Sozioökonomische Folgen

"Theoretical background and objectives Economic participation of migrants has been a major problem in many European countries for the last decades. There is overwhelming statistical evidence for the problematic labour market status of migrants, but data also show that not all migrant groups are affected to the same extent. Previous studies have revealed that differences in socio-economic integration are strongly related to ethnic origin. However, this research does not allow us to firmly establish to what extent cultural and religious factors are responsible for the differential socio-economic position of ethnic groups. Therefore, we investigate the effects of host-country orientation and cultural difference of migrants on their socio-economic integration in Germany, analysing unemployment and employment durations of male and female migrants, as well as transitions from domestic work to employment for female migrants from Turkey, Former Yugoslavia, Greece, Spain and Italy. Given the large gap in unemployment and employment rates not only between natives and migrants, but also between groups of migrants, we look at several economic, human capital and cultural factors in order to test whether migrant-specific characteristics can help to explain ethnic group differences in labour market outcomes. The migrant-specific cultural variables we investigate include host-country language proficiency, interethnic contacts, host-country media consumption, and religiosity. In the case of married female migrants, the analysis moreover takes relevant characteristics of their husbands into account, which have not received attention in earlier studies. Research design and methodology The German Socio-Economic Panel provides reliable longitudinal data, allowing us to conduct analyses over a period of nearly 20 years (1988-2006). We use duration data to analyse the hazard of labour market status transitions by estimating Cox regression models with a random frailty term to account for unobserved heterogeneity. Individual longitudinal data on employment trajectories of migrants have been combined with labour market context data and relevant human capital and cultural factors. A longitudinal approach is crucial for addressing this research question, since the relationship between socio-cultural factors such as host-country language proficiency and interethnic contacts and labour market integration is likely to be recursive. Our samples cover not only persons born outside Germany, but also their 2nd generation offspring. Findings The results indicate that although labour market transitions of migrants strongly depend on the labour market context, host-country orientation and religiosity also have a certain impact on the labour market integration of individual migrants, especially on transitions into employment of male migrants and married migrant housewives. However, while for most of our cultural variables we find significant effects on the individual level, these factors do not help to clarify the differences among the different migrant groups, which persist at a similar level even after controlling for labour market, general human capital, as well as cultural variables."

1. Effective labour market policies and measures are important tools for Member States to address increasing migration flows and persistent employment gaps between migrant and national populations. According to the ad-hoc module on migration of the Labour Market Survey in 2014, roughly two thirds of third-country nationals who migrated for work to the EU had no job at the time of migrating. While unemployment rates have decreased steadily since 2014, the gap in the unemployment rate between third-country nationals and native- and EU-born remains. 2. Most Member States have dedicated labour market integration policies in place, targeting multiple migrant groups, including newly arrived, first generation third-country nationals who were the focus of this study. These policies are usually integral to Member States’ more general integration policies. 3. The driving forces behind current labour market integration policies tend to be labour shortages and the need to help newcomers into employment quickly so they become self-sufficient. The 2014- 2016 influx of migrants has encouraged many Member States to update existing policies or develop new ones. 4. Member States combine mainstream and tailored labour market integration measures. While mainstream integration measures help to ensure equal access to general (public employment) services, tailored measures can specifically address some of the disadvantages facing newly arrived third-country nationals compared to other groups, including lack of language proficiency and unfamiliarity with the new society. 5. The most common obstacles encountered by Member States in supporting third-country nationals relate to the accreditation of job qualifications/assessment of skills of those arriving from outside the EU, tackling discrimination within recruitment processes and managing varying levels of language skills in integration measures. These difficulties are more pronounced when dealing with migrant women or vulnerable groups. 6. Public sector integration measures focus primarily on the phase prior to accessing employment, including preparing for and finding a job. Based on examples provided by Member States, these relate most often to the development of (soft) skills, vocational training and qualification and career counselling. 7. The best innovative measures connected migrant and host communities or developed inter-generational bonds by bringing together people of different ages or ethnic groups, not only to ease migrants’ integration into society but also to create social cohesion. 8. Employment centres and non-governmental organisations emerge as key partners in the implementation of labour market integration measures. Most of the measures are financed through national and/or EU funds, but examples exist of privately funded measures, including new tools such as social impact bonds and sponsorship. 9. Private sector measures aim more specifically at integrating (migrant) workers into the workplace. Examples reported were mostly implemented by large companies. They focussed predominantly on training and qualification, counselling and enhancing intercultural relations in the workplace, for example through ‘buddy’ programmes, on-boarding programmes or internal company workshops on intercultural relations.

