Arctic Yearbook 2014 | Page 119

119 Arctic Yearbook 2014   There was a challenge to attract inhabitants to the Arctic and preserve a structure of settlements under changes in technologies or depletion of resources, reducing labour demand. This paper presented northern economies which are not based primarily on resource extraction. Two northern counties of Sweden, Västerbotten and Norrbotten, have attracted skilled workers by developing markets in education and research. Differences in job opportunities in the counties for Swedishborn and immigrant women with children were studied in the paper. Variations in earnings and LFP were investigated for fifteen ethnic groups and four aggregate types of immigrants including those from the Nordic countries, from other European countries, from countries with a predominance of refugees among the immigrants, and the group of all other countries combined. This study confirms that earnings of immigrant women are significantly lower with respect to Swedish-born women and that LFP is also considerably lower in immigrant groups. However, these differences decline significantly the longer the immigrants have been in Sweden. Even the earnings and LFP of “refugee” immigrants, which were significantly lower on average, still increased during the study period. Other differences between the ethnic groups were not pronounced. There were slight differences in the geographical distribution of labour outcomes. The earnings of immigrant women were slightly higher in the remote areas of Norrbotten, and women from the Nordic countries residing in cities and city fringe areas had greater earnings and employment rates compared to those living in remote areas. However, women from other groups had reduced earnings and employment when living in cities and fringe areas. Women’ labour market outcomes were visibly lower in the municipalities bordering Finland, and this was presumably because these municipalities share labour markets with Finnish towns and this distorted the statistics on the actual local labour market situation. The estimates, however, did not support any effect on a particular group of immigrants. Human capital, especially host country-specific human capital, plays an important role in labour market outcomes. This study shows that integration as measured in economic outcomes can be quite successful and can be achieved in first generation immigrants. Controll