‘Back to work’—factors facilitating migrants’ re-entry into their previous vocations

ABSTRACT

This article focuses on ‘successful migrants’, who have succeeded in gaining employment in Sweden in their previous vocational area. The aim is to describe factors on various levels – individual, organisational and national – that have facilitated migrants’ way back to work as well as their inclusion at workplaces. Twenty migrants and five employers/mentors were interviewed. The overarching theme of facilitating factors concerns language proficiency, individual factors, enabling frameworks, and supporting persons and networks. The migrants’ own ambitions and motivations, and the support they got in interpersonal encounters were especially emphasised as important. In the migrants’ narratives, a central theme in relation to the theoretical perspective was how to deal with threats to their social and professional identity in the new country. For them, maintaining a positive self-image was key to the strength needed to fight for a return to working life. People in the environment were important in this struggle – for positioning them as competent persons and for offering support.

KEYWORDS:

• Migrants
• employment
• facilitating factors
• identity

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Forte [Beslutnr: 310000556].

Notes on contributors

Eva Eliasson

Eva Eliasson is a Senior Lecturer in Educational Science in the Department of Education, Stockholm University. Her research interests mainly concern vocational and teacher knowledge, especially in health care education, and the interplay between power relations and vocational knowledge. Her current research concerns how migrants in Sweden gain access to their previous vocation.

Marianne Teräs

Marianne Teräs is a Professor in the Department of Education, Stockholm University, Sweden. Before joining Stockholm University (2016) she worked as a researcher and a lecturer at the University of Helsinki. Her research mainly focuses on vocational and professional learning, immigration and interculturality. She is currently leading a research project called ‘Integration and Inclusion of Migrants in and through Vocation and Work’.

Ali Osman

Ali Osman is an Associate Professor in the Department of Education, Stockholm University, Sweden. His research interests are migration, recognition of prior learning, transition between different educational systems and working life.