Despite the polarization in public and policy debates generated by the post-2014 fluxes of refugees, asylum applicants and migrants, European countries need to work out an evidence-based way to deal with migration and asylum rather than a prejudice-based one. The proposed project, SIRIUS, builds on a multi-dimensional conceptual framework in which host country or political-institutional, societal and individual-related conditions function either as enablers or as barriers to migrants’, refugees’ and asylum seekers’ integration via the labour market. SIRIUS has three main objectives: A descriptive objective: To provide systematic evidence on post-2014 migrants, refugees and asylum applicants especially women and young people and their potential for labour market employment and, more broadly, social integration. An explanatory objective: To advance knowledge on the complexity of labour market integration for post-2014 migrants, refugees and asylum applicants, and to explore their integration potential by looking into their spatial distribution (in relation to the distribution of labour demand across the labour market), while taking into account labour market characteristics and needs in different country and socio-economic contexts. A prescriptive objective: To advance a theoretical framework for an inclusive integration agenda, outlining an optimal mix of policy pathways for labour market integration including concrete steps that Member States and other European countries along with the EU can take to ensure that migrant-integration policies and the broader system of workforce-development, training, and employment programmes support new arrivals’ access to decent work opportunities and working conditions. SIRIUS has a mixed methods approach and innovative dissemination plan involving online priority action networks, film essays, festival, job fair and an applied game along with scientific and policy dialogue workshops and conferences.

This project aims at investigating shifting migration regimes and how employment and labor differentiates categories of migrants in Sweden. Relations between employers and migrants become increasingly crucial for opportunities and restraints in migrant life situations in systems of managed migration. Employers also become engaged in global economic relations and at the same time negotiate the relations between the nation and the migrant workers.

The RuMiT (Rural Migration in Tunisia) research addresses the determinants of migration and mobility, the patterns and types of rural youth outmigration and the impact of rural youth migration on rural livelihoods and societies in origin regions in Tunisia. The research used a mixed-methods approach combining quantitative and qualitative methods, providing comparative insights into: international and internal migrants and non-migrants; pre- and post-2011 migrants; households with and without migrants. Main results show that migrants from rural areas are increasingly highly educated and leaving to pursue their studies abroad. This particularly applies to women, who also register a decrease in marriage-related migration. Migration proves to be rewarding for both internal and international migrants, in terms of occupational and social security outcomes. In particular, migrant women have higher labour market participation and employment rates than non-migrants. As a direct consequence of an emigration which is still male dominated, households with migrants are increasingly feminized, i.e. with a higher share of women, who are more likely to be active compared with women in nonmigrant households. Migrant households were also found to have higher access to social security. While incomes from remittances tend not to be invested in productive activities, evidence shows that one internal migrant out of four and one international migrant out of three has an economic activity in the areas of origin, which in most of the cases is connected with agricultural or animal production. The Rural Migration in Tunisia (RuMiT) research project was undertaken in the framework of the FAO project “Youth mobility, food security and rural poverty reduction: Fostering rural diversification through enhanced youth employment and better mobility” (GCP/INT/240/ITA) – in brief, the Rural Youth Migration (RYM) project – implemented in Tunisia and Ethiopia between 2015 and 2017, and funded by the Italian Development Cooperation.

