engleski

Struggle for recognition: Bosnian refugees’ experiences of employment in Sweden

This article presents the personal experiences of refugees from Bosnia-Herzegovina related to their employment in Sweden. It is based on 35 interviews conducted in 2009 with asylum claimants and resettled refugees who came to Sweden in the early 1990s, aiming at their own perceptions and subjective assessments of their employment paths. The variety of experiences within each of these two groups suggests that individual employment paths can neither be fully explained by the admission category, nor in terms of the type of education, age, or gender. Although they admit the importance of these factors, the interviewees perceive chance as a decisive issue with regard to their initial access to the labour market, and its strong impact on their further success. They see official channels of professional recognition as far less functional than informal paths leading into the labour market that depend on personal encounters and connections. Against the background of laws and policies, personally experienced employment integration is revealed as a chance-ridden individual process.

employment; personal experiences; Bosnian refugees; Sweden

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