Utländska akademikers anställningsbarhet - En fallstudie på Göteborgs Hamn

Abstract

Employability is a major koncept in today's society. In connection with the increase of newly arrived immigrants, the issues of employability becomes more relevant. We found that there is a lack of studies regarding the employability in the context of newly arrived immigrants. To highlight this problem we conducted a case study on Port of Gothenburg. The study aims to research how the construction of employability affects the integration of newly arrivals onto the labor market. This lead us to our research questions: 1. How do operators and authorities work to promote the integration of newly arrived onto the labor market? 2. What challenges do organizations and authorities stand upon to promote the integration of newly arrivals onto the labor market? For some considerable time, there has been a shortage of engineers in Sweden, and especially in Gothenburg. At the same time many highly educated immigrants arrived to the area. This was seen as an opportunity for Port of Gothenburg. As an intervention they have brought in two newly arrived immigrant engineers as interns. The theoretical framework is based on theories of the construction of employability from different perspectives. The theory was linked with research on challenges for newly arrivals to find employment. We conducted a qualitative case study using semi-structured interviews as measuring instruments. We conducted nine interviews in total, five of them in Port of Gothenburg with the CEO, the interns and one employee. The result analysis were performed in accordance with Grounded Theory. The study found that the employability of foreign academics is not linked with skills relevant to the duty. Initiatives that are aimed to increase the employability of foreign academics has its flaws, especially internship programs. Despite several initiatives by the authorities to increase employability, employers do not consider foreign academics to be employable in relation to a Swedish academic. Newly arrived immigrant academics do not become more employable after completion of internships.