Tracking the Migrant Journey

What obstacles do people – particularly women – face as they move between continents? And how can European countries better integrate migrants into the workforce once they arrive? These were among the issues tackled at the 2017 European Development Days in Brussels last month. But as those reaching the shores of Italy this year already outstrip arrivals for all of 2016, panellists also grappled with the role of development assistance itself.

“[Economic growth] can increase migration or it can reduce migration,” said Gervais Appave, special policy adviser to the director-general at the International Organization for Migration. “There are very few people who migrate from the poorest countries in the world. They do not have the means to do that. As development increases, they have the means to travel.”

For Marta Foresti, managing director of the Overseas Development Institute, “when it comes to Africa … there are two fundamental root causes [of migration] that I’m not quite convinced development aid can do much about.”

She cited demography – with projections of more people of working age in Africa by 2020 than the rest of the world combined – and the fruits of development aid itself. According to Foresti, fewer deaths in childbirth, combined with people having more money and information mean “more people move. The vast majority of them move within the continent, but some of those will continue to try and attempt that journey to Europe.”

“We shouldn’t be tricked into thinking that throwing money at it will make a big difference,” she added.

Meanwhile, the journey to Europe remains perilous.

Corruption and gender

Ortun Merkle, a PhD Research Fellow at Maastricht University, has been studying the phenomenon of “sextortion” – a form of corruption, where women have to pay using their bodies, rather than with money. This can include sexual favours, from exposing body parts to sexual intercourse.

“What we saw in our study [was] that especially for irregular migrants this is a constant phenomenon,” Merkle said. Her research found that corruption and sexual violence is a consistent companion for women along their migration routes, especially in places like Libya. Some reports indicate that corruption, including sextortion, continued to be a challenge once migrants reached southern Europe.

In northern Europe, “one of the things we saw very frequently is corruption with landlords,” she added. They are asking for either additional money or sexual favours to give refugees – especially women – apartments. Or, they are asking refugees to pay rent even though the rent is already paid for by official sources.”

Ortrun Merkle discusses the link between migration and corruption; what exactly ‘sextortion’ means; and how corruption affects migrants on arrival in a new country:

Integration and work

Once they have received a right to stay in a new country, migrants still face significant barriers to integration, including the struggle to find work.

Swedish furniture giant IKEA believes it has part of the answer.

The company’s Refugee Inclusion Program, in operation in Switzerland since June 2016, offered refugees the chance to join the Swiss labour market – often the first barrier to employment given the need to provide references when applying for work.

“That’s often the problem,” said Lorenz Isler. “They don’t get the opportunity to work in a Swiss company, get to know the Swiss labour market, the rules, culture …”

Two refugees in each of the company’s nine Swiss stores were selected for a six-month internship, which included intercultural-awareness training for both the refugees and their co-workers. The company has committed to two rounds of the programme per year, for three years.

“It’s a small start,” Isler said. “But if all companies the size of IKEA did something like this then we wouldn’t have the problem we have now.”

The first round saw just one of the 18 participants leave due to a lack of motivation, while six were subsequently offered full-time work at IKEA, after applying through the normal procedure.

Isler said that after the programme the participants proved much more confident with their language skills, though the company is striving to include more women in the next phase.

According to a recent McKinsey study on how to better integrate new arrivals to Europe, 70% of the 2.3 million asylum seekers arriving in Europe in 2015-16 were male, while about 50% were aged between 18 and 34. The same study argued for the importance of recognising the skills of refugees who cannot provide documentation of their degrees.In Norway, “50% who had their skills recognised in that manner in 2013 have since found employment or professional training opportunities.”

 

Banner image credit: Tim Lüddemann via Creative Commons