"Än vandrar jag från land till land" : -en studie om bristande arbetsmarknadsintegration i en mellanstor stad i södra Sverige

Sammanfattning: English title: “I still wander from country to country” The essay is about newly arrived immigrants, academics from countries outside Europe and their integration at the Swedish labour market. The purpose of this essay is to increase knowledge about non-European academic’s abilities and needs, and at the same time bring better understanding about how this group can contribute to the labour market. The essay is based on qualitative semi-structured research and interviews with ten unemployed individuals living in a medium-size city in south Sweden. The theoretical starting points are: postcolonial theory, Antonovsky’s KASAM theory and Bourdieu’s theoretical concept named social capital. The essay´s main conclusions are: This group of immigrants is facing several obstacles that aggravates their integration into Swedish labour market such as discrimination, ethnic hierarchy, stereotypes, contacts with Swedes and language barriers. Lack of network, informational contacts and communication with natives Swedes are some of challenges for the integration into the Swedish society. One of the causes that prolongs establishment in the labour market for unemployed immigrant’s is the long process of the Swedish school system for new arrivals which takes long time and isn’t combined with internship. The employers often undervalue and outlook foreign-born people’s education and this is a reason why some academics starts to look for jobs which they are overqualified for. Informants experiences of discrimination in the Swedish labour market are often related to their ethnicity and foreign name which is, according to the informants, the main reason why they don’t meet a Swedish employer. Overall there is a big dissatisfaction with Arbetsförmedlingen that doesn’t have working structure to offer internship or job to the new arrival non-European academic’s in the early phase of the integration process.