“Still haven't found what I am looking for”: rural black students' perceived work readiness and assessment of labor market access

PurposeSouth African Black graduates experience a transition challenge between the higher education context and the labor market system. The study focuses on rural Black students' perceived work readiness and assessment of labor market access in South Africa.Design/methodology/approachFocus groups and unstructured individual interviews were conducted with 30 final-year students enrolled at a historically Black university in South Africa.FindingsFour main narratives were found to affect rural Black students' perceptions of work readiness and their assessment of labor market access in South Africa. These include: (1) language of instruction within the higher education system, (2) challenges around access to career counseling and guidance services, (3) dealing with a curriculum system not relevant to the lived experiences of Black people and finally, (4) challenges inherent within higher education institution attended by Black students. A thread among these four appraisals appears to be the rural Black students' concern around the entire education system from basic to higher education.Originality/valueThe paper sheds light and presents an understanding of perceptions of an educational system and issues around work readiness and labor market access in South Africa.

Intra-EU Mobility: The Employment and Welfare Experience of Temporary EU Workers in the United Kingdom

This article explores the mobility pathways of temporary EU workers and the implications that transnational temporary mobility has on their labor market outcomes and access to social rights and benefits. The experiences of temporary EU migrants working in the UK show that despite the narrative of the borderlessness of the common European labor market, access to host countries’ labor market and welfare is shaped by their employment status and welfare eligibility criteria that produce worker precariousness. Temporary EU workers’ experiences are characterized by employment insecurity and unequal access to labor and social rights, effects which might increase since the UK has left the EU.

Malaysia and Its Transition Process Towards More Gender Equality at the Labor Market

The promotion of labor market opportunities for females in Malaysia has been part of several quantitative studies. Although the empirical data stresses the existence of gender-related constraints females are facing when trying to access labor market, the reasons remain mainly unexplored. Thus, this qualitative study tried to identify major constraints and challenges females are facing when entering the Malaysian labor market. Focus group discussions with different groups of females aged 16 to 50 have been conducted, as well as with employers and HR Managers of global players. The study identifies local disparities between rural and urban living as major consequences for female labor market access and the achievable employment situation. The analysis of the focus groups also highlights that two groups of women – females living in Projek Perumahan Rakyat (PPR) or “People ́s Housing Project” areas and Single Mothers – are strongly affected from often being no constant part of labor market but trapped in side-jobs or non-satisfying microbusinesses. The solidification of social inequality by an absence of support structures and empowerment programs can be seen as the most important reason. Policy recommendations, based on the empirical results, are therefore discussed in order to stimulate a discussion on gender equality.

Are asylum seekers more likely to work with more inclusive labor market access regulations?

In the face of recent refugee migration, early integration of asylum seekers into the labor market has been proposed as an important mechanism for easing their economic and social lot in the short as well as in the long term. However, little is known about the policies that foster or hamper their participation in the labor market, in particular during the important initial period of their stay in the host country. In order to evaluate whether inclusive labor market policies increase the labor market participation of asylum seekers, we exploit the variation in asylum policies in Swiss cantons to which asylum seekers are as good as randomly allocated. During our study period from 2011 to 2014, the employment rate among asylum seekers varied between 0 and 30.2% across cantons. Our results indicate that labor market access regulations are responsible for a substantial proportion of these differences, in which an inclusive regime increases participation by 11 percentage points. The marginal effects are larger for asylum seekers who speak a language that is linguistically close to the one in their host canton. Summary Inclusive labor market access regulations substantially increase the employment chances of asylum seekers, in particular if the language distance is short.

The Violent Legacy of Conflict: Evidence on Asylum Seekers, Crime, and Public Policy in Switzerland

We study empirically how past exposure to conflict in origin countries makes migrants more violence-prone in their host country, focusing on asylum seekers in Switzerland. We exploit a novel and unique dataset on all crimes reported in Switzerland by the nationalities of perpetrators and of victims over 2009–2016. Our baseline result is that cohorts exposed to civil conflict/mass killing during childhood are 35 percent more prone to violent crime than the average cohort. This effect is particularly strong for early childhood exposure and is mostly confined to co-nationals, consistent with inter-group hostility persisting over time. We exploit cross-region heterogeneity in public policies within Switzerland to document which integration policies are best able to mitigate the detrimental effect of past conflict exposure on violent criminality. We find that offering labor market access to asylum seekers eliminates two-thirds of the effect. (JEL D74, F22, K42, Z18)

