Transcript The Labour Market Integration of Immigrants and their Children in Austria Thomas Liebig & Karolin Krause International Migration Division Directorate for Employment, Labour and Social.

The Labour Market
Integration of Immigrants
and their Children in Austria
Thomas Liebig & Karolin Krause
International Migration Division
Directorate for Employment, Labour and Social Affairs
OECD
Vienna, 24 November 2011
The immigrant population:
relatively large and a favourable
origin-country mix
• 25% of the population in Austria have at least one foreignborn parent
• The majority of immigrants have arrived after the fall of the
Iron Curtain
Composition of the immigrant population in Austria in 2009
other lowerincome
16%
other highincome
3%
Turkey
12%
Ex-Yugoslavia
29%
EU+12
20%
Germany
15%
Other EU-15
5%
2/16
Overall labour market outcomes
are close to the OECD average,
in particular for men
Employment-population ratio of immigrants and native-born, men aged 15-64,
in Austria and selected other OECD countries, 2009
Foreign-born
Native-born
90
85
80
75
70
65
60
3/16
The integration infrastructure in Austria:
a rather complex and limited setting
• Multitude of actors
• No structured integration programme
• Language training targets that are modest at best, with no link to the
labour market
• Lack of research and evaluation
• Many small-scale, time-limited integration measures with multi-level
financing
• Separate work-permit system for (some) new arrivals
• Recent improvements:
– Facilitation of labour market access
– Targeted training programmes to place immigrants in shortage occupations
(example of good practice for other OECD-countries)
The whole against the backdrop of a rather flexible labour market with
4/16
low unemployment and a strong role of the social partners.
Recommendations
Improve the integration framework
• Establish a structure for better experience-sharing and
co-ordination of integration policy at the federal level.
• Overcome the current deficit in research and evaluation.
• Reduce the complexity of the work-permit system and
abolish the remaining obstacles to the labour market
access of permanent immigrants.
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Immigrant women from lower-income countries are
disadvantaged,
in particular recent arrivals
Percentage-point difference in the employment rates of immigrants compared with the
native-born for different immigrant groups in Austria, women aged 15-64, by duration of
residence, 2008/2009
up to 5 years
6-10 years
11 or more years
10
0
-10
-20
-30
-40
-50
-60
All foreign-born
Higher-income
countries
Turkey
Ex-Yugoslavia
Other lowerincome countries
Small children in the household increase significantly the probability for
women from lower-income countries to be far from the labour market 6/16
Recommendations
Strengthen integration measures
• Make sure that immigrant women who are far from the
labour market are reached by integration measures.
• Implement a structured integration programme for new
arrivals, targeted at labour market integration,
as implemented in the Nordic countries.
• Extend the current programmes for skills- and vocationspecific language training and promote co-ordination of
the existing programmes.
• Seek to increase the participation of the children of
immigrants in pre-school education at age 3 and 4, ideally
in parallel with integration measures for their immigrant
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mothers.
Many immigrants find their qualifications discounted
but recognition seems to help
Percentage-point differences in the probability of being in highly-skilled employment for
highly-educated persons aged 15-64 in Austria, foreign-born compared to native-born, 2008
Highest education
from Austria
Highest education from
other higher-income country
not assessed
or not
recognised
recognised
Highest education from
lower-income country
not assessed
or not
recognised
recognised
0
-10
-20
-30
-40
-50
-60
Less than a third of immigrants with foreign degrees applied for recognition.
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Recommendations
Make better use of the skills of migrants
• Make the possibilities for the recognition of foreign
qualifications more widely known.
• Enhance transparency of the recognition process, ideally
by the implementation of one-stop shops.
• Develop and implement tools for the accreditation of prior
learning, in close co-operation with the social partners.
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Many children of immigrants are at the margin of the
labour market
Share of the low-educated who are neither in education nor in employment or
training, among the native-born children of immigrants and the children of nativeborn, aged 20-29, Austria and selected other OECD-countries, around 2007
Children of native-born
Native-born children of immigrants
16
14
12
10
8
6
4
2
0
10/16
The outcomes are particularly unfavourable for
younger cohorts
Percentage-point difference in employment-rates of the native-born children of immigrants,
compared with the children of natives, for men aged 15-24 and 25-34, not in education,
2009/2010
aged 15-24
aged 25-34
16
11
6
1
-4
-9
-14
-19
-24
All native-born
children of immigrants
From Ex-Yugoslavia
From Turkey
Nevertheless, the gaps are smaller than for the parent generation.
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Recommendations
Improve education outcomes of children of immigrants
• Provide language testing and associated extensive
language support in pre-primary education for those in
need.
• Provide more structured German language training to the
children of immigrants.
• Re-consider the current focus on “mother-tongue
education”.
• Implement special measures for young immigrants who
arrive at the end of obligatory schooling or just thereafter.
• Make sure that restrictions regarding family migration do
not hamper the integration process of the children of
immigrants.
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Recommendations
Improve labour market outcomes of children of immigrants
• Investigate the causes for the low outcomes of the 15-24
year old children of immigrants compared with their older
peers, and take appropriate action.
• Promote access to vocational colleges and
apprenticeships for the children of immigrants.
• Put more effort into increasing the employment prospects
for the children of immigrants in the public sector,
following the examples of the Netherlands, Norway and
Belgium.
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Additional barriers to labour market integration?
The issue of discrimination
• (Statistical) discrimination in the labour market could
explain persistent disadvantages faced even by
immigrant offspring with good qualifications.
• Testing studies from other OECD countries show that
discrimination is more frequent than generally expected,
but no such study has been conducted in Austria yet.
• The topic of discrimination has received few public
attention in Austria thus far.
• The infrastructure to combat discrimination is weaker
than in most other European OECD countries.
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Recommendations
Streamline and strengthen the framework for
anti-discrimination
• Make the anti-discrimination framework more visible to
immigrants and inform them about their rights.
• Conduct an experimental testing study to capture the
incidence of discrimination in hiring, and communicate the
findings widely.
• Consider more pro-active measures and diversity tools to
tackle discrimination:
– e. g. Diversity Label (see France)
– e. g. Diversity plans and counselling for small- and medium-sized
enterprises (see Belgium)
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Thank you for your attention!