Young adults of ethnic minority background on the Norwegian labour market: The interactional co-construction of exclusion by employers and customers (original) (raw)
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2012
Labour market participation is commonly conceptualized as an indicator of immigrant integration, although integration is not something that should be conflated with inclusion. The mere fact of employment is no silver bullet. The sociology of work needs to consider experiences of exclusion both before and after entry to the labour market. This article is based on a 25-case selection of 50 in-depth interviews that we conducted with young adults of ethnic minority background in Norway. We analyse their experiences of, and reactions to, exclusion in the labour market. While for several interviewees the possibility of being met with ethnic prejudice from employers looms large, more experiences of this sort were reported among interviewees engaged in customer contact, where the inside of an organization intersects with the outside world.
Ethnic Minority Youths in the Labour Markets in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden
SSRN Electronic Journal
Any opinions expressed in this paper are those of the author(s) and not those of IZA. Research published in this series may include views on policy, but IZA takes no institutional policy positions. The IZA research network is committed to the IZA Guiding Principles of Research Integrity. The IZA Institute of Labor Economics is an independent economic research institute that conducts research in labor economics and offers evidence-based policy advice on labor market issues. Supported by the Deutsche Post Foundation, IZA runs the world's largest network of economists, whose research aims to provide answers to the global labor market challenges of our time. Our key objective is to build bridges between academic research, policymakers and society. IZA Discussion Papers often represent preliminary work and are circulated to encourage discussion. Citation of such a paper should account for its provisional character. A revised version may be available directly from the author.
Keeping Afloat in Norway: Immigrants’ Experiences of Integration as a Response to National Policy
2017
At the beginning of the 21st century, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) opened an office in Oslo, Norway in response to the 2003 Iraq Invasion and growing global migration. As a partner with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the IOM, the Norwegian Directorate of Immigration (UDI) established the NORCO program in the same year as an attempt to improve the integration of refugees. A pertinent issue in current events, the global refugee population figures at 21.3 million (UNHCR, 2017), representing a severe humanitarian crisis. This paper evaluates the national immigration policy of Norway and asks the question about how its Introduction Act, encourages application for residency and naturalization. Across immigrant populations from different geographies, religions, and cultural orientations, the outcomes vary. A reflection of assimilation over multiculturalism, this paper finds that immigrants from Europe who enter the labor market have lower rates of Norwegian naturalization, especially after 2007, than refugees from Asia and Africa, who are less represented in the labor market. To elucidate the experiences that immigrants have at integrating across national and local scales, this paper reviews the diversity of Norwegian municipalities, economic, geographical, and social contexts.
Unequal Opportunities for Young People with Immigrant Backgrounds in the Swedish Labour Market
This paper investigates labour-market performance for 'young people with immigrant backgrounds' and those 'born in Sweden with native-born parents' in the Swedish labour market. It focuses on young people who were aged 18-20 during 1990, and their labour-market status after 8 years, in 1998. The results indicate that young people of immigrant descent have lower annual wage income and are at higher risk of not being employed than those born in Sweden with nativeborn parents. Differences in human capital characteristics cannot explain these results. Other theories, which stress the effect of discriminatory behaviour and the power of social network composition, are discussed as alternative interpretations. Having one native-born parent is considered to be important to labour market success. However, having a native-born father rather than a native-born mother is associated with better labour-market achievement.
Dealing with the Dilemmas: Integration at the Street-level in Norway
International Migration, 2010
In Norway, as elsewhere in Europe, the debates about immigration, increasing cultural diversity and the need for integration, are heated and polarised. For welfare state workers and institutions, the perceived task and challenge of integration has to a large extent been to both provide space for cultural diversity and to promote social equality through participation in the labour market, education, and civil society. Amidst all this ongoing debate, a large number of people deal with these issues as a part of their daily work. This paper focuses on the dilemmas such street-level bureaucrats, or diversity workers, encounter in their work with refugees, immigrants and their children. Most of all, it explores the strategies they have developed to handle such situations. Street-level bureaucrats have a range of strategies to get around integration dilemmas, which are presented here as five distinct response repertoires. The analytical construction of these repertoires is useful because it provides us with a tool to describe and understand what is going on when policies are translated into institutional practices. It shows how public sector employees are handling the everyday dilemmas that policy does not provide the solutions for. Finally, this analysis of repertoires can also be useful in thinking normatively about what kinds of strategies particular institutions ought to nurture and how they can achieve this.
