Abstract
‘War, human rights violations, underdevelopment, climate change and natural disasters are leading more people to leave their homes than at any time since we have had reliable data. More than 60 million people — half of them children — have fled violence or persecution and are now refugees and internally displaced persons. […] But this is not a crisis of numbers; it is a crisis of solidarity. Almost 90 per cent of the world’s refugees are hosted in developing countries.’ (Ban Ki-moon, 9 May 2016)
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While the focus of this special issue is on asylum-seekers and refugees in relation to the labour market, it is important to note the context in which these events are unfolding (Mau and Burkhardt, 2009; Sainsbury, 2012). One key aspect is the increasing strength in recent decades of radical and extreme-right parties in which anti-immigrant, xenophobic and racist policies are of particular importance (Mudde, 2010; Tyler, 2018). A second aspect is the long-term trend of globalisation and austerity politics (Korpi and Palme, 2003). These trends have been aggravated by the 2008 financial crisis whereby unemployment, a rise in precarious work and sluggish economic growth have become more prominent, often in conjunction with reductions in welfare entitlements (Schäfer and Streeck, 2013).
Integration as a concept is used in very different and contested ways, and often either in the form of a common-sense understanding or as an empiricist measurement (Robinson, 1998). It is a term that is commonly used together with assimilation, incorporation, social cohesion and multiculturalism to capture the social processes and relationships that emerge in the context of migrant settlement (Ager and Strang, 2008). Integration is used to capture these processes in a number of specific societal fields, but it is also better understood in an overarching context. In this special issue, the focus is on labour market integration and also encompasses the following two points: first, how other processes of integration may affect it; and second, how labour market integration may in turn affect other processes of integration.
Exploring labour market integration needs contextualisation. One central aspect of such contextualisation is that labour market integration reflects a policy concern, at a time of increasing state action, to prevent migrants – and asylum-seekers and refugees in particular – from entering and settling in the EU and EEA countries, or to curtail their numbers. This in turn reflects the increasing strength of anti-immigrant attitudes, parties and policies. At the same time, however, the EU, its individual Member States and EEA countries are discussing strategies to deal with demographic statistics and projections that are increasingly pointing to declining populations and a decrease in economically active populations. Despite a negative birth rate, the population of the EU and EEA countries is growing, and the proportion of the population that is economically active is not shrinking as rapidly as feared as a result of migration. It is against this background that the issue of labour market integration takes on a salience in respect of migration. Thus, we would argue that the two dominant discourses emphasising the centrality of (successful) labour market integration focus, first, on preventing costs for increasingly austere welfare regimes and, second, on providing labour as the demand increases, especially in the precarious and low-wage sectors of the EU Member States and EEA countries (Levitas, 2006; European Commission, 2018; Joyce, 2018). While labour market access is an important means of achieving integration for asylum-seekers and refugees, research into this area has shown that this is an assumption that requires more extensive research, focusing both on analyses of problems and achievements and on issues related to policy and best practice.
This special issue seeks to understand the challenges that asylum-seekers and/or refugees face in gaining access to different sections of labour markets and thus indirectly to society in general. The texts presented in this special issue take examples from a number of European countries, including Austria, Finland, Germany, Italy, Lithuania, Norway, Sweden and Slovenia.
Taking the example of the Norwegian Introductory Programme, Djuve and Kavli argue that, within activation policy, ideas can function simultaneously as path-reinforcing cognitive locks and as drivers for political change. While across the EU and the EEA countries labour market programmes and initiatives targeting refugees have increased substantially over the past couple of years, challenges remain in identifying effective methods and policies to ensure an effective and non-discriminating incorporation into labour markets, which may be explained by evaluators’ experience of cognitive locks. In her article, Söhn investigates how legal status affects the economic integration opportunities of refugees who moved to Germany between 1964 and 2003. Contrasting refugees with German resettlers, findings demonstrate that – because of their previous precarious legal status as asylum-seekers – refugees faced greater challenges in gaining access to the labour market within six years of their arrival. Meanwhile, German resettlers tended to find employment quite swiftly (although it was not necessarily qualitatively better), which may be because they experienced a more inclusive legal-political reception. Wikström and Sténs analyse discourses in the printed press to investigate how work in the Swedish forestry sector has come to be constructed as a solution for employing refugees. Their article illustrates how immigrants are being conceived of as a malleable and available workforce that may be used to ease labour shortages and address the allegedly slow integration of refugees in the labour market. In the case of Austria, Finland and Italy, Schenner et al. attempt to investigate how asylum-seekers are pushed into the ‘hyper-precarity trap’ by analysing how policies regulating their labour market access, while formally intending to promote integration, may actually be the cause of this trap. This article argues that the ‘hyper-precarity trap’ differs for asylum-seekers depending on the national context and is not unique to this particular group of workers. Vončina and Marin, and Blažytė and Žibas, use News and Background articles to outline the challenges asylum-seekers and refugees face in Slovenia and Lithuania respectively. Fóti investigates in her News and Background piece the EU’s role in integrating asylum-seekers and refugees by investigating both legal frameworks and support for integration measures, while Turner and Cappiali each provide a review of the following books: Trade Unions and Migrant Workers: New Contexts and Challenges in Europe by Stefania Marino, Judith Roosblad and Rinus Penninx (eds) (Turner) and Reconstructing Solidarity: Labour Unions, Precarious Work, and the Politics of institutional Change in Europe by Virginia Doellgast, Nathan Lillie and Valeria Pulignano (Cappiali).