Organising labour market integration support for refugees in Austria and Sweden during the Covid-19 pandemic

Abstract

This paper addresses the question of how the Covid-19 pandemic has affected the labour market integration support (LMIS) organised for refugees in Austria and Sweden, and the potential consequences of the changes unfolding. LMIS for refugees is a complex phenomenon involving actors at different interwoven levels—the macro-national level, the meso-organisational level and the micro-individual level. However, the complexities and consequences of such processes for the labour market integration of refugees have so far received limited attention. The current Covid-19 pandemic actualises the need to gain a better understanding of how integration support is organised across the different levels and how the pandemic itself impacts such support. Thus, the article seeks to understand how the pandemic affects the LMIS organised for refugees in Austria and Sweden, two countries with a large refugee population and diverging responses to the pandemic. Based on 29 semi-structured interviews and three focus group workshops, the results highlight in particular three developments: (a) a further entrenching of broader, macro-national level developments related to integration support already underway prior to the pandemic; (b) further mainstreaming of activities; and (c) increased volatility of work. Overall, the pandemic has brought to the fore the interrelation of different levels in the organising of LMIS for refugees and has contributed to a stabilisation of already ongoing activities.

Refugees and asylum seekers in informal and precarious jobs: early labour market insertion from the perspectives of professionals and volunteers

“…As shown in recent research, potential employers of RAS became more cautious in their hiring decisions after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic (Bešić et al. , 2021).…”

“…The investigation of this topic through the perspectives of CSAs reflects their important role in enabling the insertion of RAS into the labour market. Several authors show that CSAs promote and implement integration programmes for RAS (Bešić et al. , 2021; Verwiebe et al.…”

Multilevel governance, community and emergency management during the pandemic: migrants in Japan

“…Local governments may advocate with the national state for migrants' inclusion and develop their own policies for migrants as local community members (Gebhardt, 2016; Paquet, 2020; Schmidtke, 2021; Ricardo, 2020). Some studies have begun to identify a divergence between national and subnational approaches in crisis conditions (Poppelaars and Scholten, 2008; Bešić et al ., 2021; Takenoshita, 2017).…”

Left to Their Own Devices: Refugees’ Labour-Market Integration Challenges in Austria during the Covid-19 Pandemic

“…Overall, in recent decades, tools to support labour-market integration have become increasingly digitalised; however Covid-19 lockdowns additionally served as a digitalisation multiplier regarding the different social spheres, including the labourmarket integration-support measures (Bešić et al, 2021). Thus, due to specific social distancing measures during the lockdowns, the digitalisation of most communication increased the work load for migrant support organisations, but also posed additional challenges for refugees.…”

“…For the purpose of this chapter, we define refugees in a broad sense (e.g Bešić et al, 2021;Lee et al, 2020). as individuals who have fled and cannot safely return to their home country and who have either applied for or already been granted international or national protection.…”