Search results

The purpose of this paper is to understand the value of foreign work experience for young migrants after their return to the home country labour market and their labour market preferences relative to stayers.

The authors analyse the labour market integration patterns of young return migrants in Slovakia. After reconstructing the life histories of young people from online CVs, a set of regression models investigates the attractiveness, salary expectations and positions of interest to returnees in comparison to stayers.

Post-accession foreign work experience increases the attractiveness of job candidates. Foreign work experience changes the expectations of returnees with respect to wages and widens their perspective on the location of future work. In the underperforming labour market, migration experience signals to employers a set of skills that differentiate young returnees from young stayers in a positive way.

While the web data are not representative, it allows the authors to study return migration from a perspective that large representative data sets do not allow.

Foreign work experience is, in general, an asset for (re)integration into the home labour market, but the higher salary demands of returnees might hinder the process in a less-skilled segment of the labour market.

Return migration is a relatively underresearched area, and knowledge about the perception of returnees among employers and the labour market preferences of returnees is relatively limited. Another contribution lies in the use of online data to analyse return migration from the perspective of both labour demand and supply.

Studies on the work integration of persons with disabilities (PwD) and the role of social dialogue therein are scarce. The study examines how the different systems of workers’ representation and industrial relations in Slovakia and Norway facilitate PwD work integration. Taking a social ecosystem perspective, we acknowledge the role of various stakeholders and their interactions in supporting PwD work integration. The paper’s conceptual contribution lies in including social dialogue actors in this ecosystem.

Evidence was collected via desk research, 35 semi-structured in-depth interviews with 51 respondents and stakeholder workshops in 2019–2020.

The findings from Norway confirm the expected coordination of unions and employers in PwD work integration. Evidence from Slovakia shows that in decentralised industrial relations systems, institutional constraints beyond the workplace determine employers’ and worker representatives’ approaches in PwD integration. Most policy-level outcomes are contested, as integration occurs predominantly via sheltered workplaces without interest representation.

This paper identifies the primary sources of variation in the work integration of PwD. It also highlights opportunities for social partners across both situations to exercise agency and engagement to improve PwD work integration.

By integrating two streams of literature – social policy and welfare state and industrial relations – this paper examines PwD work integration from a social ecosystem perspective. Empirically, it offers novel qualitative comparative evidence on trade unions’ and employers’ roles in Slovakia and Norway.

The purpose of this paper is to learn more about demand for competences is crucial for revealing the complex relationship between employee selection, different strands of education and training and labor market regulation.

Content analysis and statistics of job advertisements.

Employer skills requirements even for low- and medium-skilled jobs are highly specific. Formal education requirements are higher than they “should” be. No detectable “basic package” of general cognitive skills for low- and medium-skilled jobs was found. Employer demand focusses on non-cognitive skills and specific cognitive skills. Specificity of skill requirement across different sectors or occupation groups differs vastly between different types of low- and medium-skilled jobs and is linked to the interactive nature of the job, not to the qualifications or the experience required.

The analysis can be considered an initial feasibility test for a larger comparative cross-country project that would aim to understand labor demand in different EU countries.

The analysis could be used as input in designing labor market policy and life-long learning programs to integrate low-skilled and unemployed.

The research provides a tool to match disadvantaged workers to jobs for which they possess greater capabilities or to help them develop crucial skills for a given occupation.

This paper contributes to the HRM literature with a more demand-led approach to labor market policy. The authors reveal what role skills and upskilling can play in alleviating the problem of unemployment. The results can be useful for HR specialists and policy makers.