Is discrimination an issue? Young adults with immigration background in the labour market

Author: EUROMARGINS
Date: Fall 2010

EUMARGINS third policy brief looks at discrimination as a factor of exclusion for young adults with immigration background in the labour markets of seven European countries: Estonia, Spain, France, Italy, Sweden, the United Kingdom and Norway. Several observations emerge from this analysis. First, access to the labour market is generally difficult for young people, but often more so for immigrant youth, especially for so-called visible minority youth.Second, although labour market access is better for young descendants it still lags behind that of nationals and they fare worse in competition for higher-level jobs. Third, there are various sources of poor labour market integration for first generation immigrants, such as low portability of human capital, language problems and a lack of relevant social networks. Some of these issues frequently also affect descendants. Both demographics face the additional challenge of ethnic penalties and discrimination. This is a problem not only for them but equally so for the societies they inhabit, which should make it a key concern for policy-makers.

http://www.sv.uio.no/iss/english/research/projects/eumargins/policy-briefs/documents/3rd-policy-brief-labour-market-discrimination-november-3rd-2010-final.pdf