Refugees in Europe: Careers and Labor Market Integration

Abstract

This symposium aims at exploring core issues of refugees' labor market integration in Europe. While career, HRM and cross-cultural issues of self-initiated and assigned expatriation have long been in the focus of management scholars in the past, related research on refugees as a particular migrant group with a unique migration context is still scarce, yet strongly needed due to an overwhelming influx of refugees into European countries over the last few years. Thus, using qualitative data from interviews with refugees of different origin and organizational representatives as well as quantitative survey data, the five papers included in this symposium identify and discuss particular challenges refugees striving to obtain employment are facing, including encountered migration stress and identity threats, structural labor market barriers, and devaluation of career capital. Likewise, the symposium also focuses on refugees' and various stakeholders' strategies to manage these challenges. The opening paper, Can I come as I am? Identity threats, coping, and growth, will address threats to refugees' identities as well as coping responses and how these facilitate refugees' personal and work-related growth. The second paper, Refugees' career capital welcome? Its use and transformation by Afghanis and Syrians in Austria, will explore how refugees seek to make use of, and to renegotiate the value of, their existing career capital and what strategies they employ to build new career capital. The third paper, Job search among refugees in Greece: the interface of individual resources and contextual barriers, is a quantitative study that examines the extent to which refugees' individual-level human, social and psychological capital interact with perceived labor market barriers in affecting refugees' job search intensity. Next, An exploration of the integration of refugees into the workplace on the example of Germany, will investigate how migration stress influences refugees' vocational behavior, how refugees cope with migration stress, and what role social support plays in this process. Finally, the paper Refugees' inclusion in Dutch workplaces: A qualitative analysis of facilitators and barriers will explore relevant factors on three conceptual levels: contextual, organizational and individual. Together, these five papers provide fine-grained insights into the particular challenges to refugees' labor market integration and into strategies to successfully address these challenges at the individual, organizational, and societal level.