SRRD 2018_03.pdf (827.05 kB)
Who Does It and Where? Economic integration of refugees in France and Sweden
preprint
posted on 2018-01-19, 18:00 authored by Elena Ambrosetti, Andrea Fuentes MontiAndrea Fuentes Monti, Eleonora MussinoEleonora MussinoAbstract: This paper assesses migrant economic
integration in Sweden and France using two national-level surveys specifically
aimed at studying the living conditions of migrants. The “Trajectoire et
Origines” survey of 2008-2009 collects information on immigrants and their
descendants in France. The 2010 “Level of Living Survey for Foreign Born
Persons and their Children” includes information on resident immigrants in
Sweden. Through a set of logistic regression analysis based on these two
datasets, we investigate the factors that most influence the economic
integration of immigrants in both countries. The analytical focus is the
comparison of refugees to economic and other non-economic immigrants, including
both individual and contextual characteristics. Economic integration is
measured both as labour market attachment and experienced economic
difficulties. The results show that after controlling for sociodemographic and
contextual characteristics there are not significant differences in the labour
market participation between refugees and other categories of immigrants. Only
in France female refugees do significantly worse in the labour market than
their labour migrant counterparts but also better compared to family migrants.
For the experience of economic difficulties, we found that in France, refugees
experience more economic difficulties compared to families and student migrants
while in Sweden, refugees experience more economic difficulties only compared
to work migrants and women who do not need any residence permit. In terms of
host country contexts, we found that contextual factors increase the
differences between countries. However, the individual characteristics
contribute to ameliorate these differences.