International migration is affected by various economic, environmental, political, and social factors. We use the concept migrant as an umbrella term to encompass people who have left their country of origin for different reasons, such as immigrants, asylum seekers, refugees, and so on (IOM, 2019). According to European Statistics, in 2021, 2.3 million migrants moved to the EU from non-EU countries and 1.4 million moved from one EU member state to another (European Statistics, 2023a). This makes a total of 3.7 million people who were on the move in Europe in 2021. Sweden received around 90,000 migrants, Norway around 53,000, and Switzerland around 144,000 migrants during year 2021 (European Statistics, 2023a). Integration covers the following areas: employment and education, social inclusion, housing, health, and active citizenship. From our point of view, the interesting figures relate to employment and education. It is not surprising that migrants’ employment rates are lower and unemployment rates higher compared with nationals. In 2021, the employment of non-EU citizens was 70.0%, compared with 78.9% for nationals and 81.5% for citizens of other EU member states. The unemployment rate was 6.3% for nationals, 8.7% for citizens of other EU member states, and approximately twice as high (15.5%) for non-EU citizens (European Statistics, 2023b). When comparing education, European Statistics follows three topics: educational attainment, early leavers from education, and training and adult participation in learning. For example, tertiary educational attainment for nationals was 42.1%, 39.9% for citizens of other EU member states, and 32.2% for non-EU citizens. The share of early leavers was notably higher among citizens of other EU member states (23.3%) and higher still among non-EU citizens (26.0%) compared with nationals (8.4%). Whereas participation in adult education was slightly higher (11.4%) among non-EU citizens compared with citizens of other EU member states (9.7%), and nationals (10.9%) in 2021 (European Statistics, 2023c).

This book is the result of a project examining ‘Successful integration of migrants in and through vocation and work’, which ran from 2020 to 2022 and was financed by the Swedish Research Council for Health, Working Life and Wellbeing. The project aimed to follow skilled migrants’ pathways to their previous vocations in Sweden. We found that there were different pathways – some, like chefs, started working in their previous vocations after arriving in Sweden. Some re-entered their professions but on a lower level, such as nurses working as assistant nurses. Some had re-trained themselves in a new vocation, and some further trained and worked as teachers in their vocational areas. We could identify four common factors in their stories: Swedish language competence, strong motivation and agency, supporting networks/supporting persons, and structural opportunities (Eliasson et al., 2022).

In this book, our focus is on different aspects of education, employment, and integration of migrants in various contexts: Norway, Sweden, and Switzerland. We chose these countries because they have different migration and industrial histories as well as educational systems. While the chapters in the book approach these topics from various perspectives, they commonly focus on education, employment, and integration and what could be perceived as the relative success of integration processes. The chapters discuss the notion of ‘successful integration’ from different theoretical vantage points, perspectives, and aspects.

The integration of migrants into their new environments is a key focus in Europe. An action plan on integration and inclusion by the European Commission puts additional emphasis on, inter alia, inclusion for all through targeted and tailored support, enhancing migrant participation, and long-term integration. Some of the main interventions include skills recognition and the improvement of employment opportunities (European Commission, 2020). This is particularly important in relation to migrants re-entering their previous vocations in the new country.

The integration of migrants is a major political and academic issue that has captured the imagination and interest of different social actors in Sweden as well as other countries. The debate is often contentious across political, public, policy, academic, and civil society spectra. In Sweden, this debate has intensified due to the increase in the number of refugees and asylum seekers over the past few years, as was evident during the general election of 2022, and the new government, like many governments in other EU countries, is now adopting restrictive asylum and immigration policies, calling it ‘a paradigm shift’, even though the previous government had already begun to tighten immigration policy. The consensus among researchers regarding the position of migrants in the Swedish labour market is that they struggle to access a vocation that is on a par with their educational level. This is attributed to several factors, including discrimination, a lack of relevant social capital, and formal recognition of their qualifications and experience. Many studies focus on integration issues, yet there remains no universal accepted definition of integration, let alone a definition of what ‘successful integration’ entails. The book’s editorial board takes an eclectic view, hoping to start an academic debate about what ‘successful integration’ means. While discussions about the integration of migrants tend to focus on integration failures, there are millions of migrants in Europe and in the Nordic countries who have successfully integrated into their host societies.

Dodevska (2023), tracing the genealogy of the concept integration points out that since the 1800s integration has been conceived of as a matter of social order:

(…) [T]he idea of integration still enacts a similar social utopia as in the late 1800s: a wholesome, cohesive society based on cooperation and order, where ethno-cultural-religious-racial differentiations remain entrenched (and even encouraged), but members are “united in diversity” (to use the EU’s motto) through a universal acceptance of “common” (Eurocentric) values. This, of course, by default implies a major accommodation on the part of minoritized and migranticized populations, but only a minor sacrifice on the part of those that claim membership “by blood” in the national ingroup (Dodevska, 2023, p. 9–10).

