11. Migrants and the Welfare State
Convener: Willibrord de Graaf
Hagelund Anniken ( Institute for social research, Oslo, N)
Migrants in the Scandinavian welfare state
Rákoczyová Miroslava (Research Centre Brno, CZ)
Social integration in the Czech republic
Crepaldi Chiara (IRS , Milan, IT)
Roma in Europe: socio-economic condition and policies of integration
Gerritsen Debby, Maier Robert and van Zenderen Kaj (Utrecht University, NL)
Education and labour market participation of young migrants
Distributed papers
O' Connor Julia (University of Ulster, UK)
Migrants, Multiculturalism and Labour market integration
Boccagni Paolo (University of Trento, IT)
From local welfare recipients to transnational asset accumulators?
There are various populations of migrants in European countries. Next to the issues of legal aspects, such as conditions of work permits and residency, there are a number of directly social policy issues that are relevant for migrant populations, such as policies of activation or policies of integration, including provisions for language proficiency. In general the social economic position of migrant populations is behind that of the native population. However, the picture is twofold: an increasing group is highly qualified and obtains good occupational positions, whereas others drop out of school or are unemployed and end up in less favourable positions.
Therefore, quite a number of (young) migrants are explicitly or implicitly target groups of social policies attempting to reduce dropping out from school and facilitating access to the labour market. Particularly relevant are the issues of possible discrimination, which can be manifest in more or less subtle forms; such as for example in the description of qualifications presupposed for entry in the labour market, such as ‘soft skills’ – pointing to competencies of ‘good cooperation and communication’. However, this form of subtle discrimination is not exclusively for migrants looking for jobs in the lower segments of the labour market.
We welcome paper contributions that analyse the impact of the various changes in European social security systems on migrants. We are highly interested in comparative and interdisciplinary contributions as well as in papers analysing related policy areas (e.g. school drop-outs, education, family, housing, life-course, pension, labour market policies) and their impact on migrant’s equality in theory and in practice.
Willibrord de Graaf
Utrecht University
Faculty of Social Sciences
Dept. of Interdisciplinary Social Science
P.O. Box 80140
3508 TC Utrecht – Netherlands
Tel.: +31 30 2537684
w.a.w.degraaf@uu.nl
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