| 1. |
- Aamodt Bentsen, Beint Magnus
(författare)
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Intergroup Contact and Negative Attitudes Towards Immigrants Among Youth in Sweden : Individual and Contextual Factors
- 2022
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Ingår i: Journal of International Migration and Integration. - : Springer. - 1488-3473 .- 1874-6365. ; 23, s. 243-266
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Negative attitudes towards out-groups have been of academic interest for many years — and even more so with the increased levels of migration to European countries in recent years. Building on insights from intergroup contact theory, this paper seeks to extend our knowledge of the association between contact and negative attitudes toward immigrants among youth in Sweden. Multiple regression analysis and fixed effects models are used to analyze a large, high-quality dataset on Swedish adolescents based on representative survey information, complemented with extensive registry data and official statistics. Our objective is to measure contact on different levels in order to better understand the importance of these different contact variables’ associations with negative attitudes. The results of the analysis indicate that high-quality contact in the form of friendship is associated with a reduction in negative attitudes among Swedish adolescents, even after controlling for background variables. Superficial forms of contact — measured on the school level — are, on the other hand, associated with an increase in negative attitudes.
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| 2. |
- Alaraj, Hala, et al.
(författare)
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Internship as a Mean for Integration. A Critical Study
- 2019
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Ingår i: Journal of International Migration and Integration. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 1488-3473 .- 1874-6365. ; 20:2, s. 323-340
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Creating internships for newly arrived refugees and immigrants is a well-established part of the Swedish national integration program and is seen as a strategy to speed up immigrants’ establishment process. One common belief is that the workplace is expected to give the newly arrived trainee necessary language training, as well as contextual and cultural knowledge. Here, the transferring direction of knowledge is from the Swedish workplace to the receiving newly arrived trainee. However, it is rarely discussed whether the trainee will bring valuable knowledge to the organization, or what the relational aspects of the internship should look like. In this paper, we develop the analysis of internships as a mean for integration in Sweden, by analyzing what trainees and their supervisors experience in terms of knowledge transfer and development. By interviewing trainees (4) and supervisors (5), the aim of this paper is to discuss ideas and practices in an internship program for refugees that The University of Gothenburg started in 2015. The interviews focus on the structural and organizational level, though individual experiences also play a central role. Theoretically, the analysis is interdisciplinary and a cross-cut between organizational theory and cultural studies, especially the work of Sara Ahmed. Our results show that the trainee is seen both as a resource and as someone who represents multiculturalism, hospitality, and the altruism of the university and its employees. The trainee is expected not only to integrate in a productive way, but also to stand out in non-productive areas, such as the social context.
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| 3. |
- Andersson Joona, Pernilla, 1977-, et al.
(författare)
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Being Employed by a Co-national: A Cul-de-sac or a Short Cut to the Main Road of the Labour Market?
- 2012
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Ingår i: Journal of International Migration and Integration. - : Springer Science+Business Media B.V.. - 1488-3473 .- 1874-6365. ; 13:1, s. 99-120
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This paper analyses the impact of working in an ethnic economy on subsequent labour market performance for newly arrived immigrants. Is it a short cut to the labour market or does it lock immigrants into low income jobs? Working in an ethnic economy is defined as being employed by a self-employed co-national. The comparison group is a matched sample of newly arrived immigrants who were without employment during the same period. Swedish panel data for the period 1998–2005 are used, and the sample is restricted to male immigrants, 20–55 years of age. Using propensity score matching, we find that immigrants who were employed by self-employed co-nationals are more likely to be employed in the near future, but that the types of employment they have are associated with lower incomes. Many continue to be employed by self-employed co-nationals or become self-employed themselves.
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| 4. |
- Aslan, Pinar, Fil. Dr. 1986-, et al.
(författare)
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The Work Environment of Immigrant Employees in Sweden—a Systematic Review
- 2022
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Ingår i: Journal of International Migration and Integration. - : Springer. - 1488-3473 .- 1874-6365. ; 23:4, s. 2235-2268
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The aim of this systematic review was to summarize and synthesize research results focusing on the work environment of employees with an immigrant background in Sweden. We focus on the main conditions identified in the working environment of immigrant employees and how these conditions may affect their health and well-being. The concept of “minority stress” and the attachment theory are used to understand and interpret the findings. We systematically searched for literature published between the years of 1990 and 2020 in four databases, Web of Science, PubMed, SocIndex, and Academic Search Elite. We started the selection process by reading title and abstracts, then proceeded to read a selection of full-text studies and eliminated those that did not fulfil the inclusion criteria. We did a quality assessment on the full-text studies based on the MMAT-tool, and then performed a narrative synthesis of the results. The results show that immigrants experience several stressors in their work environment, including physical, psychological, and social risks. These risks are, among other things, associated with the nature of the jobs that immigrants are overrepresented in, with minority-related stressors such as discrimination, harassment, and threats on the basis of ethnic background, and with the lack of social support from managers and colleagues. Results also highlight beneficial factors in the immigrants’ working environment and show the importance of a supportive, inclusive, and empowering management. Our main conclusion is that Swedish workplaces need to introduce more active measures to raise awareness of and combat workplace discrimination, work harder to promote inclusion at the workplace, and eliminate physical, psychological, and social health hazards specific to immigrant employees. The leadership and management have an important role to play here, as does the employees’ trade unions and its special functions.
