Page 77 - valuing-diversity-guidance-for-labour-market-integration-of-migrants

Valuing diversity: guidance for labour market integration of migrants

3.3.1. Labour market situation
In this section we analyse the labour market characteristics and outcomes of the
immigrant population. Some of the data are only available by citizenship and
some by country of birth, which prevents a fully consistent definition of immigrant
in the analysis. Whenever possible we use labour market indicators by
nationality.
There is a significant difference in the activity rates of third-country
immigrants and the European origin population in the EU, while the difference for
EU immigrants is normally not very high. When this difference is significant it
tends to follow the pattern of third-country nationals.
Figure 15 illustrates the difference in the activity rates of nationals and
migrants, in decreasing order. The figure shows a regular pattern that seems to
reflect two elements: the structure and cultural characteristics of the migrant
communities; and the legal work status of the foreign nationals.

Figure 15 Differences between activity rates of nationals and third-country
nationals (%), 2011, (rate of nationals – rate of third-country immigrants)
40

30

20

10

0

-10

-20

-30

Source: Cedefop calculations based on Eurostat, labour force survey. Online data code [lfsa_argan].
Sweden, due to its high intake of refugees, has a large proportion of its
resident immigrant population with limited access to work permits, so officially
inactive. Post-colonial countries like France or the United Kingdom partially
reflect the fact that many of their immigrant population are either in retirement or
in schooling age, and so not active. The same applies to countries with long-
standing immigrant communities, such as Germany, Belgium and the
Netherlands: in the two latter countries, the high inactivity level can also be
partially related to recent changes in national immigration laws.

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