Impediments to Employment of High Skilled Immigrants in Sweden

Immigration for a very long time has had an immense contribution to the growth and prosperity of a country’s economy, society and politics. Despite the fact that established economies depend on foreign-trained labor, employment is one of immigrants’ most basic needs in a new country. Immigrants have faced strains regardless of the fact that they arrive in a country with higher education levels than local citizens.

 This study investigates the experiences of highly educated immigrants in the labor markets in foreign countries, the challenges to acquiring employment opportunities with Sweden as the case study. When conducting this study, several successful employment benchmarks were approached. Among the challenges highly educated Swedish immigrants have faced in securing employment include government policies barring immigrants from securing employment opportunities,  language incompetence owed to the language barrier, non-recognition of  oversee credentials, lack of Swedish workplace experience and the  mismatch of skills and job requirements. Lundborg argues that the difficulty in secure employment among highly skilled Swedish immigrants is a globally faced phenomenon aggravated by the fact that they are not able to gain experience in new countries. This has resulted in the high unemployment rates and poverty among immigrants since it takes them a long time to get space in the country’s labor markets. This prevents foreign-educated immigrant experts from positively contributing to the progress of the host country and many end up in low-paying jobs.