"Theoretical background and objectives The GEMM project addresses the ‘Migration, Prosperity and Growth Dimension’ of the call on the European Growth Agenda within the Horizon 2020 framework of the European Commission. With over 20 researchers located in 8 countries in Europe, our consortium will approach this important topic and deliver: An analysis of the obstacles to the successful incorporation of migrants and in particular to the attraction and retention of highly skilled migrants; A thorough assessment of the migration related drivers of growth and the optimal functioning of markets; An assessment of ethnic inequality in the labor market as a barrier to competitiveness and innovation in Europe; A set of policy recommendations that contain concrete guidelines as to how migrants can contribute to the EU economy and society. These deliverables are realized by putting forward an innovative research agenda that combines scientific rigor, a mixed methods and comparative approach, and crosscutting expertise. The main contribution of this project is to advance our understanding of ethnic inequality as a central barrier to the optimal functioning of the European labor market and thus to growth and innovation. Ethnic inequality inhibits two main migration related drivers of growth: the efficient use of human capital and managing mobility of human capital both within Europe and from other regions in the world. In the research framework, we analyze the interrelatedness between ethnic inequality as a barrier to growth, and the two migration-related drivers of growth. We achieve a unified research focus across work packages in two ways: by analyzing types of migrants defined by their educational qualifications – individuals with high, medium and vocational, and low skills; by exploring three sets of determinants of inequality - individual (gender, age, health, family situation, caring responsibilities, social ties (friendship ties), religious affiliation), contextual (neighborhood deprivation, segregation, climate of reception), institutional determinants (employment discrimination, labor market (occupational, sectoral) segmentation, flexibility and security of work, access to social welfare (policy regimes more broadly)."

Migrant entrepreneurship has received increasing attention from policy makers, stakeholders and scholars. In both the Action Plan for the integration of third country nationals and the 2020 Entrepreneurship Action Plan, the European Commission emphasises that entrepreneurship represents an alternative form of decent and sustainable employment for migrants. This also follows recent academic and non-academic studies on the topic (European Commission, 2016; Rath, Solano and Schutjens, 2019). There are at least four reasons why policies and measures should focus on supporting migrant entrepreneurs, especially in early stages of the business: • Self-employment represents a way towards empowerment. Although it cannot be taken for granted that self-employment provides migrants with a higher income in comparison to those who opted for a salaried employment (see Bradley, 2004), self-employment represents a way to tackle unemployment, and underemployment - professional downgrading and employment in poorly paid, dangerous and demanding jobs (Rath, Solano and Schutjens, 2019). Furthermore, through migrant entrepreneurship, migrants can improve their social status in the receiving society (Allen and Busse, 2016; Basu, 2001; Solano, 2015). • The impact of migrant entrepreneurship goes way beyond the benefits for the individual entrepreneur. In quantifiable terms, the number of firms, the employment creation, the volume in trade and sales are increasing, something that may benefit the economy in general (Desiderio, 2014). Migrant entrepreneurs also bring about qualitative economic and market changes that result in relatively new products and processes. They gravitate to particular neighborhoods or areas, thereby creating interesting places for leisure and consumption and revitalizing these areas (see, Aytar and Rath, 2012). • A relevant number of migrants starts a business. While many international migrants are economically active as wage workers (i.e., employees), a small but significant number has chosen or would like to start a business. About 13 per cent of all foreign-born migrants in OECD countries are selfemployed (OECD, 2010 and 2013). The same happens for the EU28 countries, in which around the 12% of foreign population is self-employed (Eurostat, 2017). In many countries the rate of self-employment among migrants is higher than the one of natives (Eurostat, 2017; OECD, 2010 and 2013). • Migrant-owned business are likely to fail and to be in low-profitable sectors. Despite self-employment and entrepreneurship represent a promising alternative option for migrants to access the labour market, they need to be adequately supported by policies and initiatives. In fact, migrant enterprises have higher failure rates than nativeowned ones and tend to concentrate in low-profitable sectors (e.g., petty trade) with no possibilities of growth (Desiderio and Mestres 2011; OECD, 2010; Rath and Schutjens, 2016). The difficulties that migrant entrepreneurs have in running the business is due to some specific obstacles that migrants – and, more in general, vulnerable groups -face when they want to start a business. The obstacles are well-known and there is an extensive literature on this (Desiderio, 2014; Rath and Swagerman, 2016): • they have difficulties in accessing credit, especially for financial institutions. As they often lack collaterals (e.g., they do not own a house), financial institutions are likely to deny credit to them. Consequently, migrant entrepreneurs normally receive small loans from relatives, friends and other migrants. This hampers the possibility of entering in sectors that requires a relevant starting capital, which are normally more profitable. • migrant entrepreneurs have difficulties to deal with the bureaucracy of the host country. They have difficulties in understanding all the administrative steps to start the business. • they (often) lack of familiarity with the (business) environment and the market where they start the business. Having only limited knowledge of the context of the destination country – with often information received from other migrants – tunnels them towards ethnic and/or not profitable markets. • a limited personal network, which is often composed of other migrants, does not help in dealing with bureaucracy or accessing information on potential unexplored market – as other migrants have often limited information as well. In conclusion, migrant entrepreneurship may represent an alternative way to access the labour market of the host | 2 country. However, migrant entrepreneurship often results in low-profitable highly-demanding micro businesses, which do not represent a decent form of employment. This is because of the barriers that migrants face when it comes to start a business. Migrant entrepreneurship needs to be supported to become an alternative form of decent employment. Policy makers and support providers (e.g. public employment services, NGOs, microcredit institutions) often face many obstacles in the design and implementation of support policies for migrant entrepreneurs. This handbook is addressed to policy makers in the field and support providers and aims at summarizing the main kinds of support that can be provided to migrant entrepreneurs and the factors for successful support measures. In doing this, we present some good practices.

