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The association between work and integration in the Norwegian welfare context, and its implications for immigrants and social work practice: An integrative review
Abstract
The association between work and integration is rarely questioned in Norwegian discourses on immigration and integration. Globalization, migration, and social problems continue to challenge social work practice, creating tensions in the welfare state. The aim of this integrative review is to clarify major themes, provide a synthesis of current understandings, and consider the implications for social work practice. Twenty-eight articles from the Norwegian welfare context were obtained through systematic searches in four databases and a search-engine. Thematic analysis resulted in the following findings: (1) Employment and outcome for immigrants in the Norwegian labour market, (2) Immigrant women – participation and equality, (3) Discrimination in Norwegian working life, and (4) Challenges ahead and possible solutions. Findings show that Norway is an egalitarian society with high social mobility, but immigrants, despite early entry to work, had a noticeably less stable attachment to the labour market than native Norwegians. Discrimination was identified and affected immigrants as well as their descendants. Immigrant women’s participation in the workforce was perceived as the way to reduce differences. Still, gender mainstreaming and freedom of choice appeared to depend upon immigrant women’s embracing the dual earner norm. Current policies seem unable to provide immigrants with qualifications needed to perform equally to native Norwegians. Throughout the dataset, there were suggestions for ways policies could be changed to permit higher employment rates for immigrants, thereby improving integration.
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The refugee crisis of 2015 can be characterised as an exogenous shock, an immigration shock, which according to institutional theory may create a window of opportunity for path-breaking policy change. In all three Scandinavian countries a range of new policy proposals were made in order to stem the incoming migration. Although the direction of policy change pointed in a similar restrictive direction, the choice of policy instruments differed, as did the style and content of policy actors’ legitimizing and coordinating discourses.
Drawing on the analytical framework of discursive institutionalism, the three cases illustrate how a similar kind of external shock (the refugee crisis) was construed differently in different national public spheres, and generated different kinds of policy responses – in particular with respect to the social rights of refugees. The emphasis on legitimizing communicative discourse and coordinating discourse differed between the countries. In Sweden, the need to legitimize policy change normatively was acute. This mattered less in Denmark, where emphasis was on creating stable political support for a range of specific measures. Norway takes a mixed position between the two. Data includes a selection of media texts from six newspapers in 2015 as well as policy texts from 2015 and 2016.
Social work practice with refugees and immigrants requires specialized knowledge of these populations and specialized adaptations and applications of mainstream services and interventions. Because they are often confronted with cultural, linguistic, political, and socioeconomic barriers, these groups are especially vulnerable to psychological problems such as anxiety, depression, alienation, grief, and post-traumatic stress disorder, as well as concerns arising from inadequate health care. Institutionalized discrimination and anti-immigrant policies and attitudes only exacerbate these challenges.
The second edition of Best Practices for Social Work with Refugees and Immigrants offers an update to this comprehensive guide to social work with foreign-born clients and an evaluation of various helping strategies and their methodological strengths and weaknesses. Part 1 sets forth the context for evidence-based service approaches for such clients by describing the nature of these populations, relevant policies designed to assist them, service-delivery systems, and culturally competent practice. Part 2 addresses specific problem areas common to refugees and immigrants and evaluates a variety of assessment and intervention techniques in each area. Using a rigorous evidence-based and pancultural approach, Miriam Potocky and Mitra Naseh identify best practices at the macro, meso, and micro levels to meet the pressing needs of uprooted peoples. The new edition incorporates the latest research on contemporary social work practice with refugees and immigrants to provide a practical, up-to-date resource for the multitude of issues and interventions for these populations.
Integrating non-Western refugees into the highly specialised Scandinavian labour markets has proven difficult. This highly ideological policy field is an interesting case for the study of policy learning versus ideas as drivers for institutional change or continuity. Using the Norwegian Introductory Programme as a case study, we show that the application of core programme measures remains largely unaffected by evaluations that show that such measures tend to have very modest effects on the labour market integration of refugees. Concurrently, incremental changes in the disciplining elements of the programme have resulted in an increasingly controlling activation regime. Our interpretation is that a major driver behind the intensification of disciplinary elements has been the assumption that participants lack the motivation to integrate into the labour market. Moreover, we find that this assumption presents an obstacle to policy learning with regard to programme quality. Within activation, policy ideas seem to function simultaneously as path-reinforcing cognitive locks and as drivers for political change.
The successful integration of immigrants into a host country’s society, economy, and polity has become a major issue for policymakers in recent decades. Scientific progress in the study of immigrant integration has been hampered by the lack of a common measure of integration, which would allow for the accumulation of knowledge through comparison across studies, countries, and time. To address this fundamental problem, we propose the Immigration Policy Lab (IPL) Integration Index as a pragmatic and multidimensional measure of immigrant integration. The measure, both in the 12-item short form (IPL-12) and the 24-item long form (IPL-24), captures six dimensions of integration: psychological, economic, political, social, linguistic, and navigational. The measure can be used across countries, over time, and across different immigrant groups and can be administered through short questionnaires available in different modes. We report on four surveys we conducted to evaluate the empirical performance of our measure. The tests reveal that the measure distinguishes among immigrant groups with different expected levels of integration and also correlates with well-established predictors of integration.
