Work

Europe has done the right thing by allowing Ukrainian refugees to work

Offer needs to be underpinned with language lessons, housing, school places and health services

‘Refugees have typically struggled to get a foothold in Europe’s labour markets.’ Photograph: Omar Marques/Getty

Sarah O'Connor
Wed Mar 16 2022 - 05:00

In less than a month, more than 2.8 million people have fled the war in Ukraine. The immediate focus in countries such as Poland, where refugees are arriving exhausted and scared, has been to provide kindness, food and emergency shelter. No one knows how long the new arrivals will stay, but it is likely to be quite some time given the uncertain outcome of the war and the damage done to their country. Given that, Europe will have to start thinking soon about how to help them settle in for the longer term.

One key question is whether they will be able to find work. “If you were to look at one single policy to make a big difference [to refugee integration], the one single policy is the right to work – you can sustain yourself and your family, you can keep the skills you have,” says Carlos Vargas-Silva, professor in migration studies at Oxford University.

Refugees have typically struggled to get a foothold in Europe’s labour markets. One study of EU data found refugees were 22 per cent more likely to be unemployed than other migrants with similar characteristics. But there is reason to believe Ukrainians will fare better.

First, policy restrictions are not setting them up to fail. Whereas a number of European countries ban asylum seekers from working for a period of time while they wait for a decision, the EU has offered Ukrainian refugees “temporary protection”, which means they can stay for at least a year and will have instant access to the labour market and education. This makes a big difference: studies show the longer an asylum seeker is banned from working, the worse their prospects of getting a job, as their skills deteriorate.

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Ukrainians will also be able to move around the EU to where they have family support or better employment prospects. Many asylum seekers, in contrast, must initially live where they are placed, sometimes in areas chosen for cheap housing rather than decent job opportunities.

Job vacancies

Second, Ukrainian refugees are arriving in economies that are hungry for workers. The unemployment rate in Poland and Hungary, the countries which have received the most Ukrainian refugees so far, is 2.9 and 3.7 per cent respectively, well below the EU average. Hungary has already said it is keen to help Ukrainian refugees fill job vacancies. "It is in the interest of the country that we should utilise the skilled labour as fast as possible," a government official said earlier this month.

Poland, in particular, has been relying on the labour of Ukrainians for years. In 2016, 2017 and 2018, Poland received more temporary labour immigrants than any other country in the OECD, many of them from Ukraine. This means there are already formal and informal networks in the region that can help Ukrainians find jobs, from relatives to employment agencies.

But there will still be challenges. The majority of the refugees are women and children, whereas most of the temporary Ukrainian migrants in recent years have been men. Some of the long-hour jobs these men were doing in sectors such as construction, transport and agriculture are probably better suited to single people on short-term stints than to lone parents with families to care for. Employers might need to be more flexible, and policymakers will have to think about childcare provision for people who want to work.

Vargas-Silva says this gender split in refugees is unusual. “We’re very used to large numbers of male refugees [who subsequently bring their families],” he says. “This is something a bit different.”

Ripple effects

It is also possible the macro-economic environment in Europe could deteriorate because of the war’s ripple effects. Any downturn would be particularly tough on the new arrivals. A Norwegian study found that refugees’ employment was five times more sensitive to changes in the local unemployment rate than that of native-born workers.

The EU has done the right thing in allowing Ukrainian refugees to access work and education straight away, but that offer will need to be underpinned with extra help: for language lessons, housing, school places and health services for people physically and emotionally wounded by the war. There are also specific programmes that could be learnt from, for example Sweden’s Fast Track initiative from 2015 which aimed to help skilled refugees validate their professional credentials.

These policies are costly, but so would be the cost of inaction in the long run. Ukrainian refugees have been met with plenty of public support so far. Now they need some strategic help to make sure they can start to support themselves. – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2022

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