Education and employment are crucial factors concerning social and economic integration into Austrian society. However, recent studies have shown that women with a migration background are disadvantaged with regard to employment and education when compared to men with a migration background as well as to women without such a migration background. The reasons for these disadvantages are manifold and comprise factors such as inadequate qualifications, low educational profiles, but also discrimination, difficulties in acknowledging foreign qualifications or the need to prove German language skills on a very high level. Furthermore, factors that are not easy to measure, such as benefits of family and social networks or attitudes regarding family or work, may indirectly impact on the employment situation and educational profiles of women with a migration background. Moreover, factors unrelated to migration, such as lack of positions that offer work-life balance, weaken the position of women with a migration background on the labour market. This said, the employment and education situation of women with a migration background is in fact very heterogeneous. In particular, first generation migrants and women coming from countries outside of the EU show lower labour market participation rates and face higher unemployment than other groups. However, to date, systematic analysis examining the combination of factors explaining the employment and education situations of women with migration history are scarce. Moreover, there is a need to combine existing statistical data on socio-demographic characteristics, educational attainment, de-skilling, discrimination, and “soft” factors, such as attitudes to work, family and education to better understand individual decision-making processes and structural disadvantages. Objectives of the project • Analyse the employment and education situation of young migrant women with specific regard to social and family contexts. • Identify factors that shape labour market and educational outcomes. • Identify good practices to promote the labour market performance of women with a migration background • Formulate policy recommendations. To reach these aims, the study applies multiple methods including desk research, secondary statistical analysis, and qualitative interviews with experts, practitioners and young women themselves.