Compared to the majority population, studies have shown that non-western immigrants are more likely to work in jobs for which they are overqualified. These findings are based on coarse measures of jobs, and an important question is how sensitive these findings are to the definition of jobs. By using detailed information from Norwegian register data 2014, we provide a methodological innovation in comparing individuals working in the same occupation, industry, sector, firm, and municipality. In this way, we measure the degree of overqualification among workers within more than 653,000 jobs. We differentiate between immigrants and their descendants originating from Western Europe, the New EU countries, other Western countries, the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), Africa and Asia (except MENA countries), and South and Central America, and compare their outcomes with the majority population holding the same jobs. We find that immigrants from all country of origin groups are more likely to be overqualified compared to the majority population and to descendants of immigrants. However, the prevalence of overqualification decreases with time since immigration.
Terrorist attacks are known to influence public opinion. But do they also change behaviour? We address this question by comparing the results of two identical randomized field experiments on ethnic discrimination in hiring that we conducted in Oslo. The first experiment was conducted before the 2011 terrorist attacks in Norway; the second experiment was conducted after the attacks. In both experiments, applicants with a typical Pakistani name were significantly less likely to get a job interview compared to those with a typical Norwegian name. But the ethnic gap in call‐back rates were very similar in the two experiments. Thus, Pakistanis in Norway still experienced the same level of discrimination, despite claims that Norwegians have become more positive about migrants after the far‐right, anti‐migrant terrorist attacks of 2011.
In this open access book, experts on integration processes, integration policies, transnationalism, and the migration and development framework provide an academic assessment of the 2011 European Agenda for the Integration of Third-Country Nationals, which calls for integration policies in the EU to involve not only immigrants and their society of settlement, but also actors in their country of origin. Moreover, a heuristic model is developed for the non-normative, analytical study of integration processes and policies based on conceptual, demographic, and historical accounts.
The volume addresses three interconnected issues: What does research have to say on (the study of) integration processes in general and on the relevance of actors in origin countries in particular? What is the state of the art of the study of integration policies in Europe and the use of the concept of integration in policy formulation and practice? Does the proposal to include actors in origin countries as important players in integration policies find legitimation in empirical research?
A few general conclusions are drawn. First, integration policies have developed at many levels of government: nationally, locally, regionally, and at the supra-national level of the EU. Second, a multitude of stakeholders has become involved in integration as policy designers and implementers. Finally, a logic of policymaking—and not an evidence-based scientific argument—can be said to underlie the European Commission’s redefinition of integration as a three-way process.
This book will appeal to academics and policymakers at international, European, national, regional, and local levels. It will also be of interest to graduate and master-level students of political science, sociology, social anthropology, international relations, criminology, geography, and history.
A great source for studying fundamental issues and policies of migrant integration in Europe.
Professor Friedrich Heckmann, Director of European forum for migration studies, University of Bamberg
F. Heckmann
Historically grounded, thought-provoking in its conceptualisation of integration and ground breaking in its emphasis on the impact of countries of origin, exploring questions of vital importance to scholars and to policy makers from a local to European level.
Sarah Spencer
Director, Global Exchange on Migration and Diversity, COMPAS, Oxford.
If you want a succinct, comprehensive, and insightful summary of scholarship on the politics of immigrant reception and the complex interplay between receiving countries, sending countries, and the E.U., written by the foremost scholars in the field, this is the volume for you.
John Mollenkopf, Distinguished Professor of Political Science and Sociology, The Graduate Center, City University of New York.
Immigrants are often concentrated in particular, often low-waged, segments of the labour market and employers tend to assume that immigrants posit (soft) skills which make them particularly suited for specific tasks. Less scholarly attention has been given to the real and perceived content of these skills and how employers may shift their view over time. We contribute to the literature by examining changing ethnic employment hierarchies in two immigrant-intensive labour markets in Norway. Drawing on qualitative data from the hotel and fish processing industries, we describe, first, how different ethnic groups are allocated into specific jobs forming a clear hierarchy in the eyes of employers, and, second, how employers’ preferences for particular groups change as new immigrants enter the labour market. Theoretically, we develop the concept of ‘ethnicity as skill’, which points to the tendency among employers to equate ethnic group membership with a set of informal qualifications.
The so-called refugee crisis presents a field of discursive struggle over meanings in politics. In Austria, mediatized politics in 2015 and 2016 was dominated by metadiscursive negotiation of terminology related to building a border fence and setting a maximum limit on refugees. Both issues raised serious ideological and legal concerns and were thus largely euphemized; as responses to ever-increasing pressure from the political right, however, they were also intended as signals to voters. This article presents a discourse-historical study of the normalization of restrictive policies in the theoretical framework of border and body politics, otherness, and mediatization.