Acta Sociologica, 2014
The articles in this Acta Sociologica e-special issue exemplify the variety of issues that are of interest to sociologists of migration and ethnicity. Together they form a continuum that goes from the integration of immigrants to that of their children, then moving to the majority and considering both adults and young adults. The topics of the articles consider social ties, social integration, educational attainment, identity, belonging, citizenship, and attitudes related to immigration and ethnic distance. These topics can also be seen to touch upon many of the different types/phases of assimilation that Milton Gordon (1964: 71) identified, which are (1) cultural or behavioural, (2) structural, meaning entry into the majority's social networks, (3) marital, (4) identificational, (5) attitude receptional, (6) behaviour receptional, and (7) civic. In the same vein as Gordon's framework, the bringing together of research that analyses the majority's attitudes towards immigrants and ethnic minorities and that analysing the ways in which immigrants and their descendants are integrating also highlights the way that these two processes are interrelated. Broadly speaking, all of these articles therefore speak to the theme of inclusion and exclusion and highlight some of the factors behind these closely connected processes.
Ethnicizing Employability Governing the Unemployed in Labour Market Projects in Sweden
The dissertation analyzes labour market projects co-financed by the European Social Fund (ESF) targeting unemployed migrants and ethnicized groups. The analysis is qualitative, discourse-oriented and based on Foucault’s concept of governmentality. More specifically, it is highlighted how the target groups are ethnicized through discourses of employability and learning. The thesis consists of four articles. In the first three articles, focus is mainly on how the projects present themselves through their project descriptions in the ESF project bank and the fourth article is mainly based on ethnographic material. Overall, this dissertation highlights different aspects of inclusion work directed towards migrants and ethnicized target groups that can be seen as problematic and sometimes contradictory. Tendencies to individualize unemployment and thus positioning the unemployed project participants as responsible for their situation is interrogated in the thesis. Further, it is analyzed how culture and ethnicity is used in ways that are likely to strengthen the target groups ‘Otherness’ in relation to a ‘Swedishness’ that often become synonymous with what is perceived as normal and thus widening the gap between ‘us’ and ‘them’ when the stated goal is the opposite. This dissertation can serve as a starting point to reflect on how inclusion efforts and labour market projects seeking to produce social inclusion and employability may be at risk to categorize people in different ways, which can sometimes be problematic in relation to what the efforts seek to achieve.
Citizens in the making – the inclusion of racialized subjects in labour market projects in Sweden
This article analyzes the formation of citizenship in today's multi-ethnic Sweden in the light of the inclusion of 'people with foreign background'. Particular focus is put on how ethnicity and migration renders visible existing citizenship ideals, defined in terms of similarity and difference on the basis of ethno-cultural background. The formation of citizenship is analysed in the case of labour-market projects targeting racialized migrants. The point of departure is an understanding of citizenship as an ongoing process of citizen formation, highlighting the formation of citizens as rights-bearing subjects, belonging to the societal community – in contrast to those not bearing these rights and not belonging to the societal community. The analysis illustrates how norms of Swedish-ness condition the membership in the Swedish societal community, forming a particular kind of racialized citizenship, including certain subjects, under certain conditions, while excluding others. One conclusion is that in addition to the formal dimensions of citizenship, the ability and willingness to adapt to norms of Swedish-ness is essential for accessing and using social rights – i.e. for becoming employable and included on the labour market. In the projects analysed, racialized migrants have the duty of becoming employable by embracing certain values – the good, working citizen, the free, independent individual, able to make choices – all constituted as being part of the ideal Swedish citizenship.