8. The Labour Market Integration of Humanitarian Migrants in OECD Countries: An Overview

While humanitarian migration is still the least commonly used channel leading to permanent residence, its increase over the last decades has raised concern about its socioeconomic impact within OECD member countries. Humanitarian migrants are often characterized by a number of factors—such as post-migration stress or the fact that they are not selected based on their human capital or skills needed in receiving labour markets—that puts them in a disadvantaged position when seeking employment in receiving countries. As one of the OECD countries with a long tradition in promoting refugees’ employment integration policies, Sweden is presented in this chapter as a case study of humanitarian migrants’ transition into OECD labour markets. With refugee integration policies and a resettlement system that date back to the late 1970s, Sweden has continued to be a major destination for asylum seekers. Like other receiving countries, refugees in Sweden have lower employment levels than other migrants on arrival. While this gap decreases over time and significant differences are also found among source country groups, the employment gap between refugees and natives persist over time.