Beyond employability: refugees’ working lives

ABSTRACT

The so-called “refugee crisis“ put forced migration to the core of Europe in a way not seen for years. Since then, a plethora of unsolved global issues which have effects on more privileged nation-states in the global North has once again came to the fore. This is especially true for the EU member states who may hardly be conceived as unitary in confronting the challenges forced migration implies for nation-states. The so-called ”receiving countries” have often set aside the humanitarian aspect of granting asylum. From their point of view, there is an increased economic interest in refugees with higher formal qualifications and work experience, who could be integrated comparatively easily into the national work forces without further investments. At the same time, such refugees would also serve national economic interests by strengthening qualified labor. Compared to earlier years of reception, several parts of Europe have thus encountered another period of numerous arriving and at least temporarily resident refugees.

KEYWORDS:

• Refugees
• everyday lives
• work

During the last years, forced migration to the core of Europe has been a major issue in the media as well as in social scientific research. Since then, a plethora of unresolved global issues which have effects on more privileged nation-states in the global North has once again come to the fore. This is especially true for the EU member states who may hardly be conceived as unitary in confronting the challenges forced migration implies for nation-states. The so-called ‘receiving countries’ have often set aside the humanitarian aspect of granting asylum. From their point of view, there is an increased economic interest in refugees with higher formal qualifications and work experience, who could be integrated comparatively easily into the national work forces without further investments. Such refugees would also serve national economic interests by strengthening qualified labor. Compared to earlier years of reception, several parts of Europe have thus encountered another period of numerously arriving and at least temporarily resident refugees. At the same time, the conditions for accessing the European labor markets have been changing significantly over the past years – also due to increased reception.

The perspective that we want to pursue with this special issue entitled ‘Refugees’ working lives’ opens up a broader research context than simply investigating refugees’ labor market access or labor market fitness. The questions of how people organize themselves in the face of others and ‘how they organize themselves vis-à-vis broader structural situations’ (Clarke 2005, 109) leads us to a specific approach within refugee studies. In this way, ‘to work’ is understood as a part of one’s biography and identity – questions that in the end are connected to citizenship and belonging within societies. The working lives of refugees are subject to legal regulations in a direct sense when labor market access for asylum seekers is restricted or empirically non-existent. Such excluding policies are part of the overall migration policies refugees are confronted with during their everyday lives, with implications for their further biographies. Refugees’ (working) lives are highly dependent on their legal status per se. Nevertheless, from a sociological perspective, it is important to move beyond such legal definitions of ‘the refugee’, also including the non-documented, the illegalized, persons who identify themselves as refugees, in addition to asylum seekers in a legal sense and recognized refugees. In the following introduction, the topic of refugees’ working lives will be presented by relating to three current research foci: first, refugees and labor market participation, second, refugees between agency and structural restrictions, and third, divergent political conditions in European nation-states. These three thematic emphases are also the main lines of analysis shared by the consecutive articles in this special issue.

Refugees and labor market participation

Participation in the labor market is one of the most important factors for a successful life and for integration in contemporary capitalist societies in general. This provides the explanation for a specific focus on employment in migration research, for instance as a part of ‘structural assimilation’ in a given receiving society (Gordon 1964). Several investigations have explicitly highlighted the question as to why labor market participation among refugees is lower than among other migrants. Such a ‘refugee gap’ (Connor 2010; Richmond 1988) is initially found to be appalling, yet seems to diminish after some years in the labor market. More recent analyses have shown that the ‘refugee gap’ tends to vanish with longer durations of residence and work in the receiving countries (Bakker, Dagevos, and Engbersen 2017). From the refugees’ and other migrants’ point of view, participation in the labor market is connected to gaining recognition also in their social networks (Warfa et al. 2012). Finding a job implies a struggle for recognition (Frykman 2012). Here, the social environments in which individuals find themselves is reflected in the literature on labor market access and social networks (Beaman 2012). Empirical research has continuously shown that the fact of being part of the working population makes a significant difference to the life worlds of refugees and their significant others (Stiftung 2016). Refugee studies have added to this perspective the connection of global processes of societal change with biographic or group struggles for a self-determined life and social recognition (Kleist 2008; Moulin and Nyers 2007). The idea of being (self-)employed is important for recognition in everyday life, as well as for future prospects. Furthermore, work is positively recognized not only in the receiving society but also by transnational and/or background contexts. Refugees are frequently confronted with expectations to financially support family members in their respective countries of origin, or they are expected to pay back the costs of their flight. Another related expectation fostered by (Western) receiving societies is to be rapidly independent of welfare provisions.

