Today, the integration of immigrants into Swedish society is a hotly debated topic, with labor market being one of the key areas of discussion. The aim of this study is to examine how the participation of immigrants in the labor market has been depicted in Swedish Government Official Reports from the years 1974, 1984, and 1996 from a historical perspective. Furthermore, the aim is to study whether the labor market situation of immigrants appears to change or if the textual material indicates continuity. The specific research questions addressed include how the situation of immigrants in the labor market is described in these reports and what measures were proposed to facilitate their situation in the labor market. The primary sources for this study are three governmental reports that investigated the situation of immigrants in Sweden during the specified years. The first report contributed to the establishment of an immigrant policy, the second led to a reformulation of this policy, and the third resulted in the adoption of an integration policy. The method used is a qualitative text analysis inspired by Bacchis “What’s the Problem Represented to be?”. The results were analyzed using Michael Piores theory of the dual labor market, which suggests that the labor market is divided into a primary and secondary sector. Individuals born in the country are typically expected to work in the primary sector, which consists of stable jobs with high wages, while immigrants are more often found in the secondary sector, which includes insecure jobs with low wages and higher unemployment rates. The results highlight that immigrants in Sweden have been concentrated in the secondary sector. During the 1970s, the employment rate of immigrants was high and not considered problematic, but in the 1980s and 1990s, employment rates decreased, and unemployment rose among immigrants. A recurring issue is identified in the reports is the lack of language proficiency, which is highlighted as a fundamental problem across all the texts. The finding suggest that foreign-born individuals were excluded from the trade union movement’s struggle for better conditions, that labor market training and employment services were not adequately adapted to the nature of immigration. The analysis of the texts indicates that measures were proposed to reduce the effects of the dual labor market, but these were insufficient. The main conclusion of this study is that foreign-born individuals in Sweden have historically been concentrated in the secondary sector, facing higher unemployment, insecure employment conditions and low wages, which are consequences of the dual labor market.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:hj-65263 |
| Date | January 2024 |
| Creators | Rundbäck, Stina |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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