Differences in labour market integration of humanitarian migrants in European countries

There is insufficient research on the question: why in some countries refugees are better integrated than in others, nor there are many comparative studies describing differences in integration outcomes of humanitarian migrants. This paper investigates economic integration across European countries as of 2008 through the indicators of employment, quality of jobs and overqualification. No country demonstrated a very high level of economic integration of humanitarian migrants. In Greece, their employment chances were almost equal to natives but the quality of employment and overqualification rates were much worse. On the contrary, in the UK, the chances for a ‘good’ job and rates of skill mismatch were similar, but the probability of employment for humanitarian migrants was much lower. Other countries revealed moderate disadvantage of refugees in the labour market, with Norway as a positive outlier. The reasons for these differences may lie in the welfare state types, but further research is needed.