Refugees between agency and structural restrictions

Adopting the perspective of refugees, it is now well established in international research that structural conditions generally force refugees to lead passive lives. Refugees are de facto (Mayblin 2014, 376) more or less excluded from participating in the labor market even after obtaining a work permit. Many studies have exemplified that both recognized refugees and asylum seekers confront difficulties in finding adequate work or receiving payment while also experiencing other work-related predicaments (Schuster 2004). Recognition of work experience and formal degrees proves difficult (for a literature overview, see Martín et al. 2016). Not only are legal regulations structural barriers to labor market access. Entering the labor market is difficult for refugees as there usually are few or no bridging institutions between the reception of refugees and their integration into the labor market (Correa-Velez, Barnett, and Gifford 2015, 325). In this context, Maria Vincenza Desiderio has thus used the expression of a ‘missing link’ to be observed in many countries (Desiderio 2016). In addition, refugees often face racism which also has repercussions on finding and maintaining employment.

Social isolation is structurally even more accentuated by the specific living arrangements and legal provisions experienced during the asylum procedures. ‘Asylum seekers are excluded from all measures enacted to promote inclusion or “integration” because there is no desire to include those who will subsequently be obliged to leave’ (Schuster 2004, 16). Waiting for an asylum decision usually involves long times of deprived privacy and self-determination in many facets of everyday life. Asylum seekers not eligible to work may thus be kept in welfare dependency for quite a fair amount of their lifetime (Mayblin 2014, 379). This has detrimental effects on feelings of personal security and self-esteem (Brekke 2004). On grounds of social exclusion, asylum seekers are also often not in a (good) position to acquire the communicative and social skills in their countries of residence. Refugees consider missing language skills as well as lacking experience with the labor market of a given ‘receiving country’ as barriers to taking up work (Bloch 2008). Long phases outside the employment sector in which one was educated or trained for in one’s country of origin lead to deprofessionalization (Smyth and Kum 2010).

In most countries, after being granted asylum, refugees have the same rights as do citizens in terms of labor market access – at least theoretically. In practice, the transition from being an asylum seeker to being a recognized refugee is abrupt: It is usually only at this stage that individuals are meant to actively and rapidly ‘integrate’ into societies. Yet the period of asylum seeking decreases refugees’ capacities to change their agency in such a way (Hainmueller, Hangartner, and Lawrence 2016). Moving from being an individual who is in a detrimental waiting position and is ‘cared for’ to being a self-reliant, self-confident subject who is called to organize the totality of everyday life – including work-related aspects – creates troublesome conditions.

While recognized refugees already are in such unfavorable positions, refugees whose asylum applications have been rejected are transformed into illegal refugees with few, if any, rights in their ‘receiving countries’ (Dauvergne 2008; Schuster 2011). This has wide-ranging implications for their possibilities to take part in the (illegal) labor markets of those countries.

Parallel to these restrictions and consequences, which surge refugees into seemingly passive lives, they need to be described in terms of their agency and their ways of dealing with such conditions. Applying such an actor-centered perspective on refugees has already yielded significant results, e.g. some studies have identified locally developed refugee businesses as a form of self-employment (Brees 2008; Raijman and Barak-Bianco 2015). Refugees also actively seek voluntary work if the labor market is not (yet) accessible (Hunt 2008). Finally, they participate in legal and/or illegalized labor markets independently and partially in contrast to their official employment and living conditions (Täubig 2009; Witteborn 2011).

Against this general backdrop, the contributions in this special issue focus on refugees’ working lives with different research interests. What they have in common is that they do not investigate labor market participation or integration in terms of the characteristics of certain migrant groups, e.g. by country of origin or ethnic group. Instead, they focus on the very (changing) labor and asylum policies, as well as the specific work conditions refugees face and deal with. The majority of the articles take the perspective of the refugees themselves as the critical point of reference in an attempt to explore the role of work in their everyday lives. Here, the meanings refugees specifically attribute to work throughout their biographies are a topic that is addressed from different angles. The chapters consider refugees with different residence permit status and in varying European countries:

Lesley Hustinx and Rachel Waerniers focus in their contribution on the discourses on citizenship and how refugees are positioned in terms of socio-economic relations elaborating on the example of Belgium. Partly contradictory immigration and integration policies prove to be labyrinth-like conditions governing refugees’ working lives in their ‘receiving countries’. In their individual articles, Elisabeth Scheibelhofer and Sabrina Luimpöck both focus on refugees holding a residence title in Austria. The qualitative in-depth interviews in Scheibelhofer’s article illustrate how broader living conditions interact with the meanings that are attached to work. Luimpöck discusses how refugees deal with experiences of deskilling in a biographic perspective by activating other forms of social recognition. The meaning of social networks and labor market access is highlighted in the context of NGO work in the chapter by Sara de Jong who analyzes how NGOs in the refugee sector become specific ‘bridging institutions’ into the labor market. Jong’s analysis in three countries retraces the transitions from asylum seekers to refugees with safe residence permit status and from clients to employees of migrant support services. The NGOs provide employment opportunities for the refugees while at the same time positioning the refugee as ‘the other’ when working for NGOs themselves. Vicki Täubig analyses the everyday lives of asylum seekers and individuals whose residency is ‘tolerated’ in Germany. She demonstrates that her interviewees perceived work as something that is forbidden to them while they adhere to work as a biographically meaningful idea.

