Working through Barriers deals with the role host countries´ institutional
characteristics play in the labour market integration of immigrants in the
European Union. Drawing on existing research it develops a comprehensive
conceptual framework of factors (and underlying mechanisms) affecting immigrant
structural integration in the European Union-15. It maps the European countries
with respect to three institutional aspects central to immigrant integration,
immigration policies, labour market structure and welfare regimes. Further, it
presents a descriptive picture of the labour market situation of the immigrant
population in the European Union and seeks to explain the variation in labour
market outcomes, namely unemployment risk and occupational status, with
reference to differences in the characteristics of the immigrant populations on
the one hand, and by differences in labour market structure, immigration
policies and welfare regimes in European Union countries, on the other. In-
depth analyses of a selected number of EU countries are carried out, with the
aim of investigating the extent to which immigrants have succeeded or failed in
different institutional contexts. TOC:1. Immigrant labour-market performance: A
European perspective.- 2. Explaining immigrant labour-market inequality.- 3.
Immigration policies and immigrant selectivity in Europe.- 4. Immigrants and
the labour-market.- 5. Welfare regimes and immigrants´ employment prospects.-
6. Empirical assessment of the role of institutions in the labour-market
outcomes of male immigrants in fourteen European Union countries.- 7.
Employment careers and unemployment dynamics of male immigrants in Germany and
Great Britain.- 8. Ex-Yugoslavs in the Austrian and Swedish labour-markets.- 9.
Conclusions.- Appendix.- List of Figures. List of Tables.- References