This special issue addresses the question of how to understand the civic turn within immigrant integration in the West towards programs and instruments, public discourses and political intentions, which aim to condition, incentivize, and shape through socialization immigrants into ‘citizens’. Empirically, it focuses on the less studied Scandinavian cases of Sweden, Norway, and Denmark. In this introduction, we situate the contributions to this special issue within the overall debate on civic integration and convergence. We introduce the three cases, critically discuss the (liberal) convergence thesis and its descriptive and explanatory claims, and explain why studying the Scandinavian welfare states can further our understanding of the nature of the civic turn and its driving forces. Before concluding, we discuss whether civic integration policies actually work.
Since the late 1990s, a wide range of so-called new civic integration policies aimed at civilizing or disciplining newcomers have been introduced. Consequently, migration scholars have discussed whether a converging restrictive ‘civic turn’ has taken place in Western Europe or whether national models have been resilient: Based on an in-depth historical and comparative analysis of labour market activation policies targeting newly arrived immigrants in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark since the early 1990s, the article contributes to the overall question: To what extent do the institutional pathways of the Scandinavian welfare states prevail when confronted with newcomers? Activation policies targeting newly arrived immigrants exemplifies how the ambition of states to promote functional, individual autonomy is also an important, ongoing process in diverse policy areas of the welfare state and not restricted to early integration instruments.
While the Scandinavian welfare states differ on a number of counts with respect to immigration control, national integration philosophies and citizenship policies, the article outlines how activation policies aimed at newly arrived immigrants share several features. One of the key factors in this turn involves path dependency from, among others, a lengthy tradition for strong state involvement and norms about employment. Another factor in this turn involves transnational policy learning. On some points, national versions of these policies are also found due to country-specific citizenship traditions, integration philosophies and party political constellations.
This first-of-its-kind book uniquely captures the meanings of work expressed by immigrants. Their stories – from work histories to life transitions and professional journeys – are conscientiously and rigorously mapped by the academic insights of communication scholars, many of whom are immigrants themselves.
Immigrant workers’ narratives of work and its nuances in an adopted country offer many hitherto muted, invisible, and/or purposely silenced perspectives. A variety of new and familiar terms – concepts such as career inheritance, aphorisms, cultural adaptation, acculturation, and cultural distance – and culture-specific terms such as "ganas" and "consejos" are discussed alongside the inherent struggles of identity construction
across borders. While the contributors represent diversity in co-cultural affiliations, national origin, and immigration experiences encountered both personally and professionally, the stories of immigrants represent an even larger number of countries and cultures. This volume compels the academic community to acknowledge immigrants as workers whose voices matter and whose sense and processes of meaning-making are nuanced, complex, and multi-dimensional. Immigrant workers’ voices can contribute significantly to the growth of research in organizational communication, meanings of work, career studies, cross-cultural management, psychology of work, and work and society.
Previous research has documented that unemployed job applicants have problems re-entering the labour market, commonly referred
to as scarring effects of unemployment. Studies have also documented ethnic discrimination in the labour market. Yet, we do
not know how these categories jointly shape employers hiring decisions. Thus, we do not know if unemployed minorities face
an additive or a multiplicative disadvantage in hiring processes. Building on experimental data from two waves of a randomized
field experiment, we test whether we find an ethnic scarring effect, which would imply that contemporary long-term unemployment
is particularly harmful to native-born ethnic minorities. As expected, our experiment documents scarring effects of contemporary
long-term unemployment. We also found, as expected, systematically lower call-backs for applicants with Pakistani/Muslim names.
Also, our results show that unemployed minorities face an additive disadvantage in the labour market. Thus, we find no evidence
of an ethnic scarring effect of unemployment, which would imply different consequences of unemployment for minority and majority
applicants.
This chapter introduces the topic of this volume, which is the recent departure from viewing integration as a strictly two-way process (between migrants and the receiving society) to acknowledge the potential role that countries of origin might play in support of the integration process. It traces the origin of this change in policy perspective, reviewing the Europeanization of immigration and integration policy since the Tampere Programme (1999–2004). Indeed, a major shift in policy framing came in 2011, with the renewed European Agenda for the Integration of Third-Country Nationals, which explicitly added the countries of origin as a third key actor in the process of immigrants’ integration, thereby introducing the three-way process in European policy. In addition to tracing the development of European policy on integration, it takes a step back to consider three broad and interconnected issues: (i) the way integration is conceptualized and studied in Europe; (ii) the way integration policies are studied and how the concept of integration is used in policy formulation and practice; and (iii) the way new perspectives and actors (e.g., those in countries of origin) are incorporated in analyses of integration processes and policies. It concludes by introducing the further structure of the volume.
