Immigrant women in and outside employment

The project combines two perspectives. The first part of the project examines how the content of the introduction programme and other qualification measures affects women's transition into work in the short term. The second part examines how labour market attachment develops over time, both among women with a refugee background and among other immigrant women who have not taken part in the introduction programme.

In the analyses, we direct attention to how health conditions, care responsibilities, other family circumstances, working conditions, discrimination and experiences in working life affect stability, mobility and the risk of permanent labour market exit. Taken together, the two parts provide new knowledge both about the immediate outcomes among those who have completed the introduction programme and about what promotes participation in working life over time, for this group as well as for other groups of immigrant women. The project examines and answers the following three overarching research questions:

• Which qualification measures, within and outside the introduction programme, promote a rapid transition into work among refugee women, and which barriers may make it difficult to benefit from these measures?
• What significance do the content of the qualification provision and participants' own circumstances have for attachment to work in the first years after the end of the programme?
• Which conditions and life events contribute to lasting and stable attachment to working life, and what can lead to early exit?

The two parts of the project are linked theoretically, analytically and methodologically. Our design combines analyses of register data, a review of existing knowledge and qualitative interviews.

We will carry out longitudinal analyses based on both quantitative and qualitative data sources. This makes it possible to study how labour market integration develops over time, rather than analysing a single outcome measured at one particular point in time.

We examine labour market integration in the short term, in the transition between qualification in the introduction programme and work or further qualification; in the medium term, in the first years after the end of the programme; and in the long term, through labour market careers that span several life phases for different groups of immigrant women.

This approach responds to an important knowledge gap: we still know too little about how immigrant women's opportunities and challenges change over the course of their lives in Norway, and how these changes affect their integration into the labour market.