Pieter Bevelander

Declining employment success of immigrant males in Sweden: Observed or unobserved characteristics?

Abstract. Focusing on Nordic and Yugoslavian immigrant males, we study the determinants of employment success of natives and immigrants in Sweden. Furthermore, we investigate the reasons behind the arising gap in employment success between Swedes and immigrants from 1970 to 1990. In a decomposition analysis, we find that the main part of the decline in the employment probability of immigrants relative to Swedes over time is explained by a change in coefficients (unobserved characteristics) rather than a change in determinants (observed characteristics).

The employment integration of immigrants in Sweden

Abstract This article investigates the declining employment assimilation of various groups of foreign‐born men and women in Sweden during the period 1970 to 1990. It discusses the factors which determine the probability of being employed in Sweden in 1970 and 1990. The analysis reveals that formal human capital characteristics of the foreign‐born are important factors for obtaining employment in the Swedish labour market. This does not explain the entire difference in levels in the employment rate between Swedes and the various groups of foreign‐born. Traditional discrimination may explain this situation, but an alternative explanation could be structural changes that have occurred in the economy, which increased the demand for specialised knowledge such as culture‐specific social competence, and language skills. These developments favoured the native‐born in terms of obtaining employment.

Social capital and voting participation of immigrants and minorities in Canada

Abstract Using the social capital literature as a base, we explore the impact of interaction with others on voter participation with particular emphasis on exploring the differences between Canadian-born majority and minority residents. We use the 2002 wave of the Equality Security Community survey to explore the relationship between voting and personal characteristics, work characteristics, social capital attributes and ethnic characteristics. We find that the odds of voting are largely a product of socio-demographic and social capital attributes. The impact of immigration and ethnicity is largely overridden. This suggests that it is not the minority attribute that impacts voting. Rather it is age, level of schooling and level of civic engagement which affects the probability of voting, both federal and provincial.

Voting and Social Inclusion in Sweden

Three decades ago, Sweden extended municipal and provincial voting privileges to non-citizen residents arguing that it would increase political influence, interest and self-esteem among foreign citizens. The aim of this paper is to explore the act of voting as a measure of social inclusion by comparing voting propensities of immigrants (people born outside Sweden), their descendants (born in Sweden) and native Swedish citizens (those who have citizenship through jus sanguine) while controlling for a range of socio-economic, demographic characteristics, contextual factors and a set of “hard” and “soft” social inclusion related variables. In particular we focus on the impact of citizenship acquisition -- does the symbolic act of attaining citizenship result in increased voting participation on the part of Swedish residents who are not citizens by birth. We use the Swedish 2006 electoral survey matched to registry data from Statistics Sweden to assess the correlates of voting by Swedish-born and immigrant residents. Using instrumental variable regressions we estimate the impact of citizenship acquisition. We find that acquisition of citizenship makes a real difference to the probability of voting. Immigrants who naturalise are in general far more likely to vote than those who do not.

The Employment Status of Immigrant Women: The Case of Sweden1

This article presents an exploration of the employment status of various groups of immigrant women in the Swedish labor market in the period 1970–1995. Since employment is one of the key components for the integration of immigrants, it is interesting to study what factors determine whether or not immigrants become employed after entering Sweden. Numerous studies have analyzed the labor market integration of immigrant men, whereas the integration of women still has received less attention (Ekberg, 1983, 1991; Hammarstedt, 2001; Scott, 1999). This study can be seen as a contribution to an increase in the knowledge of the labor market integration of female immigrants in Sweden.

Young people's attitudes towards Muslims in Sweden

Abstract With the use of multiple regression technique, the principal objective of this study is to clarify and examine young peoples attitudes towards Muslims, and the relationships between these attitudes and a large number of background factors. We use a representative sample of 9,498 non-Muslim youths between 15 and 19 years of age. The main results show that, when controlling for several background variables simultaneously, the country of birth, socio-economic background and school/programme factors all have an effect on the attitude towards Muslims. Moreover, socio-psychological factors, the relationship to friends and the perceptions of gender role patterns are found to be important. In addition, local factors like high levels of unemployment, high proportions of immigrants in a local environment also have an effect. No differences in the attitudes of boys and girls were found. Further, the study establishes a correlation between negative attitudes and right-wing populist seats in local government.

The Labour Market Integration of Refugee and Family Reunion Immigrants: A Comparison of Outcomes in Canada and Sweden

This paper assesses the employment and earnings trajectories of refugee and family reunion category immigrants in Canada and Sweden using two national level sources of data. The Canadian Immigration Database (IMDB) is a file that links the intake record of post-1979 immigrants with annual taxation records. The 2007 Swedish Register Data includes information on all legal permanent residents. Using standard regression methods, we compare labour force outcomes of age–sex–schooling–place of birth cohorts looking specifically at non-economic (family reunion and refugee intake) immigrants from Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan and the former Yugoslavia. We find that the employment and earning trajectories of the selected non-economic migrant groups are quite similar in the two host countries, although earnings are higher in Canada than in Sweden.

Self-employment of immigrants and natives in Sweden – a multilevel analysis

Recent research suggests that self-employment among immigrants is due to a combination of multiple situational, cultural and institutional factors, all acting together. Using multilevel regression and unique data on the entire population of Sweden for the year 2007, this study attempts to quantify the relative importance for the self-employed of embeddedness in ethnic contexts (country of birth) and regional business and public regulatory frameworks (labour market areas). This information indicates whether the layers under consideration are valid constructs of the surroundings that influence individual self-employment. The results show that 10% (women) and 8% (men) of the total variation in individual differences in self-employment can be attributed to the country of birth. When labour market areas are included in the analyses, the share of the total variation increases to 14% for women and 12% for men. The results show that the ethnic context and the economic environment play a minor role in understanding individual differences in self-employment levels. The results can have important implications when planning interventions or other actions focusing on self-employment as public measures to promote self-employment often are based on geographic areas and ethnic contexts.

General Versus Vocational Education and Employment Integration of Immigrants in Sweden

This article investigates the effect of human capital on the employment acquisition of foreign-born men and women in Sweden. Besides categorizing different levels of education, a distinction is made between type of education, general and vocational, and where education is obtained, home or host country. The data used is based on register data for the year 2003 held by Statistics Sweden. The population under consideration is the total population subdivided by the following countries of birth: Sweden, Former Yugoslavia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Poland, Romania, Chile, Germany, Iraq, Iran, and Lebanon. The analysis shows that foreign-born individuals have a higher probability of employment with a vocational and host country education as opposed to a general and home country education.

Voting and Social Inclusion

Three decades ago, Sweden extended municipal and provincial voting privileges to non-citizen residents arguing that it would increase political influence, interest and self-esteem among foreign citizens. The aim of this paper is to explore the act of voting as a measure of social inclusion by comparing voting propensities of immigrants (people born outside Sweden), their descendants (born in Sweden) and native Swedish citizens (those who have citizenship through jus sanguine) while controlling for a range of socio-economic, demographic characteristics, contextual factors and a set of “hard” and “soft” social inclusion related variables. In particular we focus on the impact of citizenship acquisition -- does the symbolic act of attaining citizenship result in increased voting participation on the part of Swedish residents who are not citizens by birth. We use the Swedish 2006 electoral survey matched to registry data from Statistics Sweden to assess the correlates of voting by Swedish-born and immigrant residents. Using instrumental variable regressions we estimate the impact of citizenship acquisition. We find that acquisition of citizenship makes a real difference to the probability of voting. Immigrants who naturalise are in general far more likely to vote than those who do not.