Insiders or Outsiders Within? Immigrants in the Finnish Labor Market

Abstract

This article focuses on the position of immigrants on the Finnish labor marketin thecontext of recent migration history and the disintegration of the traditional paid-worksociety. Finland is a so-called late immigration country, where a positive trend inmigratory movements did not begin until the beginning of the l 990s and where thelabor migration phase after WWII was experienced not as an immigration countrybut as ane of emigration. One outcome of this is that immigrants are treated in societyas a social burden rather than a labor resource. Results of an empirical study concerningimmigrants in the Finnish labor market indicate that more than a half ofimmigrants who have been residing in Finland for several years have an unstablelabor market career, and almost one-third of them are in the margins of the Finnishlabor market. It seems that in Finland, as in the labor markets in many other postindustrialsocieties, immigrants are acting as a buffer against upswings and downswingsin the economy.