Practices of organizing migrants' integration into the European labour market

• Published date: 01 July 2022
• Author: Vedran Omanović,Emre Tarim,Lotte Holck
• Date: 01 July 2022
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/emre.12533

SPECIAL ISSUE ARTICLE

Practices of organizing migrants’integration into the European

labour market

Vedran Omanovi

c

1

| Emre Tarim

2

| Lotte Holck

3

1

School of Business, Economics and Law,

Gothenburg University, Gothenburg, Sweden

2

Lancaster University Management School,

Lancaster, UK

3

Copenhagen Business School, Frederiksberg,

Denmark

Correspondence

Vedran Omanovi

c, School of Business,

Economics and Law, Gothenburg University,

Gothenburg, Sweden.

Email: vedran.omanovic@handels.gu.se

Abstract

Organizational practices of migrants’labour market integration have by and

large been overlooked in favour of research on societal-level/macrolevel fac-

tors, policies, rules and regulations and their impacts on migrants’positions

and perspectives on the labour market in the host country. Organizations are

conceptualized as key sites that can open doors for meaningful employment

and career progression or close them by way of producing inequalities. This

change of focus, which we advocate, has a potential to not only increase our

understanding of how migrants’labour market integration is organized and

practiced at the organizational level, but also shed light on migrants’own

mobilizations and agency in these processes. Research on organizational prac-

tices of workplace integration of migrants is also relevant as economic and

political migration is still high on the agenda in many European countries, par-

ticularly since the so-called ‘refugee crisis’in 2015, when hundreds of thou-

sands of refugees made their way to Europe. Unfortunately, the war in

Ukraine in 2022 reminds us of the heightened importance of this issue. In this

article, we start by outlining what has motivated this Special Section. Next, we

briefly review the relevant literature that directly or indirectly focuses on prac-

tices of organizing migrants’labour market integration in European host coun-

tries. We then introduce the two contributions to this Special Section,

presenting and discussing their main lines of reasoning and how each of them

answer our call for papers. We conclude by elaborating what is, from our point

of view, still missing and suggest possible avenues for future research.

KEYWORDS

employment, European labour market, labour market, migrant voices and agency, migrants,

migrants savings and investments, organizational inequality, organizational practices

INTRODUCTION

Many European countries are experiencing considerable

flows of both economic and political migrants, many of

whom are forcibly displaced as a result of war and

human rights violations (UNHCR, 2019). This is

nonetheless coupled with steadily high unemployment

levels among migrants and especially refugees in Europe.

Ironically, there still exists a pressing need for migrant

labour caused by the demographic challenges of an aging

population and a shrinking volume of younger people

entering the labour market in European countries. All

these dynamics make migrants’labour market integra-

tion a pressing question (Bucken-Knapp et al., 2020;De

Lange et al., 2014; Hirst et al., 2021; Konle-Seidl &

Bolits, 2016).

Considerable and steady flows of migrants and in par-

ticular refugee/asylum seekers in host European countries

are often construed by populists as strains, burdens and

problems on European economies, labour markets and

welfare systems (Wodak, 2015), despite empirical

evidence to the contrary (Manthei, 2021; Soroka

et al., 2016). These perceptions worsen as host country

economies and labour markets suffer from national

and/or international economic cycles (Knocke, 2000).

For instance, Vassilopoulou et al. (2019) elaborate how

economic and financial crises affect human and social

rights and diversity gains in the workplace, noting the

DOI: 10.1111/emre.12533

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