This paper estimates how local conditions at the time of immigration influence later outcomes for refugee immigrants to Norway, exploiting the quasi-experimental nature of the Norwegian system for settlement for “quota” or resettlement refugees. A unique administrative dataset with assigned settlement municipalities is used to identify the causal effect of initial location characteristics. Being placed in a labor market where other non-OECD immigrants do well increases own annual labor earnings up to 6 years after immigration. Extended models suggest that this effect is not driven by individual scarring effects: when controlling for the contemporaneous employment rate in the assigned region, effects of initial conditions disappear. Rather, the effects appear to be due to persistence in local labor market conditions combined with limited geographical mobility in response to adverse labor market conditions.
Social work may be regarded as a product of the Enlightment together with other social sciences. The ontological shift from religious perspectives to a secularly based responsibility that opens up for political as well as individual action is regarded as a baseline for modern social work. Social work itself has struggled to develop an academic identity and a sustainable social field within the social sciences. Social work has historically experienced a gap between research and practice, relating to social sciences and other subjects as part of its teaching without a firm scientific foundation for social works own practice. If social work earlier developed related to ideas of welfare and social policy in practice it may now be moving in a new direction towards more than being based on scientific development within its own field. Over the last decades the need for scientific development within social work has strengthened its relation to research and social science. There seems to be arguments to support that social work is moving with research in directions which may be regarded as an epistemological turn based on understanding of knowledge production as well as a linguistic turn where the construction of meaning enhance the importance of regarding different lifeworlds and worldviews as basis for claiming some egalitarian positions for different positions as clients as well as researchers and practitioners.
Politihøgskolen i Oslo Ved hjelp av randomiserte felteksperiment under-søkes utbredelsen av diskriminering i arbeidsmarke-det i fire byer: Oslo, Stavanger, Bergen og Trondheim. Felteksperimentene er basert på likelydende jobb-søknader med typisk pakistansk og typisk norsk navn, og responsen fra arbeidsgiverne dokumenterer sys-tematisk forskjellsbehandling i favør av søkere med norsk navn, men forskjellene er mindre enn en tidligere norsk studie fant. I motsetning til vår utgangshypotese fant vi noe mindre diskriminering i Stavanger, Bergen og Trondheim enn i Oslo, men for-skjellen er relativt liten og ikke statistisk signifikant. Nøkkelord: Diskriminering, arbeidsmarked, felteksperiment, minoriteter Discrimination in the labor market Results from randomized field-experiments in Oslo, Stavanger, Bergen and Trondheim Building on randomized field-experiments in the Norwegian labor market this study documents the prevalence of discrimination in four Norwegian cities: Oslo, Stavanger, Bergen and Trondheim. Using a typical Pakistani name and a typical Norwegian name we have sent identical job applications to publically advertised jobs, and the call-backs from the employ-ers' reveal systematic discrimination in favor of the applicants with Norwegian name, yet the overall level of discrimination is lower than found in a previous study. Contrary to our expectations, we found less discrimination in the cities outside Oslo, yet the differences are small and not statistically significant.
This paper unpacks the contested inter-connections between neoliberal work and welfare regimes, asylum and immigration controls, and the exploitation of migrant workers. The concept of precarity is explored as a way of understanding intensifying and insecure post-Fordist work in late capitalism. Migrants are centrally implicated in highly precarious work experiences at the bottom end of labour markets in Global North countries, including becoming trapped in forced labour. Building on existing research on the working experiences of migrants in the Global North, the main part of the article considers three questions. First, what is precarity and how does the concept relate to working lives? Second, how might we understand the causes of extreme forms of migrant labour exploitation in precarious lifeworlds? Third, how can we adequately theorize these particular experiences using the conceptual tools of forced labour, slavery, unfreedom and precarity? We use the concept of ‘hyper-precarity’ alongside notions of a ‘continuum of unfreedom’ as a way of furthering human geographical inquiry into the intersections between various terrains of social action and conceptual debate concerning migrants’ precarious working experiences.
How immigrants and their descendants adapt to the dual earner family model of Scandinavian welfare states is a topic of considerable interest. While earlier studies have addressed this issue in terms of economic integration, expanding our understanding of how cultural adaptation underpins these processes is vital. This study aims to identify patterns and dynamics shaping attitudes towards mothers' employment in Norway. The analysis draws on a survey including immigrants from Pakistan, Iran, Iraq and Vietnam, as well as descendants of Pakistani immigrants and a Norwegian control group. Survey data are linked with public register data. The analysis suggests both cultural persistence and adaptation; among immigrants, country of origin is a strong predictor of attitudes, whereas years of residence in the host country is of limited importance. While I find little evidence of a gradual process of adaptation over time, the analysis shows that both economic and linguistic integration is related to more positive attitudes to mothers' employment. Pakistani descendants express stronger support for mothers' employment than immigrants from Pakistan. Although Pakistani descendants are still less supportive of mothers' employment compared to the Norwegian control group, this suggest a significant degree of adaptation from one generation to the next.
