Essays on poverty and labor market integration for refugees

Abstract

The last part of this thesis is dedicated to labor market integration for refugees in Switzerland, which is closely tied to poverty. Chapters 1 and 2 show that a strong labor market attachment is important to protect against poverty regardless of area or even life cycle. This is even more so for refugees. Refugees usually cannot fall back on an array of social insurances, like natives can. Given that they have fled their origin country and sought refuge in a host country, refugees are also unlikely to possess financial reserves. Yet, compared to native job seekers, refugees face several additional barriers, e.g., lacking knowledge of the local language, trauma or discrimination to name a few. Given these difficulties it is interesting to know which strategies work best to ensure a rapid and durable labor market integration of refugees.