Taking on the challenge of getting refugees into the job market in Sweden

A police officer escorts migrants from a train at Hyllie station outside Malmo. TT News Agency/Reuters Sweden is one of the few countries in Europe that has provided protection to a large number of refugees fleeing the war zones of Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq. Despite its relatively small population of 10 million, Sweden had the highest number of individuals seeking asylum per capita (163,000) in Europe in 2015. The large number of refugees who have gained residence in Sweden over the past couple of years constitute a major challenge to Swedish society and, especially to the Swedish labour market. According to a recent report from the OECD, only 22% of newly-arrived men and 8% of women had employment after one or two years of introductory programmes. But the long-term employment rates of previously-arrived refugees in Sweden are more favourable and lead us to believe that the numbers above will grow within the next few years. As reported by the Swedish Migration Delegation, only 30% of refugees who arrived between 1997 and 1999 were employed after two years of residency in Sweden, but this number jumped to 65% after ten years in the country. Despite the fact that this figure is still below the Swedish average employment rate of about 80%, it is illustrative of the gradual growth in employment rates for refugees. The number of first-time asylum applications in Europe for 2015 reached 1.3 million, three times more than in 2013. The spike in arrivals in the past year has put significant pressure on receiving countries, such as Sweden and Germany, and on the resources allocated to integrate refugees. The main focus of introduction programmes in Sweden and other European countries has been on labour market integration. Of course, this is not the first time in history that Sweden has received large numbers of asylum seekers and tried to incorporate them into the labour market. During World War II and directly after, Sweden accepted refugees from Poland, Finland and the Baltic states, as well as Jewish refugees from Denmark and Norway. The goal of Swedish integration policies then was to employ and resettle refugees in parts of the country where there was a high demand for labour. Since the 1950s, when Sweden accepted Hungarian refugees, and especially over the past three decades, Swedish integration policies have continued developing to become more encompassing and ambitious. The current policy was adopted in 2010 with the goal of facilitating the integration of refugees into the Swedish job market. Refugees are offered an introduction program that includes basic Swedish language training and civic and labour market orientation courses for up to two years. Why integration is hard Despite these efforts, the labour market integration of refugees in general, and resettled refugees in particular, has been characterised as having a slower pace, compared to that of family reunion migrants and labour migrants. Of course, refugees – unlike labour migrants – are not selected primarily for their skills. It will naturally take longer for them to […]

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