Cultural competence is today a prominent concept and aspiration in all aspects of international social work. In this article, I argue that the common understanding of ‘cultural competence’ from the so-called essentialist perspective is inadequate, and even risky, when working in an international context. Drawing on examples, I suggest that a more constructive and reflective view of cultural competence be adopted in order to meet the challenges of international social work in the contemporary world, and to better equip ourselves as ethical and anti-oppressive practitioners and educators.
In 2001, the National Association of Social Workers (NASW) adopted 10 discrete standards of culturally competent practice which undergird our commitment to diversity and social justice. The concept of intersectionality is newly emerging in social work, though, causing us to reflect on our current conceptualizations of cultural competence. According to this construct, in order to understand one aspect of the self, such as race, we have to understand how gender, ethnicity, sexuality, social class, and other markers influence one another. The authors present the concepts of cultural competence, social identity, and intersectionality in order to deepen our anti-oppression, social justice approach.
During the 1990s and more so after the turn of the century, the authorities and the public in Scandinavia have become increasingly concerned about the pressure on welfare inflicted by the immigration of people with low skill levels from countries in the South. A large proportion of these newcomers have proven difficult to integrate in the Scandinavian labour market, which is characterised by high demands for skills and a compressed wage structure that makes low-skilled labour comparatively expensive. The universalistic welfare approach, implying a generous inclusion of legal newcomers from day one, in combination with the highly regulated and knowledge-intensive labour market has made the three states, Denmark, Norway and Sweden, particularly exposed to disincentive challenges as concerns the absorption of immigrants in gainful work. This article discusses the current development in the immigration/welfare nexus in the Scandinavian region.
De senere årene har stadig flere norskfødte barn av innvandrere fullført utdanning og kvalifisert seg til deltakelse i arbeidsmarkedet. Vi analyserer, separat for kvinner og menn, overgangen fra utdanning til sysselsetting blant etterkommere av indiske og pakistanske innvandrere, og undersøker tiden det tar fra de er ferdig utdannet til de finner arbeid. Vi sammenligner dem med et 10 prosents tilfeldig utvalg av majoritetsbefolkningen. Resultatene viser at begge etterkommergruppene har lavere overgangsrate til sysselsetting enn majoriteten. Gruppeforskjellene vedvarer også etter informasjon om forskjeller i observerte faktorer som utdanning, familiesituasjon og bosted inkluderes, noe som kan tyde på at andre faktorer, som diskriminering eller sosialt nettverk, kan være årsaken til gruppeforskjellene i overgangsrater. Vi finner ingen tegn til at familieforpliktelser i større grad hemmer overgangen til sysselsetting for pakistanske eller indiske etterkommere enn for andre kvinner. Nøkkelord: Sysselsetting, etterkommere av innvandrere, kjønn, forløpsanalyse
Sammendrag
I likhet med andre europeiske land mottok Norge i fjor et stort antall asylsøkere, og bosettingstallene forventes å bli høye i
årene som kommer. Dette gir åpenbare utfordringer knyttet til integrering i det norske arbeidsmarkedet. I denne artikkelen
undersøker vi hva vi kan lære av historiske erfaringer for tidligere kohorter av bosatte flyktninger fra land utenfor Europa. En
hovedkonklusjon er at ikke-europeiske flyktninger har hatt store problemer med å oppnå høy sysselsetting, og at mange derfor har
blitt avhengige av helserelaterte trygdeytelser. Med ambisjon om å oppnå sysselsettingsrater i nærheten av det vi observerer for
norskfødte, følger behov for politikkendringer.
Nøkkelord: flyktninger, sysselsetting, helserelaterte trygdeytelser, utflytting, familieinnvandring
With increasing international migration, social workers have not only been confronted with growing diversity, but also with the effects of displacement, trauma and immigration controls in the lives of their service users. Although the ongoing debates on migration, migrant integration and social cohesion have facilitated a growing literature on, and demand for cultural competence in social work, little progress has been made to arrive at an agreement of what exactly is required from social workers in cross-cultural encounters. This paper draws from the qualitative element of a mixed-methods study on social workers’ experiences of cross-cultural practice conducted in Glasgow, Scotland in 2016. By focusing on social workers’ experiences of accommodating and negotiating cultural differences with asylum seekers, this paper illustrates how social workers are moving beyond the cultural lens in understanding difference and disadvantage. The findings suggest that whilst culture continues to influence social workers’ encounters with service users, addressing cultural conflicts requires social workers to understand the complex power relations which asylum seekers are subject to both within and beyond the care relationship. Practice perspectives on the challenges and successes in cross-cultural social work illustrate the interplay between cultural and structural considerations involved in social work with asylum seekers.