Generally, social scientists from different disciplines have focused on making sense of institutional and policy aspects of integration and initiatives to facilitate the integration of migrants and then the consequences of these for the individual (e.g., Osman, 2006). Various disciplines understand and explain integration from different theoretical perspectives. Sociological theories describe the integration of migrants into the labour market of their host society. Some, through macro analyses, attempt to identify the cause of structural inequality – among these theories being the underclass thesis, the idea of racialised class fraction, segmented labour theory, and different types of globalisation theories. The common denominator being, however, that they all ignore “the efficacy of social agency” (Ratcliffe, 2004). One of the main explanations for the position of minorities, migrants, and refugees is direct or indirect discrimination through racism or racialised market relationships. These theories and analyses emphasise structural hindrances. Another theoretical perspective, while emphasising the importance of migrants’ agency, stresses that they also suffer from various forms of lacks, or deficits. Put simply, they do not possess the social capital to compete effectively. This form of analysis takes a number of forms: language problem, the lack of appropriate skills, faulty job strategies (Ratcliffe, 2004, p. 98). Finally, the occupational position of migrants in the labour market in Sweden, but also in different countries is a consequence of positive social agency. The focus in this approach is on achievement rather than deficits, particularly how migrants and refugees transcend obstacles such as discrimination or their ability to mobilise cultural resources to access the labour market (Ratcliffe, 2004).

However, other perspectives can also be used to explain the position of migrants in the labour market – the socio-cultural perspective, for instance, popular in educational sciences, holds that we mediate the world through language, artefacts, and practices. This can be used to examine how skilled migrants and refugees can access their previous vocations in a new context. Sociocultural perspectives see vocational knowledge embedded in vocational communities of practice in specific contexts. By vocational practices, we mean interaction and communication in the workplace as well as the local rules, norms, tools, and technologies used in a vocation. A ‘community of practice’ is Lave and Wenger’s (1991, p. 98) concept. They perceive it as a set of relations among persons, activity, and world. Community of practice refers to the relations, knowledge, and activity of a vocation in a workplace and participation refers to the process of ‘becoming and being’ accepted as a member of the community of practice (Lave & Wenger, 1991). In both processes, it is about acquisition of different types of cultural skills and competences as well as acceptance from the community of practice. To access the previous vocation, the key is recognition of migrants’ prior knowledge or skills. Migrants’ struggles are about crossing boundaries and integrating the knowledge and skills acquired outside the new environment.

Chapters in the Book

The chapters in this book reflect education, employment, and integration from micro, meso and macro perspectives; some are based on interviews with migrants and people who work with them, others on documents and literature about migration. The book is divided into two parts; the first deals with the Swedish context and the second with the Swiss and Norwegian contexts.

The Swedish context starts with Ali Osman’s Chap. 2: Migrants Successfully Accessing Their Vocations in Sweden: The Significance of Labour Market Initiatives to Facilitate the Integration of Migrants and Refugees. From the perspective of three migrants’ experiences in Sweden the chapter provides an overview of how integration is conceptualised in Swedish integration policy and examines also how this shapes integration practices and measures. Osman shows how integration practices can function as a control mechanism to classify, categorise, and order immigrants’ knowledge and competence, but more importantly, to inculcate into immigrants that their knowledge and competence is irrelevant, or only partly relevant, in relation to accessing their vocations in Sweden. The chapter stresses that successful practices are contingent not on the initiatives per se, but rather on serendipity, which seems to be a red thread running through informants’ success stories.

Per Andersson’s Chap. 3: Understanding Recognition of Prior Learning as a Tool for the Labour Market Integration of Skilled Migrants explores the process of recognising skilled migrants’ prior learning and highlights three concerns. What is the object of the recognition process, the individual’s formal and actual competence? Is the subject of the process, the migrant? The process of recognition could be seen solely as a matter of classification and assessment, but this misses the fact that the process should also entail a learning process for the individual. A successful recognition of prior learning process facilitates a migrant’s access to the labour market.

Fredrik Hertzberg’s Chap. 4: Potential, Actuality or Vulnerability? The Importance of Recognition in Career Counselling for Newly Arrived Migrants also focuses on the importance of recognition but here the emphasis shifts from labour markets to the work of study and career counsellors. According to his interviewees, while some recognition processes are unproblematic, others can lead to conflicts in counselling work. An example of the latter is the tension between recognition and inclusion, where recognition of previously established educational and career aspirations may not lead to inclusion into the workforce. Hertzberg’s results show that successfully supporting newly arrived migrants’ career paths is a complex part of counsellors’ work.

