vote, we reported on the heated debate – and then, the next day, the results: the government passed its harsh family immigration bill, despite a united opposition.

A swath of Brexit-related deportation orders and permit rejections for long-term British residents of Sweden have been coming in, including on for a 78-year-old widow, a 74-year-old with advanced dementia, and a 47-year-old who came here with her parents when she was 7 – and whom everyone assumes is simply Swedish.

In lighter news – albeit literally darker – this week people in Sweden got treated to an 80 percent solar eclipse. We published some of your photos of the event.

In the election race, the first big new poll since June is out, and it shows the current governing coalition gaining big ground on the opposition.

Those who have been waiting years for a decision on their Swedish citizenship case are presumably hoping that the opposition still pulls off a victory, since the leader of their largest party, Magdalena Andersson of the Social Democrats, said this week that her party would bring in transitional rules for those who applied before June 6th of this year, if they form the government after the election.

Are you taking the brand new Swedish citizenship test today? If so, here's what you need to know.

That's all for this week! Have a great weekend.

Mandy

Inside Sweden is our weekly newsletter for members which gives you news, analysis and, sometimes, takes you behind the scenes at The Local. It's published on Saturdays.