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Better. Thanks

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for downloading the more or less

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podcast, with a program that has

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a good nosy around in some

0:44

of the numbers in the news,

0:46

and I'm Charlotte McDonald. The

0:48

stat we're looking into this

0:50

week was sent in by loyal

0:53

listener David, who saw a suspicious

0:55

percentage on social media. I recently

0:57

saw a post on X, claiming

0:59

79% of refugees in Sweden have

1:01

vacationed in the country they fled

1:03

from. I don't believe this to

1:05

be true. But can you look

1:07

into the numbers? This figure has

1:09

been bouncing around the internet for

1:11

a couple of years and it's

1:13

often used to imply that current

1:15

asylum seekers are not really fleeing

1:18

from a genuine risk in the

1:20

country they fled from. If they

1:22

were you might think they'd be

1:24

unlikely to return to that country

1:26

for a holiday. One of those

1:28

bouncing the number around is Elon

1:30

Musk who recently posted on X.

1:32

Almost 80% of asylum seekers went

1:34

on vacation to their home countries.

1:36

So, is David right to doubt

1:38

this stat? Well, it started

1:40

with a conversation between me

1:43

and a newspaper here, and

1:45

they were interested in doing

1:47

a survey where we were

1:49

talking to people who are

1:52

born outside of Sweden, and

1:54

we asked them a myriad

1:56

of questions on opinion on

1:59

different things. Almar Strid from

2:01

Swedish polling company Novus. The newspaper

2:03

he was talking to was The

2:05

Bulletin, an online news site which

2:07

describes its politics as libertarian conservative.

2:10

And one other question was have

2:12

you been back on vacation to

2:14

the country where you were born?

2:16

Now Novus take their polling seriously.

2:18

This wasn't one of those ticks

2:20

unboxes and get a price type

2:22

online surveys that produced some weird

2:25

results. We only have a randomly

2:27

selected panel. So there's no opt-in,

2:29

there is no way to sway

2:31

this by joining the panel, you

2:33

have to get randomly selected. Of

2:35

a panel of 50,000 people living

2:37

in Sweden, they randomly selected around

2:39

a thousand who were born overseas

2:41

and asked them some questions. Of

2:43

this group, the whole group born

2:45

overseas, we'll get to the asylum

2:47

seeker part in a second. 85%

2:49

had travelled back to their country

2:51

of origin for holiday. This is

2:54

not surprising. Many of these people

2:56

had moved to Sweden from Finland,

2:58

Norway and Denmark, Germany or the

3:00

UK. And they did it because

3:02

they got a job or wanted

3:04

a change of lifestyle or... They

3:06

met a Swedish girl or a

3:08

Swedish boy and they moved here

3:10

for that reason. And then probably

3:12

used their holidays to go back

3:14

and see their families or friends

3:16

or whatever, although the survey didn't

3:18

ask them the reason why. Then

3:20

we get to the refugee figure.

3:25

The survey asked respondents to select

3:27

the reason they came to Sweden.

3:29

Two of the answers could be

3:31

used to identify those who were

3:33

refugees. They were fleeing from war,

3:35

fleeing for political reasons, and they

3:37

would be sort of clumped into

3:39

asylum seekers. They identified 183 people

3:41

who likely claimed asylum and looked

3:43

again at whether they'd been back

3:45

to their country of origin for

3:47

a holiday. 79% of this group

3:49

said that they had. People on

3:51

social media. seemed to have seen

3:53

this stat and jumped the conclusion

3:55

that they were recent arrivals. But

3:57

that's actually very unlikely. When you're

3:59

in a country and you answer

4:01

questions on a panel, that usually

4:03

means you've lived it for quite

4:05

a while. You do speak the

4:07

language fluently. You feel like a

4:09

part of society. Recently arrived asylum

4:12

seekers turn out to be incredibly

4:14

hard to recruit to this kind

4:16

of survey. There are particular groups

4:18

in a society that are difficult

4:20

to reach. and recent asylum seekers

4:22

would definitely fall into that category.

