Urban migrant absorption. Theories and policies on the absorption of immigrants on the local labour market of host areas

This paper addresses labour market aspects of new immigrants in host countries with a specific emphasis on the Netherlands. In general, it can be stated that in the Netherlands immigrant groups have not been absorbed very well in the labour market and that to some extent the dual labour market approach is applicable to the Dutch situation. Furthermore, future labour market developments in western Europe - and hence also in the Netherlands - are not very favourable, because the skill profile of the new immigrant groups corresponds in a decreasing way to the needs in western European labour markets. Various policies - especially in urban areas - have been developed to improve the labour market situation of immigrants. These projects are diverse in nature and aim at the improvement of basic skills, e.g. language and vocational training programs. The results of these programmes in terms of an improvement in labour market participation are often somewhat disappointing. Furthermore, a systematic evaluation of these programs is missing. Therefore, in this paper a systematic evaluation framework is presented which incorporates both quantitative and qualitative evaluation approaches. This may improve assessment procedures used and will hopefully encourage policy-makers to systematically evaluate labour market absorption programmes.