Rapid or long-term employment? A Scandinavian comparative study of refugee integration policies and employment outcomes

A Maternal Wall for Refugees? Gender and Labor Market Establishment in Sweden

“…Second, the role of adult education for mitigating exclusion is an important issue with obvious policy relevance (cf. Hernes et al 2020). Finally, the re-structuring of labor markets implies new uncertainties that are particularly pertinent to immigrants (e.g., Åberg 2015).…”

“…Swedish research analyzing refugee labor market establishment from a gender perspective is limited and inconclusive regarding the long-term patterns and mechanisms. A number of studies suggest that, initially, refugee women are less established than men but that over time, gender gaps narrow (Andersson Joona et al 2017;Bevelander & Irastorza 2014;Hernes et al 2020;Liebig & Tronstad 2018;Ruist 2018;Åslund et al 2017). However, gender is not the prime focus in any of these studies and the mechanisms behind these patterns have not been thoroughly explored, either for initial gaps or for later convergence tendencies.…”

Integrating Immigrants into the Nordic Labour Markets: The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic

“…First, the employment gaps seen between refugees and natives (or economic migrants) are rather similar in countries experiencing very different levels of humanitarian migration (Brell, Dustmann, and Preston 2020). This type of observation holds also within the Nordic countries in the sense that outcomes converge and diverge in ways that are not directly related to the size of immigrant inflows (Hernes et al 2020).…”

“…The literature on active labor market policies targeting the foreign-born is encouraging in the sense that various interventions appear to be able to contribute positively (Åslund, Forslund, and Liljeberg 2017;Hernes et al 2020;Sarvimäki and Hämäläinen 2016). Recent findings confirm that more extensive language training (Arendt et al 2021) as well as programs directly involving employers (Dahlberg et al 2020) can be effective tools.…”

The case for increased centralization in integration governance: the neglected perspective

“…The principle states that policies that restrict local autonomy should be applied only if they are necessary to fulfill important national goals and that the least restrictive instruments should be preferred (Feltenius, 2015). However, in both Norway and Sweden, there has been a consistent employment gap between refugees and the majority population (Bratsberg et al, 2017, Hernes et al, 2020. In the Scandinavian countries, high employment levels are a precondition for the central government to finance and maintain an extensive welfare state.…”