Open AccessInsiders or Outsiders Within? Immigrants in the Finnish Labor Market
Author(s) -
Annika Forsander
Publication year - 2003
Publication title -
finnish yearbook of population research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1796-6191
pISSN - 1796-6183
DOI - 10.23979/fypr.44984
Subject(s) - immigration , emigration , demographic economics , position (finance) , world war ii , population , labour economics , economics , split labor market theory , political science , secondary labor market , sociology , labor relations , demography , law , finance
This article focuses on the position of immigrants on the Finnish labor marketin thecontext of recent migration history and the disintegration of the traditional paid-worksociety. Finland is a so-called late immigration country, where a positive trend inmigratory movements did not begin until the beginning of the l 990s and where thelabor migration phase after WWII was experienced not as an immigration countrybut as ane of emigration. One outcome of this is that immigrants are treated in societyas a social burden rather than a labor resource. Results of an empirical study concerningimmigrants in the Finnish labor market indicate that more than a half ofimmigrants who have been residing in Finland for several years have an unstablelabor market career, and almost one-third of them are in the margins of the Finnishlabor market. It seems that in Finland, as in the labor markets in many other postindustrialsocieties, immigrants are acting as a buffer against upswings and downswingsin the economy.