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| 5. |
- Barker-Ruchti, Natalie, 1971-, et al.
(författare)
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Second Generation Immigrant Girls’ Negotiations of Cultural Proximity in Switzerland : A Foucauldian Reading
- 2015
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Ingår i: Journal of International Migration and Integration. - : Springer. - 1488-3473 .- 1874-6365. ; 16:4, s. 1213-1229
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Although overtly racist political discourse in Switzerland has receded, culturalist discourses continue to construct ideal immigrants. Policies define immigrants in terms of “cultural proximity” and contain an implicit distinction between “distant” and “proximal” foreigners. Culturally, distant immigrants have been stereotyped as aggressive and/or lacking interest in education and professional success and while scholars have examined immigrants from Switzerland’s “culturally-near” regions, the experiences of second generation immigrant populations from perceived culturally distant countries have largely escaped attention. Knowledge about girls and women is particularly scarce. Against this backdrop, this paper provides an examination of how six teenage girls living in a German-speaking Swiss city negotiate their perceived cultural distance. By combining interview material with elements of Foucauldian theory, the paper provides insight into (1) the diasporic experiences of girls with second generation immigration backgrounds and (2) the operation and influence of culturalist discourses. Foucault’s notion of dispositive—the discourses, institutions, laws, and scientific findings that, through various means of distribution (e.g., media texts, policies, education curricula), act as an apparatus that constructs and supports normative ideals—provides a generative analytic tool for this task. The analysis suggests that the ways girls learn to understand their social worlds is a collective process of discipline that places mechanisms of social control within each individual. This process involves the homogenisation and marginalisation of the immigrant population and is circular in nature in that the girls strengthen and maintain the power of existing culturalist knowledge that works negatively on them. The paper concludes with a consideration of how this situation might be challenged.
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| 6. |
- Bevelander, Pieter, et al.
(författare)
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Citizenship, co-ethnic populations and employment probabilities of immigrants in Sweden
- 2012
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Ingår i: Journal of International Migration and Integration. - : Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology/Springer Verlag. - 1488-3473 .- 1874-6365. ; 13:2, s. 203-222
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Over the last decades, Sweden has liberalized its citizenship policy by reducing the required number of years of residency to 5 years for foreign citizens and only 2 years for Nordic citizens. Dual citizenship has been allowed since 2001. During the same period, immigration patterns by country of birth changed substantially, with an increasing number of immigrants arriving from non-western countries. Furthermore, immigrants were settling in larger cities as opposed to smaller towns as was the case before. Interestingly, the employment integration of immigrants has declined gradually, and in 2006, the employment rate for foreign-born individuals is substantially lower compared with the native-born. The aim of this paper is to explore the link between citizenship and employment probabilities for immigrants in Sweden, controlling for a range of demographic, human capital, and municipal characteristics such as city and co-ethnic population size. The information we employ for this analysis consists of register data on the whole population of Sweden held by Statistics Sweden for the year 2006. The basic register, STATIV, includes demographic, socio-economic, and immigrant specific information. In this paper, we used instrumental variable regression to examine the “clean” impact of citizenship acquisition and the size of the co-immigrant population on the probability of being employed. In contrast to Scott (2008), we find that citizenship acquisition has a positive impact for a number of immigrant groups. This is particularly the case for non-EU/non-North American immigrants. In terms of intake class, refugees appear to experience substantial gains from citizenship acquisition (this is not, however, the case for immigrants entering as family class). We find that the impact of the co-immigrant population is particularly important for immigrants from Asia and Africa. These are also the countries that have the lowest employment rate.