Internationally, research on social work with immigrants has taken a critical perspective to the influential cultural competence discourse in social work. However, such criticism has been virtually absent in Norway. Research from Norway and Scandinavia shows how social workers perceive social problems affecting minorities as cultural differences, and not as difficulties related to uneven power relations and the subordinate position of minorities in the Nordic societies. The aim of this article is to critically explore the expressed need for cultural competence in the context of Norwegian social work and to discuss some implications of such a position. Drawing on Norwegian social work research and policy documents, we argue the need to shift from a culturalised position of the “other’ towards a position where intersecting categories and uneven power relations are acknowledged and combatted. In addition, by exploring what matters in people’s lives, and by learning from clients experiences, social workers will be better equipped to support individuals whose lives are influenced by complex individual, cultural and structural power relations.
Since initially writing on thematic analysis in 2006, the popularity of the method we outlined has exploded, the variety of TA approaches have expanded, and, not least, our thinking has developed and shifted. In this reflexive commentary, we look back at some of the unspoken assumptions that informed how we wrote our 2006 paper. We connect some of these un-identified assumptions, and developments in the method over the years, with some conceptual mismatches and confusions we see in published TA studies. In order to facilitate better TA practice, we reflect on how our thinking has evolved – and in some cases sedimented – since the publication of our 2006 paper, and clarify and revise some of the ways we phrased or conceptualised TA, and the elements of, and processes around, a method we now prefer to call reflexive TA.
Qualitative interviews with Latvian and Swedish agency nurses in Norway reveal that the two groups have quite different experiences of integration in the Norwegian labor market. Aiming to add knowledge about differentiation within migrant labor markets, the objective of this article is to examine how language, nursing culture, and personal motivation affect the double control that agency nurses are subject to, their resultant skill-sets, inclusion in the workplace, and response to this. Norway is of interest as the Norwegian language can be difficult to learn outside Scandinavia. The Latvian agency nurses are harder hit by the double control of the temporary work agencies than the Swedish are. They obtain higher wages and better working conditions and are ready to speak up against unfair treatment. If they want to leave the agency, they easily find direct employment. Latvian nurses seem more ready to accept work below their qualifications and some show signs of “resigned acceptance.” They have more to lose than the Swedish nurses in terms of access to work, wages, and working conditions if they return to their homeland. Although Latvian and Swedish nurses largely feel well received in the workplace, the double control they are subject to calls for self-restraint and impedes a sense of inclusion. For the Latvian nurses, language problems and cultural differences exacerbate this. The study expands and nuances how double control affects agency workers, and applying a broad concept of resigned acceptance it nuances what language means for discrimination in the workplace.
This article analyses if, how and why Scandinavian integration policies converged as a result of the refugee crisis in 2015, studying policies of permanent residence, citizenship, family reunification and access to social benefits. The analysis of policy processes finds that a logic of regulatory competition led to goal convergence, as all three countries explicitly adapted their policies relative to other countries’ policies. Nonetheless, when comparing the configuration of policy instruments and their settings, the cross-national gap persists as all three countries took restrictive steps, thus showing traits of path dependency. The conclusion discusses a severe challenge in the current policy convergence debate in the integration literature: how an insufficient level of precision (1) concerning different dimensions of the policies and (2) concerning how to assess convergence could lead to inaccurate and even opposite conclusions when interpreting empirical analyses.
Whereas refugees and larger immigrant groups’ integration in the Norwegian labour market has received considerable research attention, less is known about the labour market integration of small, non-refugee immigrant groups from West African countries such as Ghana. The purpose of the article is to examine the role of social networks and social identities for the differentiated labour market integration outcomes among Ghanaian immigrants in the city of Bergen. Based on data produced through in-depth interviews, participant observation and informal conversations, the authors argue that Ghanaian immigrants’ ability to obtain jobs is determined by more than simply having the appropriate educational and language qualifications, and largely depends on having favourable social identities and being embedded in social networks beyond the Ghanaian immigrant community. They find that those who mainly relied on Ghanaian networks found it difficult to circumvent labour market hindrances and they predominantly obtained menial jobs. The authors conclude that Norwegian job-seekers networks played a crucial role in the immigrants’ opportunities and for potential Norwegian employers’ perception of their employability, especially in professional and semi-professional jobs.
This paper asks a simple question: why did Western and other European politicians become so alarmed and, in some cases, downright apocalyptic at the rise of asylum seekers in 2014–16, especially compared to the previous refugee crisis in the 1990s? This paper argues that in 2014/2015, a “perfect storm” developed, bringing together factors that in the past had been largely unrelated and then converged with new ones. Peeling the onion of societal discontent with migrants and refugees has revealed five necessary and sufficient conditions: (1) discomfort with immigration and integration of colonial and labour migrants from North Africa and Turkey (1970–80s); (2) growing social inequality and widespread pessimism about globalization (1980s–); (3) A growing discomfort with Islam (1990s–); (4) Islamist terrorism (2000s–) and (5) the rise of radical right populist parties (2000s).