"In this project, we investigate the (sometimes unintended) consequences of policies that have been implemented to regulate immigration and to subsequently facilitate the socio-economic integration of newly arrived immigrants. (1) Networks: First, we exploit a natural experiment in Switzerland, where asylum seekers are randomly assigned to cantons. This immigration policy can be regarded as a transparent and neutral way of distributing refugees across a country to “share a burden”. At the same time, such restrictions regarding free movement within a country come with hefty consequences for the persons affected. On the one hand, a large share of jobs are found through referrals within social networks: in the US, for instance, around 30-60% (Bewley, 2007). At least since Granovetter (1973), a rich theoretical literature has rationalized this fact by modelling networks as non-market institutions that help overcome information frictions inherent in the labor market. From workers' perspective, networks grant their members preferential access to information on high-quality job openings, e.g. as in Calvo-Armengol and Jackson (2004). On the firm side, networks may help alleviate the asymmetric information problem in hiring leading potentially to a better job-match, e.g. as in Beaman and Magruder (2012). In our study, we focus on the value of social networks from the perspective of workers. Swiss asylum policy provides a unique natural experiment to study the effects of social networks on labor market outcomes. Because of the truly exogenous placement, long horizon over which the policy was in place and the large sample size, we can delve deeper into the mechanisms of how social networks affect labor market integration than previous studies have done and look at network structure beyond simply its size. Our findings will enable us to distinguish among a large set of theoretical models of the value of networks from the point of view of individual job seekers. (2) Maternity: At the same time, such immigration policies also affect the social integration of immigrants and, in our case, individual health and wellbeing. Specifically, we exploit the same unique setting to assess the relevance of information on infants' health. Random allocation of asylum seekers in Switzerland allows us to first, study the spatial differences in health care provision across the country. Further, by exploiting that French-speaking refugees are randomly placed in French- or non-French-speaking regions, we can credibly identify the language-match-health-gap, based on refugees that do not speak French as a control group and placed on either side of the language border (in a Difference in Differences framework). By extending the language to a novel (continuous) measure of language distance, we are able to factor out country of origin effects using bi-lateral regressions. A second strand of policies targets the (economic) integration of immigrants and generally of persons outside the labor market. A common approach is to provide measures, so-called Active Labor Market Programs (ALMP) that enhance a jobseeker’s employability (e.g., through additional human capital) or that keep a person close to the labor market through occupational programs. (3) Access Bias: Some measures, however, can negatively affect labor market outcomes, such as unemployment duration and post-unemployment wages, because of factors such as human capital deprivation or lock-in effects. Based on encompassing registry data that allow researchers to control for usually unobserved employability variables, we find evidence of a systematic access bias whereby caseworkers in Switzerland assign unemployed immigrants to activation measures based on what we call a competition logic that is mainly driven by and conforms to an economic rationale and the job center’s performance evaluation. From the perspective of immigrants’ labor market integration, this may be problematic because it results in an overrepresentation of immigrants in measures with little efficacy rather than in measures that could compensate for (some of) their employability disadvantages. Conversely, we find that Swiss citizens are relatively advantaged in the ability to access more measures that promote human capital enhancement (compensation logic) and that have been shown to be successful tools for labor market reintegration. It is plausible that a stronger reliance on the competition logic by caseworkers and the consequential overrepresentation of migrants in low-efficacy measures amplifies migrants’ general labor market disadvantages. (4) Priming: This rather negative stance on integration measures in the form of ALMPs is further advanced by a study where we present indications that ALMP participants are pushed into lower paying jobs compared to equally qualified non-participants. In this study on the effect of subjective beliefs on employment outcomes we find that the employment chances one year after the start of unemployment increase for both ALMP participants and non-participants when self-control and employment beliefs are high. In contrast, higher initial reservation wages increase employment chances for non-participants but substantially reduce them for ALMP participants. Previous studies have shown that beneficial effects of activation measures are often abrogated by lock-in effects, human capital deprivation, and/or negative signals to prospective employers, all of which are particularly harmful for highly skilled workers and higher-paying jobs. We argue that these detrimental effects ultimately push ALMP participants into jobs below their expected salary, where the negative consequences of activation measures are less pronounced. (5) Heterogeneity: A related aspect that is crucial from an integration perspective is whether such effects of ALMPs differ across groups, that is, whether the participation of “natives” turns out to have different consequences for their labor market performance compared to participating immigrants. In this study, we argue that effect heterogeneity between native and migrant participants can provide information about the type of discrimination that migrants face in the labor market. Using encompassing administrative data from Switzerland, we observe all registered jobseekers in 2004 and follow their monthly labor market trajectories over 10 subsequent years. Our findings are consistent with earlier evaluations of ALMPs in Switzerland and elsewhere, which find that participation effects of ALMPs are limited and sometimes even negative. However, findings show that employers value the additional productivity-related information of ALMP participation more if participants have a foreign nationality. We infer that labor market discrimination against migrants is dominated by statistical reasoning on the part of prospective employers. (6) LM-Index: Eventually, we provide a meta-analytical study where we argue that comparative assessments of integration policies fail to properly take confounding factors into account. That is, immigrant groups exposed to integration policies in different countries differ in their characteristics because immigration policies and migrants’ destination choice induce an ex-ante bias. To circumvent this limit to comparative analyses, we aspire to collect and generate data on all existing policy dimensions and subsequently provide a comparative analysis of immigrants’ labor market integration in industrialized countries."

