Refugee employment in the Basque Country and Emilia-Romagna.

Over the past two decades, the topic surrounding the integration of refugees into host countries has experienced a significant escalation in focus, particularly with regard to labour-market integration. To further explore this issue of how hosting communities integrate refugees into the labour markets, the following thesis focuses on the Basque Country and Emilia-Romagna, two regions within Spain and Italy, respectively. These regions were chosen to add to the body of literature that deals with the gap between regional policy differences (the Basque Country and Emilia-Romagna) within their respective national-contexts (Spain and Italy) to further contribute to the study of refugee labour-market integration. Specifically, the objective of this thesis was to map out the major successes and challenges of the refugee labour-market integration policies in the respective regions by emphasising the factors that can either increase or hinder employability in their respective labour markets. Through semi-structured qualitative interviews and by questioning a range of individuals which included refugees, NGO workers and policymakers from both these contexts, this study revealed, although to differing extents, that policies regarding the provision of language courses, recognition of skills, facilitating permission to work, and ensuring freedom of settlement to be the main areas within which the Basque Country and Emilia-Romagna might find common ground on policies which facilitate labour-market access for refugees. Obstacles regarding the processes of accessing residency permits represented a clear policy failure in both regions. Moreover, in the Basque Country, policies regarding the recognition of previous qualifications also proved disappointing in their outcomes, whereas discriminatory attitudes were more prevalent among the refugee participants in Emilia-Romagna, suggesting that policies regarding the equality of treatment within the workplace were less effective for the Italian region. Finally, establishing social contacts emerged as the most popular method for increasing a refugee’s chances of becoming employed.