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Education key to Balkan refugee integration

Refugees who came to Sweden during the Balkan war are faring comparatively well almost two decades after migration peaked in 1994, with seven out of ten employed today, although figures were gloomier for the less-educated.

Published: 18 February 2013 14:45 CET
Education key to Balkan refugee integration

The comparable figure for the overall population of immigrants that arrived in Sweden that same year is 63 percent.

“I think the results for Balkan migrants would have been even better if there had been an earlier focus on jobs and linking employment with knowledge of the Swedish language,” Integration Minister Erik Ullenhag told the TT news agency on Monday when presenting the figures.

More than 60,000 refugees came to Sweden in 1994.

Many were fleeing what Ullenhag called “the most devastating conflict in Europe since the second world war,” as he presented an overview of Balkan refugees’ current well-being on Monday.

The 1994 surge was more than double the 25,000 people who arrived here in need of shelter in 2012, many of them from Syria.

The review, put together by Statistics Sweden (Statistiska centralbyrån, SCB), examined the integration process by highlighting how an increasing proportion of refugees found their way into employment as the years went by.

After six years in Sweden, for example, 65 percent of men from the Balkans had found work. Four years later, after a decade in Sweden, that number had gone up by 9 percentage points to 74 percent.

For women from the Balkans, the hike between six years and ten years spent in Sweden was 15 percentage points – fom 51 percent to 66. Yet that figure then levelled out when looking at employment statistics after 15 years spent in the country.

For men, meanwhile, employment fell somewhat from 74 percent to 72 when comparing employment after ten and 15 years in the country.

The report also showed a clear link between education levels and employment, as the gap between Balkan refugees and workers born in Sweden widened considerably among those who had not finished their high school studies.

Only one in five of the Balkan refugees with only compulsory education were employed in 2011, while about seven out of ten people born in Sweden had found work – a 22-percentage point gap.

Employment figures for refugees with higher degrees was 79 percent compared to 91 percent among those born in Sweden, a 12-percentage point gap.

Furthermore, the report showed clearly that refugees who arrived in Sweden when they were young fared better than their older peers.

The integration minister said there needed to more focus on getting newly-arrived migrants to Sweden into the labour market quickly.

Ullenhag also said that integration efforts needed to be tailored to help migrants with lower education levels. On the other side of the education scale, he argued, Sweden needed to get better at benefiting from foreign-born academics’ experience and knowledge.

He further underlined that the discrepancies between men’s and women’s employment was noteworthy, and that integration efforts needed a clearer equality focus.

Ann Törnkvist

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WORKING IN SWEDEN

‘Reassess your cultural background’: Key tips for foreign job hunters in Sweden

Many foreigners living in Sweden want to stay in the country but struggle to find a job, despite having relevant qualifications. The Local spoke to three experts for their advice.

Published: 7 May 2024 09:00 CEST
'Reassess your cultural background': Key tips for foreign job hunters in Sweden

One international worker who found it hard to land her first job in Sweden is Amanda Herzog, who eventually founded Intertalents in Sweden with the aim of helping other immigrants find work in the country.

Herzog originally came to Sweden to study at Jönköping University and decided to stay after graduating.

“I thought it would take three months, maybe six months to find a job, I was prepared for that,” she told The Local during a live recording of our Sweden in Focus podcast held as part of Talent Talks, an afternoon of discussions at the Stockholm Business Region offices on how to attract and retain foreign workers in Sweden.

“What happened was it took over 13 months and 800 applications to actually get a job in my industry, within marketing.”

During this time, Herzog was getting multiple interviews a month, but was not getting any further in the process, despite showing her CV to Swedish recruiters for feedback.

“They were baffled as well,” she said. “By the time I landed my dream job, I had to go outside of the typical advice and experiment, and figure out how I actually can get hired. By the time I got hired, I realised what actually works isn’t really being taught.”

‘Reassess your cultural background’

Often, those who come to Herzog for help have sent out hundreds of CVs and are unsure what their next steps should be.

“My first piece of advice is to stop for a second,” she said. “Reassess your cultural background and how it fits into Sweden.”

Herzog, for example, discovered she was interviewing in “the American way”.

In the US, when asked to tell an interviewer about yourself, you’d be expected to discuss your career history – how many people have you managed? Did sales improve while you were working there? – while Swedes are more likely to want to know about you as a person and why you want to work in a specific role for their company in particular.

“A lot of people don’t know this, so imagine all of the other cultural things that they’re doing differently that they learned in their country is normal,” Herzog adds.

“Just start with learning, because it could be that you don’t need to change very much, you are qualified, you just need to connect with the Swedish way of doing things.”

 
 
 
 
 
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Networking is important

“Don’t hesitate to reach out for help and guidance,” said Laureline Vallée, an environmental engineer from France who recently found a job in Sweden after moving here nine months ago with her partner, who got a job as a postdoc at KTH Royal Institute of Technology.

“You tend to insulate yourself and consider yourself not capable, but you’re not less capable than you were in your home country, you just need to explain it to the employers.”

Another tip is to network as much as you can, Vallée said.

“Networking is really important here in Sweden, so just go for it, connect with people in the same field.”

This could be through networks like Stockholm Akademiska Forum’s Dual Career Network, which helps the accompanying partners or spouses of foreign workers find a job in Sweden, or through other connections, like neighbours, friends, or people you meet through hobbies, for example.

Make a clear profile for yourself

Another common issue is that applicants are not presenting themselves clearly to recruiters, Stockholm Akademiska Forum’s CEO, Maria Fogelström Kylberg, told The Local.

“If you’re sending 600 applications without an answer, something is wrong. We have seen many people looking for jobs working in a supermarket, and the next application is a managing director post,” she said. “You have to decide ‘who am I? What do I want to do?’, you have to profile yourself in a clear way.”

This could be editing down your CV so you’re not rejected for being overqualified, or just thinking more closely about how you present yourself to a prospective employer.

“Which of my skills are transferable? How can I be of use to this company? Not what they can do for me, but what problem can I solve with my competence?”

Job hunters should also not be afraid of applying for a job which lists Swedish as a requirement in the job description, Fogelström Kylberg said.

“Sometimes if I see an ad for a job and I have a perfect candidate in front of me, I call the company and say ‘I have a perfect candidate, but you need them to speak Swedish’, they then say ‘no, that’s not so important’. This is not so unusual at all so don’t be afraid of calling them to say ‘do I really need perfect Swedish?’”

Listen to the full interview with Maria Fogelström Kylberg, Amanda Herzog and Laureline Vallée in The Local’s Sweden in Focus Extra podcast for Membership+ subscribers.

Interview by Paul O’Mahony, article by Becky Waterton

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