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2019 (1)

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Dissertation
Social capital and the labour market integration of highly educated refugees in Flanders. An exploratory qualitative study

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Abstract

Upon their arrival in Flanders, highly educated refugees face major obstacles in finding jobs appropriate to their skills and knowledge. Their low employment rates are attributed to their experience of blocked means, such as the lack of institutional know-how, their shortage of social capital and the devaluation of their work experience and diplomas issued in their home country, which limits their entrance into the Flemish labour market. Literature shows that, to react to and overcome these obstacles, social capital must be refunctioned to compensate for the social capital left in the home country. Social capital is an essential prerequisite for labour market integration. This qualitative exploratory research is the first to specifically investigate how social capital influences the labour market integration of highly educated refugees. Twenty-two semi-structured interviews and one questionnaire with highly educated refugees (12 employed and 11 unemployed) were carried out, mostly with those who arrived between 2013 and 2018. We argue that during the three stages of labour market integration formed in this thesis (i.e., before/ while accessing the labour market, and after obtaining the job) three types of social capital can be established – namely bonding, bridging, and linking. The analysis of the responses confirms that there is a correlation between social capital and labour market integration. Particularly, bonding social capital (i.e., family and co-ethnic friends) provides information, emotional, and material resources to access the labour market, while bridging social capital (i.e., Flemish native population) seems to be less favourable due to the difficulties in bridging connections with the Flemish community. For 57% of the participants, linking social capital (i.e., social workers of, for example, OCMW or VDAB) was crucial to find a job. However, to access the resources embedded in linking social capital, some participants experienced mismatched expectations and unequal treatment by the representatives of this form of social capital. Further, it is concluded that social capital increases opportunities in the labour market. Based on these results, further research topics and recommendations are discussed.

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