International Migration. 2021;00:1–10. | 1 wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/imig INTRODUCTION The arrival of almost 2.7 million asylum seekers in Europe in 2015 and 2016 has reignited long-term academic and societal debates about labour market integration. Most refugees want to work in the receiving country (Brücker et al., 2016), and research has shown that employment is critical for their psychological well-being and their de- sire for financial independence (Bloch, 2002; Phillimore & Goodson, 2006). Despite the desire to work and the proven benefits of employment, refugees tend to have lower employment rates than other migrant groups and Received: 28 April 2021 | Accepted: 11 May 2021 DOI: 10.1111/imig.12883 SPECIAL ISSUE ARTICLE Introduction to special issue: Labour market integration of highly skilled refugees in Sweden, Germany and the Netherlands Micheline van Riemsdijk 1 | Linn Axelsson 2 This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made. © 2021 The Authors. International Migration published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of International Organization for Migration. 1 Department of Social and Economic Geography, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden 2 Department of Human Geography, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden Correspondence Micheline van Riemsdijk, Department of Social and Economic Geography, Uppsala University, Box 513, 75120 Uppsala, Sweden Email: micheline.vanriemsdijk@kultgeog. uu.se Funding information Swedish Research Council for Health, Working Life and Welfare, Grant/Award Number: 2016-07105 and 2019-01220; Swedish Foundation for Humanities and the Social Sciences, Grant/Award Number: F18-1266:1 Abstract This article introduces a special issue on the labour market integration of highly skilled refugees in Sweden, Germany and the Netherlands, three countries that received a large number of asylum seekers in the mid-2010s. Authorities have devised various policies that aim to speed up the la- bour market integration process for refugees. This article critically examines normalized assumptions about refugees and the causes for their low employment rates that inform existing labour market integration initiatives. We pay par- ticular attention to highly skilled refugees, who generally want to work but tend to experience difficulties finding employment commensurate with their educational attain- ment and professional expertise. This issue warrants more attention as one in five refugees in Europe has completed a tertiary education.
Introduction to special issue: Labour market integration of highly skilled refugees in Sweden, Germany and the Netherlands
Jul 11, 2023
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