Migration policy is one of the fields least scrutinized in the Arab world. Responding to international economic trends, policy makers, social partners, and civil society players in Jordan and Lebanon have come to the realization that certain labour market bottlenecks can only be overcome by bringing in foreign workers. This has led to a significant immigration of laborers from a wide variety of countries and forced all relevant participants in the policy making process to renew their interest in coordinated temporary labour migration schemes. Both in Jordan and Lebanon, experts and policy makers alike see opportunities in these schemes that can help them meet the changing demands in their labour markets without permanently adding to their populations and labour forces. In the countries of origin, reciprocally, temporary labour migration schemes are intended to allow governments to alleviate pressures on their labour markets in the short and medium-term, and also let them reap the benefits of migration, through remittances and skill acquisition. In this study the authors will consider, based on a tripartite approach, whether the interests of employers and workers organizations coincide with those of governments in designing and implementing temporary migration schemes. The internationally codified rights of migrant workers to equality and non-discrimination and to their integration into societies and workplaces will be compared to the realities on the ground in Lebanon and Jordan. Have the limited provisions for protecting employees’ rights and a lack of their integration into the host societies negatively affected policy goals, closely linked to social cohesion? Does the effective protection of migrant workers contradict the needs of the indigenous populations in Lebanon and Jordan in general? Can the empowerment of the migrants themselves and their inclusion into the tripartite decision making process facilitate migration policy reform? Which social players can – and have – step in if the state and social partners neglect those roles foreseen for them by the international organizations dealing primarily with migrant labour, first and foremost the International Labour Organization (ILO)?

This project is one of six projects within the six year programme: The Challenges of Polarization on the Swedish Labour Market at the Department of Sociology and Work Science funded by the Swedish Research Council for Health, Working Life and Welfare, Forte. This project addresses the integration of migrants and minorities into the Swedish labour market by assessing the extent, implications and experiences of ethnic polarisation across different dimensions; that is, between majority and minority populations (first and second generations); and the diversity within the migrant workforce and its distribution across the occupational structure. Classical migration theory holds that migrants are recruited to perform jobs in the lower sections of the labour market that native workers avoid (Piore 1979; Massey et al. 1998). This also applies to Sweden, where many migrants are employed in low-wage and insecure employment (Johansson & Vingård, 2012). Comparisons of Western Europe countries have show that labour markets are polarised because ethnic minorities do not compete on equal terms with majority populations, and experience a substantial ‘ethnic penalty’ in the second generation (Heath & Cheung 2007; Johnson 2010). Given such patterns, important question arise concerning the prospects of migrants (both first and second generations) to transition into better-paid segments of the labour market and what strategies migrants develop to reduce the impact of discrimination (Modood 2015; Elgenius 2017). Sweden is considered one of the most gendered labour markets in the world (Charles & Grusky 2004) and intersections of ethnicity and gender need be considered as a ‘double disadvantage’ (Bradley & Healy 2008). However, the tendency towards polarisation within the migrant workforce is another focus for this project as diversity-within is visible with an increasing share of highly skilled migrants in Sweden; for example, computing professionals from India. Thus, the fact that migrant groups are unevenly distributed across the occupational structure requires further attention. For instance, the largest share of migrants within the construction sector is from Eastern Europe, whereas Indian nationals are concentrated in the IT sector (Migrationsverket). This project will critically appraise migrants’ occupational status, prospects and experiences in the Swedish labour market by focusing on diversity within the migrant workforce and the experiences of ethnic penalties in first and second generations (see, e.g., Elgenius 2011, 2017; Frank 2012, 2014; Omanović 2009, 2013, Knights and Omanović 2016).

Attracting and retaining migrants can have many benefits for the host country and its economy, for example to mitigate skills shortages. Regulating immigration may prevent several negative consequences of a shrinking and ageing population. However, research and policy often focus on the highly skilled or so-called knowledge migrants (kennismigranten) as a source of human capital, which can increase innovation and a country’s competitiveness. A group of labour migrants that receives significantly less attention from research and policy, are the medium-skilled migrant workers. Although it makes up a significant share of the migrant population, this group is rarely supported by specific migration policies. Therefore, in this report we would like to answer the following central research question: What is known in available literature about the opportunities and limitations of filling labour shortages through labour migration, especially in the middle segment of the labour market?