Differences in Labour Market Integration of Humanitarian Migrants In European Countries

There is insufficient research on the question: why are refugees better integrated in some countries than in others? In addition, there are few comparative studies describing differences in integration outcomes of humanitarian migrants. This paper investigates economic integration across 8 European countries, in the year 2008, through the indicators of employment, quality of jobs and overqualification. No country demonstrated a very high level of economic integration of humanitarian migrants. In Greece their employment opportunities are almost equal to those of natives, but the quality of employment and overqualification rates are much worse. On the contrary, in the UK, the chances of getting a ‘good’ job and rates of skill mismatch are similar, but the probability of humanitarian migrants finding employment is much lower. Other countries revealed moderate disadvantage of refugees in the labour market, with Norway as a positive outlier. The reasons for these disparities may lie in the variations between types of welfare states, but further research is needed.