Double Jeopardy: How Refugees Fare in One European Labor Market

This paper examines the labor market trajectories of refugees who arrived in Belgium between 1999 and 2009. Belgium offers a relatively easy formal labor market access to refugees and other types of migrants but they face many other barriers in this strongly regulated and institutionalized labor market. Based on a longitudinal dataset that links respondents’ information from the Belgian Labor Force Survey with comprehensive social security data on their work histories, we estimate discrete-time hazard models to analyze refugees’ entry into and exit out of the first employment spell, contrasting their outcomes with family and labor migrants of the same arrival cohort. The analysis shows that refugees take significantly longer to enter their first employment spell as compared with other migrant groups. They also run a greater risk of exiting out of their first employment spell (back) into social assistance and into unemployment. The low employment rates of refugees are thus not only due to a slow integration process upon arrival, but also reflect a disproportional risk of exiting the labor market after a period in work. Our findings indicate that helping refugees into a first job is not sufficient to ensure labor market participation in the long run, because these jobs may be short-lived. Instead, our results provide clear arguments in favor of policies that support sustainable labor market integration.

New Approaches to Urban Refugee Livelihoods

Increasingly refugees live in urban areas—usually in slums impacted by unemployment, poverty, overcrowding and inadequate infrastructure. Host governments often restrict refugees’ access to the labor market, access that can be further impeded by language barriers, arbitrary fees, and discrimination. UNHCR and its partners are seldom equipped to understand and navigate the complex urban economic environment in order to create opportunities for refugees in these settings. Based on assessments undertaken in 2010 and 2011 in Kampala, New Delhi and Johannesburg, research findings indicate that refugees in urban areas adopt a variety of economic coping strategies, many of which place them at risk, and that new approaches and different partnerships are needed for the design and implementationof economic programs. This paper presents findings from the assessments and lays out strategies to address the challenges confronting urban refugees’ ability to enter and compete in the labor market.

A Geografia Universitária em época de Benchmarking

The Bologna process has brought some new dimensions to the discussion around the structure and organization of university degrees. The aim of this paper is to contribute to this discussion by focusing on three particular aspects: the increase in the level of competition between the schools, the type of labor market access rendered possible by the first cycle of studies and, in close relationship with the latter aspect, the issue of the skills and competences that the students are supposed to have acquired upon ending their university studies. Finally, we address the issue of the teaching methods and their repercussions upon the structure of the courses.

Devalued Germans

Despite the privilege of German citizenship, Spätaussiedler experience difficulties in the German labor market. Unemployment tends to be high, and many of those who are employed fill positions in the secondary segment of the labor market. A problem for many Spätaussiedler is that their former occupations do not exist or are not in demand in Germany. Tractor operators, technicians in the oil industry, and coal miners from the former Soviet Union have difficulty finding employment in their fields, particularly in Berlin. Other Spätaussiedler still work in their general field, but below their original qualifications. Of these, many are denied work in their former occupations because their foreign occupational and educational credentials are not recognized by German authorities and employers. Government efforts to streamline the transferability of foreign credentials have concentrated on countries within the European Union (Schneider 1995); however, Spätaussiedler from the territory of the former Soviet Union do not benefit from these efforts. Although, as German citizens, they are legally entitled to credential assessment, exclusionary practices in the credential assessment and recognition process still make it difficult for Spätaussiedler to obtain work in the upper labor market segment. These immigrants fall victim to a double standard that values domestic and foreign credentials differently. The nonrecognition of foreign credentials as a mechanism of labor devaluation is not unusual in countries that receive large numbers of immigrants, as illustrated in chapter 5 in the case of immigrants in Vancouver. In Germany, Spätaussiedler present an interesting group because they enjoy citizenship rights and privileges unavailable to other immigrant groups. They receive full legal labor market access, economic integration assistance, the right to credential assessment, privileged treatment by labor market institutions, and, unlike foreigners and naturalized migrants, they are able to use their foreign qualifications to establish small businesses and offer vocational apprenticeships. In some instances, Spätaussiedler even receive preferential treatment relative to other Germans, for example, when applying for small business loans (Juris 2003, BFVG §14). In light of these privileges, labor devaluation through legal exclusion is apparently not an issue for Spätaussiedler.