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| 7. |
- Bevelander, Pieter
(författare)
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Voting participation of immigrants in Sweden : a Cohort Analysis of the 2002, 2006 and 2010 Elections
- 2015
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Ingår i: Journal of International Migration and Integration. - : Springer. - 1488-3473 .- 1874-6365. ; 15:1, s. 61-80
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Three decades ago, Sweden extended municipal and provincial voting privileges to non-citizen residents on the grounds that this would increase political influence, interest and self-esteem among this group of immigrants. Three decades later, in the political and public debate, electoral participation on the part of immigrants is perceived as being substantially lower than for native-born citizens. As a result, questions have arisen regarding the degree to which this may be symptomatic of a larger integration issue. The aim of this paper is to explore the determinants of voting in municipal elections for immigrants—both naturalised and non-citizens, in Sweden, by controlling for a number of socio-economic and demographic and immigrant specific characteristics. More specifically, using cohort analysis, the idea is to study the impact of time spent in the country on the voting behaviour of immigrants, foreign citizens and naturalised over time. Two unique sets of data were used in the research. The 2002, 2006 and 2010 electoral surveys (participation study) all contain information about individual electoral participation in municipal elections. This information is matched to registry data from Statistics Sweden, which also contains information relating to every Swedish resident. From these two sources of information, a database is created that matches voting to individual characteristics. This study analyses 60 thousand immigrants of which 43 thousand are non-citizens. After controlling for demographic and socioeconomic characteristics, the results show that the acquisition of citizenship makes a real difference in the voting odds. Immigrants who obtain citizenship are far more likely to vote than those who do not. Country of birth also makes a difference: Compared to immigrants from the Nordic countries, Europeans and North American immigrants are equal or less likely to vote, whereas immigrants from Asia, Africa and Latin America are more likely to vote. Finally, immigrants’ odds of voting increase as their length of stay in the country does.
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| 8. |
- Björnsson, Davíð Freyr, et al.
(författare)
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Discrimination in the Housing Market as an Impediment to European Labour Force Integration : the Case of Iceland
- 2018
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Ingår i: Journal of International Migration and Integration. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 1488-3473 .- 1874-6365. ; 19:3, s. 829-847
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Labour market integration, and the free movement of people, has been a key feature of the European Economic Area (EEA). In fact, the EEA states that the free movement of people is “perhaps the most important right for individuals, as it gives citizens of the 31 EEA countries the opportunity to live, work, establish business and study in any of these countries.” However, unless citizens within the EEA are granted equal possibilities, the free movement will be of less value. This paper sets out to study the role of the rental housing market, in particular from the perspective of equal possibilities between majority (domestic) and minority (foreign) groups in Iceland. With the largest minority group of the Icelandic workforce being Polish, it is important from an integration perspective to study potential differences between native and Polish workers in possibilities to enter the rental housing market. By conducting an Internet field experiment, we show that Polish men in fact face a more difficult situation on the rental housing market than others, which serves as an impediment to the free flow of labour for this group of immigrants.
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| 9. |
- Bonfanti, Sara
(författare)
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'new rules for labour immigration' : delving into the 2008 Swedish reform of labour migration and its effects on migrants' well-being
- 2014
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Ingår i: Journal of International Migration and Integration. - : Springer Nature. - 1488-3473 .- 1874-6365. ; 15:3, s. 371-386
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- I have investigated the nature of the transformation triggered by the reform of labour mobility entitled 'New Rules for Labour Immigration', introduced in Sweden in 2008, and its impact on migrants' well-being. By applying the methodology of the 'What's the problem represented to be?' approach (Bacchi 2009), I show that the problem at which the reform was aimed is represented as a shortage of skills and labour. I argue that such a representation and the silences it invokes are underpinned by the paradigms of managed migration and of neoliberalism, thus marking a discontinuity in the political rhetoric of universalism which had been endorsed by Sweden since the beginning of the 1970s. I contend that such a formulation of the problem assumes and entails a conceptualisation of migrants as factors of production. This formulation stands in sharp opposition to the one advanced by the Human Development and Capability Approach to migration (UNDP 2009) which recognises migrants as human beings, endowed with capabilities, aspirations, and agency. Such reification of migrants implies that the reform regulates the stay of immigrants in Sweden with the purpose of maximising their contribution to Swedish economic growth, thus putting them in a vulnerable position which is likely to reduce their capability for work (Bonvin 2009).
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| 10. |
- Dahlstedt, Inge
(författare)
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Occupational Match : Over- and Undereducation Among Immigrants in the Swedish Labor Market
- 2011
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Ingår i: Journal of International Migration and Integration. - : Springer. - 1488-3473 .- 1874-6365. ; 12, s. 349-367
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The aim of this article is to study the differences in the match/mismatch of education and job level as well as the differences between the native and immigrant population in the occupational match. A distinction is made between educational levels and general and vocational education. A sample consisting of native Swedes and nine immigrant groups, based on register data, was selected for analysis. Descriptive statistics are presented and analyzed as well as logistic regression analysis controlling for basic human capital and immigrant specific variables. The main conclusions of the article are that there are considerable differences between vocational and general education in the match/mismatch, as well as differences between natives and immigrants. The vocationally educated population shows a higher match compared to the generally educated, but the generally educated population shows a higher proportion of undereducated individuals compared to the vocationally educated population. Although there are considerable differences between the studied immigrant groups, the general conclusion is that the immigrated population shows a lower match between educational level and skills level of the job as well as a higher level of overeducation compared to the native population.
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