Whether and how quickly immigrants and their descendants gain a foothold in the labour market significantly influences the process of their social integration and their opportunities for social and economic participation. This makes the labour market integration of people with a migration background an important topic in the public discourse in the EU.

The quality of jobs plays a particularly important role in the integration and financial and social participation. Here, Germany is a good example of an imbalance in terms of equal opportunities: of highly qualified immigrants, around ten percent are unemployed, while only three percent of top German graduates do not have a job. Moreover, academics with foreign roots are often paid less than their German colleagues. Rather, their entry into the labour market often takes place through comparatively low-paid jobs in low professional positions or below one’s qualifications, or through jobs with uncertain employment prospects such as temporary work or fixed-term employment. People with a migration background are also more often exposed to potentially unhealthy working conditions such as time pressure, shift work or changing working hours than people without a migration background. Researchers suggest that the Corona crisis has only exacerbated these circumstances.

Migrant women are particularly affected by all these circumstances, and for many of them, the situation is aggravated by the intersectional entanglement of racist, xenophobic and sexist structures. Therefore, it is essential to strengthen these group(s) of people.

This is exactly why the WINBIZ project was launched. It involves migrant women or women with a non-Western background and with medium-high levels of education, in a training pathway aimed at enabling the acquisition and development of personal, transversal and specific competencies and skills necessary for their full integration and reintegration into the European labour market, thus generating well-being for themselves and for the society they live in.

Sources:

IAB Summary Report 5/2020, Current analyses from the Institute for Employment Research. (German Report): https://doku.iab.de/kurzber/2020/kb2520.pdf

Jobware, Highly skilled migrants are in low demand (German article): https://www.jobware.de/ratgeber/hochqualifizierte-migranten-sind-wenig-begehrt

Report on equality between women and men in the European Union 2018-2020: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/A-9-2021-0315_EN.html