Is Discrimination an Issue?
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EUMARGINS Policy brief nr 3 Deliverable 4 April 2010 www.ibs.ee Is discrimination Contributor Kristina Kallas, an issue? Institute of Baltic Studies Young immigrants in labour market In summary: in seven European countries 1. Governments in all seven countries Resume: EUMARGIN’s third policy brief looks at discrimination need to improve monitoring as a factor of exclusion of young adult immigrants in labour discrimination by employers markets in seven European countries: Estonia, Spain, France, through field experiments and Italy, Sweden, United Kingdom and Norway. Several observations annual surveys. emerge from the analysis. First, unemployment rates are high 2. Anti-discrimination policy for young people in all seven countries, however, for immigrant framework needs to be made youth, they are even higher. Unemployment is especially high more visible to immigrant youth for so called visible minorities such as Magrebians in France; together with increasing the Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi in Britain; Sub-Saharan awareness about their rights. Africans in Spain and Italy; and non-European minorities in Sweden and Norway. Second, although the situation improves for 3. EU should encourage second-generation immigrant youth, their labour market access benchmarking and best practice still lags behind of that of nationals of given country. Second exchange among national agents generation immigrant youth also fare worse in competition for in the field of labour market higher-level occupational positions. However, in some countries, discrimination with special focus namely UK and Sweden, once in the market, second generation on second generation young immigrants’ occupational attainment more often than not is in immigrants. par with nationals. Third, while there may be various sources of ethnic discrepancies in labour market for first generation immigrants such as low portability of human capital (or as is the case for language for most countries) and lack of social networks. However, it is more difficult to explain why second generation immigrant youth still face these disadvantages. Through analysing second generation immigrant youth’s performance in the labour market we thus approach the question whether there is employer discrimination on the grounds of ethnic origin in countries under study. Information & contact Based on these arguments a set of general recommendations EUMARGINS Department of Sociology and Human Geography can be made. First, governments in all seven countries need to University of Oslo improve monitoring discrimination by employers through field Post Box 1096 Blindern, N-0317 Oslo, NORWAY experiments and annual surveys. Second, anti-discrimination Coordinator Katrine Fangen: (+47) 22 85 52 44 / 91 66 51 12 policy framework that is already in place needs to be made Administration Officer more visible to immigrant youth together with increasing the Kirsten Fossan: (+47) 22 85 52 13 / 93 66 30 71 awareness about their rights. And last but not least, EU should encourage benchmarking and best practice exchange among [email protected] national agents in the field of labour market discrimination www.iss.uio.no/forskning/eumargins with special focus on second generation young immigrants. 7th Framework Programme, Collaborative Small or Medium-Scale Focused Research Project GRANT AGREEMENT NO. 217524 Project co-funded by the European Commission within the Seventh Framework Programme (2007-2014) Policy Brief no 3. EUMARGINS Insitute of Baltic Studies Introduction of young adult immigrants’ in labour market relying on EUMARGINS national context reports and national For a young person with immigrant background, either and transnational comparative surveys. Additionally, first or second generation, access to education and the brief looks at national policies of EUMAGINS’s labour market are the most important arenas in which countries directed at fighting against this discrimination. young adults have to establish themselves as active The author recognises that labour market challenges social actors in society. Similarly, for the state, young differ between countries based on the differences in immigrants’ participation in labour market is one of immigration history and composition of immigrant the most important indicators of successes or failures population in these countries. These differences make of country’s integration policy. For EU Member States, the presentation of comparative analysis and consequent effective integration of immigrants into the labour policy recommendations a complicated task and it is not market constitutes an important contribution to reaching the aim of this brief to delve into these tasks. It rather the Lisbon targets for jobs and growth. However, in aims at highlighting the differences and commonalities many European countries young people with immigrant that young adult immigrants face in these different background tend to have higher unemployment rates countries and if possible refer to best practice cases and are more likely to be employed in jobs of lower in fighting labour market discrimination. quality and pay compared to the nationals. Even more, in majority of countries that were analysed for this brief (with the exception of Italy and UK) immigrant Difficulties of transnational youth face a double disadvantage: the European youth comparative analysis unemployment rate is more than double that of the overall working-age population and the unemployment Comparison of these seven countries is a difficult task rate for immigrant youth is significantly higher again. as there are important differences between the labour market organisation and welfare state type. For example, Although the situation improves for second-generation in Southern European countries of Italy and Spain immigrant youth their job-access rates are still below there are higher levels of illegal and undocumented that of nationals of given country. These disadvantages immigration while again in Sweden large bulk of recent have been explained by several factors such as lower immigrants are quota refugees. Estonia stands out from educational attainment of young immigrants, lack of the group with its rather large but unique composition human and social capital (namely language skills and of immigrant population where people categorised as citizenship of host country, knowledge of host country immigrants by the state (Soviet time settlers) resist this labour market etc), socio-economic background categorization. Additionally, differently from all other and country of origin, social context and ethnic countries under study, there are no visible minorities segregation. These factors differ to very large extent among immigrants in Estonia. among different immigrant young people groups as well as different When it comes to labour market organisation, there is evidence that in Italy and Spain migrant inclusion with immigrant national context. This diversity in explanatory factors and in into labour market occurs to a far greater extent in background tend the national contexts makes the informal sector than in Northern and Western European countries. Integration into labour market to have higher the comparative analysis of labour market integration a in Italy and Spain appears to take place in much faster unemployment rather challenging task. It is phase due to the fact that large amount of illegal and undocumented immigrants are labour migrants pulled rates and are thus not the aim of this policy brief to present comprehensive into country by such sectors of booming economy more likely to be comparative analysis of as agriculture, tourism, construction and domestic services. However, as will be discussed below, these employed in jobs labour market exclusion and inclusion but rather to look sectors are most vulnerable to cyclical nature of the of lower quality at ethnic penalties in labour market economy and thus put young immigrants at and pay compared market, especially inequalities most vulnerable situations in these labour markets. of opportunity caused by For the purpose of targeted discussion, a definition of to the nationals discrimination. a young person with immigrant background is given The aim of EUMARGINS as following: a person between the ages of 15-25 who project’s fieldwork research, among other objectives, is a first generation or second generation immigrant, is to identify and assess the degree to which young the latter meaning those born in receiving countries, adult immigrants in their attempts to access the labour but with parents born in country of origin. The author market have experienced discrimination of some sort. recognised the difficulty in conducting a meaningful This policy brief aims to supplement fieldwork data with comparative analysis of groups of people so diverse such providing a targeted discussion on the discrimination as young immigrants in different European countries. 2 Policy Brief no 3. EUMARGINS Insitute of Baltic Studies However, based on the survey data presented in this Table 1: Youth employment and unemployment rate brief, it can be argued that all these diverse groups share of nationals and foreigners in seven European countries one common trait when it comes to labour market (age group 15-24), 20081 participation – they have experienced discrimination Employment Employment Unemployment Unemployment based on their immigrant background which makes Country nationals foreigners nationals foreigners them either ethnically, racially, linguistically or religiously Estonia