IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/iza/izadps/dp9496.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Improving the Integration of Refugees: An Early Evaluation of a Swedish Reform

Author

Listed:
  • Andersson Joona, Pernilla

    (SOFI, Stockholm University)

  • Lanninger, Alma W.

    (SOFI, Stockholm University)

  • Sundström, Marianne

    (SOFI, Stockholm University)

Abstract

This paper is an early evaluation of the Swedish Establishment Reform which was enacted in 2010 with the goal of facilitating and speeding up the integration of refugees and their family into the labor market and the society. From December 1, 2010 the reform transferred the responsibility for the integration of newly-arrived refugees from the municipalities to the government funded Public Employment Service through which those eligible would get an establishment plan and a coach. The reform was motived by concern over the low employment level and slow integration of refugees. Our approach is to compare the outcomes of the treatment group, which took part in establishment activities and arrived between December 1, 2010 and December 31, 2011, to those of the comparison group, which arrived in the eleven months preceding the Reform and participated in municipal introduction programs, controlling for a rich set of observables, including country of birth and date of residence permit. Outcomes are measured in terms of employment and earnings in 2012 for the treatment group and in 2011 for the comparison group. Our data comes from registers held by Statistics Sweden and the Public Employment Service and covers all immigrants. Although there are good reasons to expect positive effects of the Reform we find no significant difference in employment or earnings between the treatment group and the comparison group.