4:24

Even if you did over the

4:26

phone or you did it by

4:28

mail or you actually tried to

4:30

go and knock on doors, it

4:32

will always be a very difficult

4:34

group to get. The survey in

4:36

question did ask the participants when

4:38

they came to Sweden and rather

4:40

than being recent arrivals, they entered

4:42

the country at some point in

4:44

the last 80 years. They didn't

4:46

find out which actual country they

4:48

came from, but you can work

4:50

out what's likely based on the

4:52

migration flows into Sweden over that

4:54

time period. We were talking about

4:56

people usually who came from the

4:58

war in Yugoslavia, they came from

5:00

Chile, you know, they came from

5:02

the fall of the Soviet bloc

5:04

from Eastern Europe. So these are

5:06

countries where the situation is not

5:09

the same as it used to

5:11

be. For example, in the 1970

5:13

70s and 80s, Sweden took in

5:15

a lot of asylum seekers from

5:17

Chile. fleeing from the brutal dictatorship

5:19

of General Pinochet. Likewise, Sweden took

5:21

in refugees during the Iran-Iraq war,

5:23

which started in 1980 and ended

5:25

in 1988. There were refugees from

5:27

the Soviet regime when the USSR

5:29

were still going, and Bosnians fleeing

5:31

the war that followed the collapse

5:33

of Yugoslavia in the 1990s. So

5:35

these are people that have been

5:37

here for 30, 40, maybe 50

5:39

years. It will be like my

5:41

friend from Bosnia who lives here

5:43

and has a child and a

5:45

family and an apartment and then

5:47

has lived here for 20 years,

5:49

came here as a kid. Is

5:51

he not allowed to go back

5:53

to Bosnia and to visit his

5:55

family without, you know, risking not

5:57

being able to come back to

5:59

his family here? No. There were

6:01

people in the survey who entered

6:03

the country more recently. 26 of

6:05

the survey respondents identified as refugees

6:08

came to the country after 2010

6:10

with the most recent arriving in

6:12

2022. But as to where they

6:14

came from, perhaps Afghanistan, Syria. or

6:16

Ukraine, we don't know, and as

6:18

to what their immigration status was,

6:20

whether they returned somewhere, that they

6:22

claimed was unsafe, or any other

6:24

information that would help you make

6:26

a judgment about these cases, we

6:28

simply can't say. No, we didn't

6:30

look on the reason why they

6:32

left that specifically in a connection

6:34

to whether or not the conflict

6:36

is still ongoing. That would have

6:38

taken a lot more time than

6:40

we put on it in it.

6:42

The way this stat has mutated

6:44

on social platforms like X is

6:46

being implied as referring to asylum

6:48

seekers in the present tents, who

6:50

are going back on holiday to

6:52

a country they are simultaneously claiming

6:54

is too dangerous for them to

6:56

live in. When Yalmar sees that

6:58

suggestion... I cringe a little bit

7:00

because I know that's not what

7:02

we asked, that's not what we

7:05

surveyed. That has nothing to do

7:07

with the survey we did, and

7:09

has nothing to do with the

7:11

number that has shown. Now to

7:13

be clear, Yalmar says that the

7:15

reporting of the story by bulletin

7:17

by bulletin... was factually accurate. The

7:19

result they reported was the result

7:21

of the survey. I don't have

7:23

a really big issue with it,

7:25

with how they reported it. The

7:27

problem with how they reported it

7:29

was that it was slightly ambiguous

7:31

and that ambiguity, that's what got

7:33

used for political reasons by other

7:35

people who posted on Twitter, posted

7:37

on social media back and forth.

7:39

We asked the bulletin whether they'd

7:41

written the article in an ambiguous

7:43

way on purpose, so the survey

7:45

could be interpreted as saying something

7:47

about refugees that the survey didn't

7:49

back up, a so-called dog whistle,

7:51

that people with anti-immigrant views could

7:53

hear and share, but others could

7:55

not. Tino Sanandadi is the co-owner

7:57

of bulletin. I am very much

7:59

against dog whistles. And it exists

8:02

a lot, unfortunately. And I dislike

8:04

that. These kind of exaggerated, hateful,

8:06

dismissive, discussion on immigration. A lot

8:08

of people on the right do

8:10

that. And I don't think that's

8:12

constructive. And I think they're hurting

8:14

themselves by doing that. And both

8:17

sides have created this polarized

8:19

situation. There are people who don't

8:21

like refugees. They think they're liars.

8:23

They just don't want them here.

8:25

Or they don't care about being...

8:27

objective interpreting the data to just

8:30

make the worst possible interpretation which

8:32

is people are just coming with

8:34

lots of money in their pocket

8:36

and pretend to be refugees and

8:38

as they're getting money from Europe

8:40

they're going back to luxury vacations

8:43

in their home country and there

8:45

are people who make that type

8:47

of interpretation and that's completely wrong.

8:49

Then there is a correct

8:51

interpretation which is that lots of people who

8:53

at some point came as refugees who

8:56

have stayed in Sweden. feel safe enough

8:58

to go back to your home country.

9:00

And as long as those 183 people

9:02

in the survey are representative of

9:04

Swedish refugees in general, and as

9:06

long as you know that a

9:08

large proportion of these people are

9:11

Swedish citizens, and that they arrived

9:13

over the last 80 years, then

9:15

this is perfectly correct. That's it

9:17

for this week, our thanks to

9:19

Yalmar Strid from Novus Antino

9:21

Sena Daji from bulletin. If

9:23

you want to get in

9:25

touch, please send an email

9:27

to more or less, BBC.

9:29

C.O. UK. Until next

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