While integration policies typically focus on labour market entry, we present evidence showing that immigrants from low-income countries tend to have more precarious jobs, and face more severe consequences of job loss, than natives. For immigrant workers in the Norwegian private sector, the probability of job loss in the near future is more than twice that of native workers. Using corporate bankruptcy filings for identification, we find that the adverse effects of job loss on future employment and earnings are twice as large for immigrant employees from low-income source countries.
This study examines the causal relationship between childhood immigrants' age at arrival and their life chances as adults. I analyze panel data on siblings from Norwegian administrative registries, which enables me to disentangle the effect of age at arrival on adult socioeconomic outcomes from all fixed family-level conditions and endowments shared by siblings. Results from sibling fixed-effects models reveal a progressively stronger adverse influence of immigration at later stages of childhood on completed education, employment, adult earnings, occupational attainment, and social welfare assistance. The persistence of these relationships within families indicates that experiences related to the timing of childhood immigration have causal effects on later-life outcomes. These age-at-arrival effects are considerably stronger among children who arrive from geographically distant and economically less-developed origin regions than among children originating from developed countries. The age-at-arrival effects vary less by parental education and child gender. On the whole, the findings indicate that childhood immigration after an early-life formative period tends to constrain later human capital formation and economic opportunities over the life course.
Det er godt dokumentert at innvandrede kvinner har lavere sysselsetting enn norske kvinner uten innvandringsbakgrunn. Men hva preger deltakelsen i arbeidslivet blant de som har fått en fot innenfor? I denne artikkelen studeres mobilitet i arbeidstid og arbeidstilknytning gjennom å ta i bruk registerdata der kvinner som var sysselsatt i 2009 følges fram til og med 2012. Norske kvinner sammenliknes med kvinner som har innvandret fra Irak, Iran, Pakistan, Somalia og Vietnam. Vi finner at deltidsarbeid er langt mer stabilt hos kvinner uten innvandrerbakgrunn. Kvinner fra Irak, Iran, Somalia og Vietnam har større tilbøyelighet til å øke arbeidstiden enn norske kvinner, noe som kan tyde på høyere grad av ufrivillig deltid. Samtidig er bevegelsen ut av lønnet arbeid langt mer omfattende blant innvandrede enn blant norske kvinner. Dette gjelder også etter kontroll for variasjoner i utdanning, familiesituasjon, type arbeid og arbeidstid. Analysene tyder på at innvandrede kvinner sett under ett har en mer marginalisert posisjon i norsk arbeidsliv enn kvinner uten innvandringsbakgrunn, men viser også at det er store variasjoner på dette området mellom kvinner fra ulike landgrupper. Nøkkelord: deltidsarbeid, innvandrede kvinner, økonomisk integrering, marginalisering, mobilitet
A growing body of programme evaluation literature recognises immigrants as a disadvantaged group in European labour markets and investigates the employment effects of Active Labour Market Programmes (ALMPs) on this subgroup. So far, however, there is no systematic review establishing which ALMPs are effective for immigrants. Using a meta-analysis, we condense 93 estimates from 33 empirical studies of the effectiveness of four types of ALMPs employed across Europe to combat immigrant unemployment: training, job search assistance, wage subsidies and subsidised public sector employment. We find that only wage subsidies can be confidently recommended to European policy-makers. Jel codes: J15, J61, J68, I38
Using Norwegian registry data, I study the intergenerational transmission of educational attainment and adult earnings from
immigrant parents to their second-generation children. Generational progress is documented by strongly reduced native-immigrant
gaps in completed education and relative earnings position among the immigrant offspring compared to the gaps found in the
parental generation. The level of intergenerational gains is highest within the ethnic minority groups characterized by the
lowest parental statuses. The overall child-by-parent gradients in education and earnings are broadly similar among immigrants
and natives, suggesting comparable rates of upward mobility among children of immigrants and children of natives with disadvantaged
family background. Children of immigrants in several non-European ethnic minorities actually achieve higher educational attainment
and earnings as adults when compared to their native counterparts with similar parental socio-economic status and neighbourhood
of residence in adolescence. The role of neighbourhood segregation appears to be considerably less important in accounting
for the native-immigrant socio-economic attainment gaps than observed parental characteristics. The results suggest substantial
intergenerational convergence in socio-economic life chances between the children of immigrants and the children of the native-born
in the egalitarian Norwegian welfare state setting.
The work ethic disguised as gender equality? Do arguments for the gender equality of women from minorities have an altogether different intention? The point of departure for this article is text analysis of a Report to the Storting (white paper) no. 6 (2012-2013) A Coherent Integration Policy. Diversity and Community. It shows that gender equality is being used as a steering principle bringing women from minorities into the labour market. The gender equality discourse appears to conceal an assumption that these women have a poorly developed work ethic. In this way gender equality becomes the welfare and integration «solution» for women from minorities «not willing» to enter the labour market, while the goal of freedom of choice and diversity is to involve only symbolic gestures.
