Immigration is a hot topic. Climate change, wars and political instability do and will generate movement. Around the world, you have people trying to flee these issues. Right now, there are more than 280 million migrants worldwide, more than 3.5 %of the global population. In Europe, many countries are experiencing considerable flows of both economic and political migrants, many displaced as a result of war and human rights violations. In the UK, voters were part of a political process which chose a solution on migrant workers. Now they are living with the consequences of Brexit. This is not something that is going to go away. Among the challenges facing migrants are poor labour market outcomes. Integrating them successfully and sustainably into the labour market is a pressing issue, because as it stands if you are a migrant worker, you have much less opportunity to be employed or promoted. There is need for migrant labour, caused by the demographic challenges of aging populations and shrinking numbers of younger people entering the labour force. If migrants are to successfully integrate into the workforce, we need to know how to help that process be successful. As part of that, we want to look at what employers and employees do, how their practices generate processes – such as promotion and recruitment, or training – and how this results in certain outcomes, both at individual and organisational levels. Organisational practices – including those designed to broaden diversity – can open doors for meaningful employment and career progression, or close them by way of producing inequalities, because they condition which people can and cannot be hired and progress in their careers. HELPINGOR HINDERING We have focused on scholarly and popular discussions on labour market integration in Europe, where the refugee crisis of 2015 – when Syrian refugees fled to Europe – stoked popular, political and academic debate. We looked not just at refugees, but at all migrant workers who leave their home country on their own initiative. Sometimes they are forced to leave, sometimes they are seeking better opportunities. Populist debate tends to reduce integration to cultural and lifestyle attitudes, values, norms, religion and language, but it ismuchmore than that. Populist arguments would have it that migrants are ‘coming over here, stealing our jobs’. In a negative economic cycle, this populist rhetoric only picks up, consequences we all have to live with – Brexit, or the downfall of Angela Merkel in Germany, which was instigated by the refugee crisis and the rise of the far right. There is an irony in the UK that we don’t have enough workers. Despite this, we still have questions and concerns about migrant workers. Refugees and asylum seekers in particular are often portrayed by populists as strains, burdens and problems for the countries they settle in – despite empirical evidence to the contrary in economies, labour markets and welfare systems. Why is it happening, and how is it generated by and reflected in practices? 28 |
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