In her Chap. 5, Important Encounters for Education and Employment, Eva Eliasson examines descriptions of skilled migrants’ encounters in Sweden, and the meaning the migrants attribute to these encounters for their paths to employment. While some encounters led to direct access to education or workplaces, other encounters supported, encouraged, and strengthened the respondents’ social identity, ultimately contributing to their inclusion in the labour market. One conclusion is that successful encounters may lead to successful inclusion into working life. Another factor that facilitates access to work is the ability to resist other people’s negative constructions and to be persistent in job searching.

Åsa Broberg and Lázaro Moreno Herrera take a historical perspective on integration and development in vocational education in Chap. 6: Education for Access to The Swedish Labour Market and Society: A Historical Comparison of Practices for the Integration of Immigrants in the 1960s and early 2000s. They highlight some of the core features of this development while elucidating such questions as how perceptions about work, education, and integration have evolved. They present three cases, namely, tailored workplace experience, company training, and a professionally tailored language training programme. The chapter shows how integration has evolved and why, how, and what immigrants need to learn to attain successful integration into the Swedish labour market and society.

Marianne Teräs’s Chap. 7: Integration as a Conceptual Resource When Studying Skilled Migrants in the Workplaces analyses the concept of integration in the literature, focusing on the integration of skilled migrants. The concept is contested, with both defenders and opponents. The literature review suggests that the concept of integration has not been clearly defined, with authors taking for granted that readers know what it means. Integration processes as well as multiple uses of the concept are highlighted. The author concludes that researchers need to be conscious of and transparent about their use of the term integration.

The eighth and last chapter in this first part of the book, Chap. 8: Integration and the Art of Making a Society: The Case of Swedish Society by Petros Gougoulakis poses the question: “Who is a Swede and how does one becomes a Swede?” He reflects on immigration and “Swedishness” in the light of the ongoing public debate on integration, ethnicity, and equality. Popular adult education – the experience of Swedish “folkbildning” for civic participation and integration – is used as an example of how to achieve social cohesion, reduce inequalities, and counteract discrimination and marginalisation.

The second part of the book provides an international dimension to the questions of education, employment, and integration, beginning with Barbara Stadler, Marlis Kammermann, Iris Michel, and Marie-Theres Schönbächler’s Chap. 9: Successful Integration of Refugees in Vocational Education and Training: Experiences from a New Pre-vocational Programme. The authors offer an overview of the Swiss Integration Agenda before focusing on a specific educational programme: pre-apprenticeship for integration (PAI). The aim of this programme is to support refugees and temporarily admitted people in their endeavour to access vocational education and training in Switzerland. They explore the participants’ learning environments in the workplace and school and identify factors contributing to participants’ successful transition to accessing a regular apprenticeships programme.

Line Nortvedt, Astrid Gillespie, Kari Dahl and Ida Drange’s Chap. 10: ‘Open Sesame’: Skilled Immigrants’ Experiences with Bridging Programmes in the Validation Process in Norway also examines a programme which prepares participants for the next step. They focus on skilled migrants – nurses, teachers, and engineers who have enrolled in bridging programmes. Their interest is in describing the migrants’ experience of success factors for the maintenance and development of a professional habitus and for inclusion in the labour market. Success factors described are resilience, for example, being able to see professional downgrading as something temporary, being able to locate social and economic support for requalification, having a strong professional identity, renegotiating what profession means in a new cultural context, and recognition from colleagues and employers.

The eleventh chapter by Tatjana Bru Blixen, Kai Andre Fegri, and Ellen Beate Hellne-Halvorsen, Chap. 11: Multicultural Perspectives in Driving Instructor Education and Driving Schools for Professional Drivers in Norway examines how a multicultural perspective is integrated into driving instructor education and education of professional drivers in traffic schools in Norway. Many of the public transit bus drivers and drivers of other commercial motor vehicles are immigrants and second language speakers. The study centres on investigating the training experiences of teacher educators of driving instructors and teachers of professional immigrant drivers on how driving students attend training and gain a professional license. The perspective is on second language and cultural challenges within driving instructor education and schools for professional drivers. The researchers pointed out that learning a new traffic culture to ensure safety on the roads is vital to the successful inclusion of immigrant professional drivers.

In the final Chap. 12, Concluding Remarks Eva Eliasson, Ali Osman and Marianne Teräs state that the various chapters in the book show that integration via education and employment can be approached from different angles but what is understood as success varies according to context and the historical moment.

The chapters in the book are based on different empirical, theoretical, and methodological points of departure, examining education, employment, and integration of migrants. While the empirical contexts are diverse – Sweden, Switzerland, and Norway –these are all small European countries with strong welfare systems. In other words, the institutional frameworks of the welfare state impact not only on reception but also on initiatives to facilitate the integration of migrants. Because all countries have different migration histories and policies which shape the successful integration of migrants, the intention here is not to compare Sweden with other countries.