Labour market integration of immigrants and their children: Developing, activating and using skills

Abstract

Immigrants now account for more than 115 million people in the OECD, which represents almost 10% of the total population. Their share has increased in virtually all OECD countries over the past decade, and children of immigrants are also entering the labour market in growing numbers. Against this backdrop, the integration of immigrants and their offspring has become a prime policy objective for OECD countries, and a vast array of different integration policies have been adopted over the past fifteen years. Among the various challenges for integration, perhaps the most important one is releasing the full skills potential of immigrants and their offspring. Skills of immigrants that are not used represent a wasted resource at a time when economies are increasingly less able to afford such waste, and may also impact negatively on social cohesion.The chapter takes stock of the broad issues involved in the labour market integration of immigrants and their offspring from a human capital perspective, as well as of the policies at hand to free their full skills potential through the identification and utilisation, the activation, and the development of their skills. It builds on the extensive work of the OECD on integration issues, together with new evidence. The chapter first identifies the main issues involved, followed by a discussion of the instruments and policies in OECD countries along the three pillars identified by the OECD Skills Strategy -namely using, developing and activating skills.The statistical data for Israel are supplied by and under the responsibility of the relevant Israeli authorities. The use of such data by the OECD is without prejudice to the status of the Golan Heights, East Jerusalem and Israeli settlements in the West Bank under the terms of international law.

Early Life Family Care for and With Migrants: The Development of a Transcultural Transition Mentoring Competence Profile

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Making Integration Work: Assessment and Recognition of Foreign Qualifications

“…Recognition improves the labour market prospects of immigrants, regardless of their migration category, field of expertise, or the origin of their degree (Damos de Matos and Liebig and Huddleston, 2014;Brücker et al, 2015). Data from selected European OECD countries suggest that immigrants who obtained formal recognition are more often employed and work in better jobs than their peers whose applications were not successful, or the large majority of migrants who never underwent an assessment process in the first place.…”