Timbro-seminar 2: Subsidy, the road to work?

The second Timbro seminar I watched concerned the significant discrepancy in employment between immigrants and the native born population. This discrepancy is hardly new, but has persisted for at least as long as I've been actively studying the field (i.e. since 1998). To the best of my knowledge, it started sometime in the mid 80s. All the same, it is good to give it continuous attention, since it is a solid indicator of segregation.

Von Bahr, the author of the report presented in the seminar, discusses different explanatory variables that have been addressed in the public debate. She argues that discrimination is hardly a convincing such, since a survey conducted for the report showed that Swedes are more tolerant than many other populations (including, for instance, the Norwegians). Nor is there a lack of interventions. In fact, Sweden is known for spending heavily on programmes and training to integrate newcomers into the labour market. Rather, one should look to general labour market policies, like wage levels and work security. Since these are both very high, internationally speaking, there are some signifcant thresolds for immigrants to get over before they can enter the labour market. I.e, the entry level sustenance jobs that are found in many other countries (including Canada) do not really exist in Sweden, which creates an impediment for labour market integration.

In short, Timbro is saying pretty much the same as it has been saying for the past decades - reform work security legislation and lower pay roll taxes, and integration will improve.

Now, there is some truth to these arguments, I'd say. For instance, in a labour market where "the last one in, the first one out" is a regulatory regime at lay offs, new people (i.e. immigrants, youth and possibly women returning from maternity leave) in the labour market will, on a structural basis, find it harder to get entrenched there. This much I can agree with.

However, there are several problems with the presentation, as well (again, I have yet to get around to read the full report):

1) Discounting discrimination as problem is difficult to do based on the presented material. Opinion surveys, it seems to me, are probably a weak instrument at best to capture prevalence of discriminatory practices on the ground. This was wisely commented on by one of the commentators on the report, Ardalan Shekarabi, who pointed out that if you ask people if they are tolerant, they'll likely answer "yes", which says little about how they will actually conduct themselves when confronted with a situation where stereotypes and essentialist ideas about "others" come into play. This is probably particularly true in Sweden, where being tolerant is very much a deeply entrenched part of the Swedish self-image. What is needed, instead, is participatory observation and situational testing, and I'm not aware that anyone has conducted such studies in a comparative fashion between countries. Those that have been carried out in Sweden during the past decade consistently show that discriminatory behaviour does exist, both in employment situations, as well as when seeking housing, for instance.

2) Large sums of money are devoted to providing newcomers with language training and labour market interventions, this much is true, but being satisfied with this assumes that outcomes can be directly correlated to spending levels, and I'm not aware of any public management literature who would find this assumption convincing. In fact, the Swedish public administration has been consistently criticized for not knowing if the labour market policy administration delivers any measurable outcomes at all, both for the population in general and for immigrants. The past decade has even seen a lot of critique directed towards Swedish as a Second Language courses. I even believe that Timbro as sometime was part of that choir. It's strange that this dimension seems to have been left out in the report.

3) Entry level jobs are often a necessary first step for newcomers, this is true. But Swedish labour market statistics seem to stop measuring labour market success at that point, seemingly content as long as an immigrant has gotten a job, any job, regardless of the immigrant's previous work experience or educational level. That is hardly very satisfactory. If a great number of highly skilled people are doing work below their levels of competence, there is still a significant integration problem, and I'm not at all convinced that this would be addressed by simply lowering the payroll taxes.

Paternalism is the problem, not the solution

Today's article in the Swedish major daily DN discusses the unrest in Herrgården in the distrcit Rosengården in the city of Malmö, Sweden. The area is closely follows the pattern that is familiar in discussions about social exclusion and have also grabbed the spotlight in the national media because of the violent outburts of disaffected youth. The article discusses the counter measures taken by the seemingly desperate public decision-makers, primarly in the form of an increased police presence.

What really caught my eye was the suggestions made by Dr Carlbom, anthropoligist. He solution to the segregation is to "...stop the in-migration of immigrants to Malmö." For some reason, he does not agree with the dominant analysis which suggests that uneployment is a prime cause, saying only that he has difficulties seeing that as a cause: "There are many unemployed, but very few who throws rocks".


His solution is highly problematic, though.


While stopping immigration might go some way to address the rise in the rate of overcrowded apartments, a phenomenon that is generally associated with the area, but it will hardly address the reasons for such overcrowding, which, it seems to me must be attributed precisely to the high very unemployment rates that Carlbom discounts as relevant. To put it bluntly, I believe that people don't live in cramped up spaces because it is fun, but because they can't afford anything else.


More importantly, however, stopping immigration is questionable since the measure would constitute a highly paternalist approach to integration. It basically entails adopting the principle that certain people in society (namely immigrants) don't have the freedom of movement that everybody else has. That is, if anything, highly disempowering. If there already is a siege-mentality (and the article certainly suggests this), then it will only be strengthed by such quite draconic measures, further fuelling frustration and antagonistic us vs. them feelings.


It seems to me that in a situation where disempowerment and social exclusion is so prevalent, such paternalist measures will only make things worse.