The Integration of Refugees Into the Workforces of Sweden, Germany, and Poland Following the 2015 Migrant Crisis
Open Access
- Author:
- Moran, Mary
- Area of Honors:
- Management
- Degree:
- Bachelor of Science
- Document Type:
- Thesis
- Thesis Supervisors:
- Maurie Kelly, Thesis Supervisor
Srikanth Paruchuri, Thesis Honors Advisor - Keywords:
- immigration
migrant
crisis
european union
international business
management
moran
mary kate moran - Abstract:
- The 2015 European Migrant Crisis saw unprecedented numbers of Syrians, Iraqis, and Afghans seeking asylum within the European Union. While the EU governance sought to institute quotas that would help to better distribute this population across member nations, national governments and populaces were largely left to develop their own responses to the crisis. These responses varied sharply in accordance not only with pre-existing governmental stances but also with shifts in public opinion. Sweden and Germany, representing left and centrist national perspectives, respectively, exceeded their quotas and initially led with open-door policies. Other nations, including Poland, one of the rightmost EU nations, were assigned enormous quotas but ultimately took on less than 1 refugee per thousand people. This left an overwhelmingly young, male, and Muslim population to be extremely unevenly distributed across an aging and largely Christian European Union, which in turn left many European national governments, workplaces, and populaces to grapple with the integration of migrants into their economies and labor forces. The rise of far-right politics, the inconsistency of responses across the European Union, the aging of European populations, and the cultural divisions between migrant and native populations all played roles in determining the ability and willingness of nations to integrate these migrants. Sweden, Germany, and Poland provided three unique responses to the crisis and represent a portion of the breadth and variety of member nation reactions. This thesis will compare these reactions and the ways in which they have shifted in an effort to provide an image of the current challenges posed to both migrants and European societies.