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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