Divergent political conditions in European nation-states

All articles compiled in this issue rely on empirical research in at least one of the member states of the EU. More specifically, research was conducted in Austria, Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands and the UK.¹ While these countries have divergent histories in terms of admitting refugees, they currently share the EU-wide regulations in terms of asylum and refugee jurisdiction applying to the member states. More specifically, since the Treaty of Amsterdam became effective in 1999, refugee migration policies have been aligned EU-wide (Buckel 2012, 80; Scheibelhofer 2016, 77f.). As of that time, national legislation has ensued implementations of European restrictions with a more or less strong extent of perceptible national variation. Thus, along with European actors’ year-long efforts to harmonize EU refugee laws, the European asylum system remains nationally diverse in many dimensions and refugees’ life circumstances, while depending highly on the EU member states they settle in. On the one hand, the EU regulations are indeed ‘translated into everyday practice’ in the respective countries (Rosenberger and König 2011, 551) instead of equalizing the respective situations in the member states. On the other hand, the politically defined areas that by now have become highly regulated through EU legislation concern especially the asylum seekers’ entry regulations on account of the Dublin Regulations.

The rise of refugees arriving in some EU member states in and after 2015 has made visible the limitations of the EU regulations when several member states deviated by receiving or not receiving refugees. Even more, the German chancellor’s so-called open-door policy has led to conflicts between the member states (Borjas and Monras 2017). Yet in spite of the year-long problematic situation of potential asylum seekers in the Mediterranean and Eastern European member states, and the ongoing deaths near the borders of the EU, no redistribution has been put in place to reallocate refugees more evenly across the Union. From the perspective of political science, the EU member states seem to constitute contrasting cases as to levels of high or low refugee reception (Hilz and Saracino 2017). Starkly different conditions for everyday life including opportunities for refugees to work have emerged due to the considerably varying reception quota of single nation-states (Parusel 2017) and interrelated integration policies. Even the given quantitative proportions of refugees among the total populations have effects on the duration of the asylum procedures, accommodation, and access to social work services, amongst others. Irrespective of admission quotas or open-door policy, the deterrence of further potential refugees and other political goals permeate the solutions to such ‘logistic challenges’. Following the so-called ‘refugee crisis’, the public debate surrounding refugees has become an even more important part of refugees’ everyday life in their ‘receiving countries’ – including their serving as scapegoats for more complicated societal issues (Cederberg 2014).

National differences with implications for the working conditions refugees experience in the EU are also visible in terms of their access to the labor market in the respective EU member states and the policies that might or might not be in place for schooling, housing and medical provisions relevant for refugees. This situation persists although EU Directive 2013/33 on the standards for the reception of applicants in terms of international protection defines common grounds. This minimum standard for all EU members determines that asylum seekers are to be granted access to the labor market nine months latest after lodging their asylum application. Yet in practice, labor market access still varies greatly (Weber 2016).

Conclusions

This special issue² merges manuscripts that elaborate on the fact that refugees face manifold restrictions concerning work in the ‘receiving countries’. The articles focus on refugees’ working lives in a broad sense and deepen our understanding of the meaning of the social environment, enabling reflections on the complexity of the research topic from a social scientific point of view. Recent empirical studies from different Central and Western European countries are presented that also reflect upon work as a distant idea or as being what is commonly called informal. The contributions also stress the perspective that refugees are actors in their own right who under these specific circumstances need to – and indeed do – find their way into local, national and transnational communities.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. The UK still had the status of a full EU member state at the time this introduction was written. This was also the case when the empirical data was collected.

2. We would like to include one remark on the ‘making of’ of this special issue: It originated from a conference session entitled ‘Refugees’ Everyday Life Worlds and the Production of Societal Inequalities in Europe’, held at the European Sociological Association (ESA) conference in Prague in August 2015, which the guest editors organized and chaired together. Most papers included in this issue were presented and discussed at the conference, while discussions have been continued orally and via email between the guest editors and authors. As authors and guest editors, we also want to thank the anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful, critical and highly constructive feedback.