Labour market integration of young refugees and asylum seekers: a look at perceived barriers and resources

ABSTRACT

Immigration has been increasing at a significant rate over the past decades. The labour market integration of immigrants—especially of young refugees and asylum seekers—is a major challenge for not only the host country but also the immigrants themselves. This study is based on narrative career counselling, specifically the “journey of life” narrative metaphor; it is aimed at exploring the barriers and resources that 14 refugees and asylum seekers (ages 19–25) enrolled in a state integration programme in the French-speaking part of Switzerland perceive in their quest for labour market integration. The results show that language proficiency is the main barrier and that they can rely on a host of resources to achieve sustainable labour market integration.

KEYWORDS:

• Refugees
• asylum seekers
• resources and barriers
• labour market integration
• narrative career counselling

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Swiss National Science Foundation: [Grant Number 51NF40-185901].

Notes on contributors

Shagini Udayar

Shagini Udayar is a doctoral student in career counselling at the Institute of Psychology of the University of Lausanne. As part of her thesis, she analyses the impact of life events on career sustainability and how these events interact with personal resources (both cognitive and emotional) to predict different professional trajectories. She is also interested in the career construction of refugees and asylum seekers and the field of emotional intelligence.

Laurence Fedrigo

Laurence Fedrigo is a doctoral student at the Institute of Psychology of the University of Lausanne, where she works on the access to decent work of refugees, asylum seekers and provisionally admitted persons in Switzerland, also focusing on their meaning of work.

Federico Durante

Federico Durante is working as a career counsellor since 1998. He works mainly with young adult in transition and/or refugees and asylum seekers. At the same time, he is also a senior lecturer at the Institute of Psychology of the University of Lausanne. He supervises the field practice of master's students in career counselling.

Eva Clot-Siegrist

Eva Clot-Siegrist is a senior lecturer at the Institute of Psychology of the University of Lausanne. She supervises the field practice of master's students in career counselling. Her areas of interest include biographical narratives and career and life paths, sense of well-being at work, and transitions and processes of identity building.

Jonas Masdonati

Jonas Masdonati is a professor at the Institute of Psychology, University of Lausanne. He is responsible for the counselling and career guidance programs. His research focuses on school and vocational transitions, career reorientations, building identity in the workplace, integration and vocational training, values and the relationship to work, and the processes and effects of career counselling.