At the end of 2010 there were 4,020 people with refugee backgrounds living in Oppland. Of these, 3,077 are the primary refugees themselves; 943 are family members related to them.

Among the primary refugees in Oppland, 1,812 people are here as asylum seekers or on other humanitarian grounds. 665 are refugees transferred to Norway through a defined selection process, usually in co-operation with the United Nation’s High Commissioner for Refugees. The Norwegian Parliament annually determines a quota as to how many new refugees can be taken into the country. Also living in Oppland are 460 persons whom Statistics Norway categorizes as “other.” They are refugees, primarily from Bosnia-Herzegovina, who fled a war zone with their families and have gotten residency through an official decision known as “collective protection.”

Interviews representing all of these groups of refugees can be found in project materials.

At the beginning of 2010, 151,100 people with refugee backgrounds lived in Norway. They composed 3.1 per cent of the country’s population. People with refugee backgrounds from Iraq and Somalia were the largest groups based on home country. (Source: Statistics Norway)

In Oppland, people from Bosnia made up the largest refugee group (677) on January 1, 2010). The next largest groups were from Iraq (666), Somalia (648) and Iran (408).