With 16% of its population born abroad, Sweden has one of the larger immigrant populations among the European OECD countries. This report looks at the challenges of integrating migrants and their families into the Swedish labour market.

Flanders experienced large inflows of immigrants over the past decade, coming from an increasingly diverse range of countries, with growth rates outpacing the Netherlands, France and Germany, as well as Belgium as a whole. While integration outcomes have improved in recent years, some of the core indicators remain unfavourable in international comparison, especially for non-EU immigrant women, refugees, and youth with migrant parents.

Norway’s foreign-born population has tripled since 2000, and the share of migrants among the population has seen one of the largest increases across the OECD, mostly driven by labour migration from EU countries. Most migrants from non-EU countries, in contrast, are refugees and their family members. High qualification levels and labour market participation of the native-born raise the question of an adequate benchmark for integration outcomes, especially for the low-educated refugees and their families.

Relative to its population, Iceland experienced the largest inflow of immigrants over the past decade of any OECD country. Four out of five immigrants in Iceland have come from EU and EFTA countries, although there has been a recent increase in humanitarian arrivals. Employment rates are the highest in the OECD, for both men and women, reflecting the recent and labour market oriented nature of most immigration to Iceland. However, immigrants’ skills are often not well used, as witnessed by the high rate of formal overqualification. What is more, immigrants’ language skills are poor in international comparison and there is evidence of growing settlement of immigrants. Against this backdrop, Iceland is at a turning point in its integration framework, and seeks to develop a comprehensive integration policy for the first time. This review, the fifth in the series Working Together for Integration, provides an in depth analysis of the Icelandic integration system, highlighting its strengths, weaknesses, and potential areas for improvement. Earlier reviews in this series looked at integration in Sweden (2016), Finland (2018), Norway (2022) and Flanders (2023).

While Finland’s foreign-born population remains small by international standards, growth has been amongst the fastest in the OECD. Finland’s foreign born population have lower employment rates than native-born Finns and women, in particular, are struggling to integrate and face incentives ...

This report presents the way Gothenburg municipality and its state and non-state partners are addressing migrant integration issues and opportunities. It compiles data and qualitative evidence on how local integration efforts are designed and implemented within a multi-level governance framework.

Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden face similar problems of integrating large groups of immigrants, especially low-educated ones from outside the EU, into their labour markets. In this volume, researchers from across the Nordic Region analyse how labour market integration of immigrants can be promoted. Education policy, active labour market policy, social benefit policy and wage policy are analysed. A key conclusion is that no single policy is likely to suffice. Instead, various policies have to be combined. The exact policy mix must depend on evaluations of the trade-offs with other policy objectives.