Highly Skilled Refugees in Sweden: Labour Market and Workplace Experiences

Ioanna Blasko, Uppsala University

Sweden is one of the countries in Europe that received the highest number of refugees per capita following the increased forced migration inflow in 2015. While many studies focus on refugees as a homogenous group, there are many differences within the refugee population, such as educational level, which can influence the paths to employment in the new country of residence. This presentation focuses on highly skilled refugee engineers in Sweden – people who upon arrival already had a minimum three year engineering education – and their experienced on the labour market and at the workplace. This helps contextualise and give background to the so-called “refugee gap” which has been found in previous quantitative studies showing that refugees take longer than the host population as well as other migrant groups to gain employment. The study comprises 51 semi-structured interviews with refugee engineers and integration initiatives in Sweden, as well as two job observations at engineering workplaces where highly skilled refugees work. The results showcase what opportunities and obstacles they face when searching for a job and entering a workplace for the first time in Sweden, bringing up how individual as well as institutional factors affect their labour market and workplace trajectories.

Keywords: Migrant Populations and Refugees, International Migration, Inequality, Disadvantage and Discrimination, Qualitative data/methods/approaches

See extended abstract.