Suggested Citation

  • Andersson Joona, Pernilla & Lanninger, Alma W. & Sundström, Marianne, 2015. "Improving the Integration of Refugees: An Early Evaluation of a Swedish Reform," IZA Discussion Papers 9496, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    • Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp9496
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://docs.iza.org/dp9496.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Svantesson, Elisabeth & Aranki, Ted N., 2006. "Do Introduction Programs Affect the Probability of Immigrants getting Work?," Working Papers 2006:3, Örebro University, School of Business.
    2. Pernilla Andersson Joona & Lena Nekby, 2012. "Intensive Coaching of New Immigrants: An Evaluation Based on Random Program Assignment," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 114(2), pages 575-600, June.
    3. Clausen, Jens & Heinesen, Eskil & Hummelgaard, Hans & Husted, Leif & Rosholm, Michael, 2009. "The effect of integration policies on the time until regular employment of newly arrived immigrants: Evidence from Denmark," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 16(4), pages 409-417, August.
    4. Olof Ã…slund & Per Johansson, 2011. "Virtues of SIN," Evaluation Review, , vol. 35(4), pages 399-427, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Battisti, Michele & Giesing, Yvonne & Laurentsyeva, Nadzeya, 2019. "Can job search assistance improve the labour market integration of refugees? Evidence from a field experiment," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 61(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Ulf Rinne, 2013. "The evaluation of immigration policies," Chapters, in: Amelie F. Constant & Klaus F. Zimmermann (ed.), International Handbook on the Economics of Migration, chapter 28, pages 530-552, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    2. Bonin, Holger & Rinne, Ulf, 2017. "Machbarkeitsstudie zur Durchführung einer Evaluation der arbeitsmarktpolitischen Integrationsmaßnahmen für Flüchtlinge," IZA Research Reports 76, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    3. Jacob Nielsen Arendt & Christian Dustmann & Hyejin Ku, 2022. "Refugee migration and the labour market: lessons from 40 years of post-arrival policies in Denmark [‘The Dynamics of Return Migration, Human Capital Accumulation, and Wage Assimilation’]," Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Oxford University Press and Oxford Review of Economic Policy Limited, vol. 38(3), pages 531-556.
    4. Sebastian Butschek & Thomas Walter, 2014. "What active labour market programmes work for immigrants in Europe? A meta-analysis of the evaluation literature," IZA Journal of Migration and Development, Springer;Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 3(1), pages 1-18, December.
    5. Walter, Thomas & Butschek, Sebastian, 2013. "What Active Labour Market Programmes Work for Immigrants in Europe?," VfS Annual Conference 2013 (Duesseldorf): Competition Policy and Regulation in a Global Economic Order 79745, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    6. Dahlberg, Matz & Egebark, Johan & Vikman, Ulrika & Özcan, Gülay, 2020. "Labor market integration of low-educated refugees," Working Paper Series 2020:21, IFAU - Institute for Evaluation of Labour Market and Education Policy.
    7. Jacob Nielsen Arendt, 2022. "Labor market effects of a work-first policy for refugees," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 35(1), pages 169-196, January.
    8. Dries Lens & Ive Marx & Sunčica Vujić, 2017. "Integrating (former) asylum seekers into the Belgian labour market. What can we learn from the recent past?," Working Papers 1710, Herman Deleeck Centre for Social Policy, University of Antwerp.
    9. Dahlberg, Matz & Egebark, Johan & Vikman, Ullrika & Özcan, Gülay, 2020. "Labor Market Integration of Low-Educated Refugees: RCT Evidence from an Ambitious Integration Program in Sweden," Working Paper Series 1372, Research Institute of Industrial Economics.
    10. Anne Britt Djuve & Hanne Cecilie Kavli, 2019. "Refugee integration policy the Norwegian way – why good ideas fail and bad ideas prevail," Transfer: European Review of Labour and Research, , vol. 25(1), pages 25-42, February.
    11. Fasani, Francesco & Frattini, Tommaso & Pirot, Maxime, 2023. "From Refugees to Citizens: Labor Market Returns to Naturalization," IZA Discussion Papers 16651, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    12. Matti Sarvimäki & Kari Hämäläinen, 2016. "Integrating Immigrants: The Impact of Restructuring Active Labor Market Programs," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 34(2), pages 479-508.
    13. Hangartner, Dominik & Sarvimäki, Matti & Spirig, Judith, 2021. "Managing Refugee Protection Crises: Policy Lessons from Economics and Political Science," IZA Discussion Papers 14821, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    14. Peter Huber & Gerhard Streicher & Georg Böhs, 2018. "Evaluierung des Paktes für Arbeit und Qualifizierung für Oberösterreich," WIFO Studies, WIFO, number 66774, April.
    15. Pernilla Andersson Joona & Lena Nekby, 2012. "Intensive Coaching of New Immigrants: An Evaluation Based on Random Program Assignment," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 114(2), pages 575-600, June.
    16. Frederik Thuesen & Vibeke Jakobsen & Nina T. Dalgaard & Bjørn C. A. Viinholt, 2020. "PROTOCOL: Interventions to improve the economic self‐sufficiency of unemployed immigrants from non‐Western countries," Campbell Systematic Reviews, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 16(4), December.
    17. Seonho Shin, 2022. "Evaluating the Effect of the Matching Grant Program for Refugees: An Observational Study Using Matching, Weighting, and the Mantel-Haenszel Test," Journal of Labor Research, Springer, vol. 43(1), pages 103-133, March.
    18. Jacob Nielsen Arendt & Iben Bolvig & Mette Foged & Linea Hasager & Giovanni Peri, 2020. "Language Training and Refugees' Integration," NBER Working Papers 26834, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    19. Matti Sarvimäki & Hanna Pesola, 2022. "Intergenerational Spillovers of Integration Policies: Evidence from Finland’s Integration Plans," RF Berlin - CReAM Discussion Paper Series 2212, Rockwool Foundation Berlin (RF Berlin) - Centre for Research and Analysis of Migration (CReAM).
    20. Nekby, Lena, 2008. "Active labor market programs for the integration of youths and immigrants into the labor market: the Nordic experience," Macroeconomía del Desarrollo 5441, Naciones Unidas Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe (CEPAL).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    integration; refugees; labor market policy; treatment effect; employment; earnings; caseworkers;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J15 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Minorities, Races, Indigenous Peoples, and Immigrants; Non-labor Discrimination
    • J61 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Geographic Labor Mobility; Immigrant Workers
    • J68 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Public Policy

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp9496. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Holger Hinte (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/izaaade.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.