Balkan refugees in Sweden - a study on labour market assimilation

Sammanfattning: This study focuses on annual earnings assimilation and the employment probability, described as the assimilation of annual earnings and the extent of which available workers are being used respectively (in this case workers originating from a certain country) of immigrants arriving from former Yugoslavia, i.e. Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia and Croatia, to Sweden during the Yugoslav wars occurring in the 1990s. Previous research made on immigrants, and in this case focusing on refugees, brings some empirical standpoints; initial annual earnings of refugees are lower than those of labour-market immigrants and natives, higher education level as well as geographic closeness and cultural similarities between source country and host country makes the transition and assimilation easier for immigrants. Immigrants incur a net-cost on public sector finances during their first years in host country, but that it diminishes as years since migration increases. These longitudinal regressions were made for two different cohorts and genders separately. The cohorts included individuals in ages 20-64 years of age from countries previously being a part of former Yugoslav that arrived in Sweden between the years of 1990 and 1995, and between 1996 and 1999. These cohorts are being studied in three cross-sections, 1990, 1995 and 1999. A brief history of the Yugoslav wars will also be presented in this thesis. Our results show that the refugees from former Yugoslavia had a positive assimilation in to the Swedish labour market, and our results are in line with previous theory regarding labour market assimilation. Moreover, men without university education as well as women with university education assimilate faster in comparison to their corresponding opposites in regards of educational level. However, both genders, regardless of educational level, assimilated. This confirms some of the theory presented in this thesis.