The European refugee crisis has gained worldwide attention with daily media coverage both in and outside Germany. Representations of refugees in media and political discourse in relation to Germany participate in a Gramscian “war of position” over symbols, policies, and, ultimately, social and material resources, with potentially fatal consequences. These representations shift blame from historical, political-economic structures to the displaced people themselves. They demarcate the “deserving” refugee from the “undeserving” migrant and play into fear of cultural, religious, and ethnic difference in the midst of increasing anxiety and precarity for many in Europe. Comparative perspectives suggest that anthropology can play an important role in analyzing these phenomena, highlighting sites of contestation, imagining alternatives, and working toward them. [refugee, media, immigration, crisis, Germany, Europe]
Labour market opportunities among children of immigrants is a crucial test of long-term structural integration of ethnic minorities,
since these individuals have acquired linguistic fluency, educational qualifications, and work experience specific to their
parents' destination country. Using comprehensive Norwegian administrative data on birth cohorts 1965–1982, this article examines
whether second-generation immigrants experience disadvantages in access to employment and advantaged occupational positions
compared to native peers with similar educational qualifications and social origins (N = 107,362). The results show that non-European ethnic minorities experience weaker labour market attachments relative to
the native majority. Once employment is secured, however, there is no evident pattern of ethnic disadvantage in access to
advantaged occupational positions. Insofar that ethnic stratification is reproduced between immigrants and their children
in Norway, this appears not to happen via differential allocation to occupational positions, but primarily within the educational
system and at the entrance to the labour market.
Proficiency in the language spoken by the majority population may be crucial for the cognitive development of children from immigrant families. High-quality child care is believed to promote such language skills, and it is thus of concern that children from immigrant families are underrepresented in formal child care across OECD countries. How can we increase their participation, and can such participation improve family integration? We study an intervention in some districts of Oslo where children aged four and five were eligible for twenty hours of free childcare weekly. Taking advantage of the intervention being available in some city districts and not in others, we estimate the effect of the intervention on the enrollment of children and on their parents’ employment and education, using outcomes measured for the same family before and after the child’s age of eligibility. We find that the intervention increased the participation for children from immigrant families by 15 percent. However, we do not find support for effects on parental employment or education. The performance in tests at school entry (age six) for children from immigrant families in city districts with free child care is better than that of similar children in comparison districts. Overall, our results suggest that subsidizing center based child care can improve the cognitive development of children from immigrant families.
This study examines the tensions between the Global Statements of Ethical Principles of Social Work influenced by the Universal
Declarations of Human Rights and related international conventions and the social work practices with undocumented immigrants
in Sweden. The paper is based on a comprehensive study of working practices with undocumented immigrants in the framework
of the Swedish social care system, where municipal social workers and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) actors have been
interviewed. The material was complemented by participant observations. The empirical results show how globalisation, migration
and social problems of undocumented immigrants increasingly challenge the national basis of social work and create tensions
between national laws and practices guiding the Swedish welfare services and the Global Statements of Ethical Principles of
Social Work. The lack of adequate working methods and legal frames makes it possible for social workers and NGO actors to
make informal alliances with other actors for the improvement of undocumented immigrants' living conditions. It is argued
that the national basis of social work should be reformed in order to include global conditions of local social problems and
realise itself as a human rights profession.
A major question in labour market research is the extent to which discrimination in employments causes the disadvantages experienced by children of immigrants. This article contributes to the debate by utilising a correspondence test study in which pairs of equivalent résumés and cover letters—one with a Pakistani name and one with a Norwegian name—were sent in response to 900 job openings in the greater Oslo area. The results show that applicants with Norwegian names on average are 25 % more likely to receive a call back for a job interview than equally qualified applicants with Pakistani names. More refined analyses demonstrate that the effect of ethnic background on employment probabilities is larger among men than women and larger in the private sector than in the public sector, and important variations among the occupations included in the study are revealed. In an effort to separate the potentially conflating effects of gender and sector, all applications to gender-segregated occupations were removed from the analyses. Interestingly, the gender differences disappear when exclusively analysing discrimination in gender-integrated occupations by sector. In gender-integrated occupations in the private sector, the gender difference in fact is reversed, indicating that women with minority background are treated less favourably than are minority men in the private sector. These results suggest that the intersection of gender, ethnicity, and sector should be scrutinised more carefully in future field experiments.
Using longitudinal data from the date of arrival, we study long-term labour market and social insurance outcomes for all major immigrant cohorts to Norway since 1970. Immigrants from high-income countries performed as natives, while labour migrants from low-income source countries had declining employment rates and increasing disability programme participation over the lifecycle. Refugees and family migrants assimilated during the initial period upon arrival but labour market convergence halted after a decade and was accompanied by rising social insurance rates. For the children of labour migrants of the 1970s, we uncover evidence of intergenerational assimilation in education, earnings and fertility.