Giuliano Bonoli

Integration through Active Labor Market Policies

Western countries have long struggled to achieve a successful social and economic integration of immigrants. This challenge has further increased against the backdrop of recent immigration trends. In this context, labor market integration is a pivotal stepping-stone that grants opportunities for immigrants and their families allowing them to take part in the social and economic life of their host country. This project analyzes which policies are most promising in enabling immigrants’ labor market access.

Project Fact Sheet (PDF)
Main Results (PDF)

Messages for Decision-Makers

Employer discrimination remains a serious obstacle to immigrants’ participation to the labor market, especially for immigrants of non-European origin.
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Labor market programs, especially employment subsidies, reduce the disadvantage experienced by immigrants.
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Employment probability should be taken into account when making certain policy decisions, such as those concerning the placement of asylum seekers among cantons or the allocation to labor market programs.

Project-related scientific publications Select publication   Knotz, Carlo M., Flavia Fossati and Fabienne Liechti Explaining the lacking effectiveness of labor market integration programs for workers with immigrant backgrounds: The role of cognitive shortcuts in recruitment 2024   Fossati, Flavia, Daniel Auer and Fabienne Liechti Discrimination Multipliers How Immigrants’ integration affects labour market disadvantage 2017   Auer, Daniel and Flavia Fossati Compensation or competition: Bias in immigrants’ access to active labour market measures 2020   Bonoli, Giuliano and Flavia Fossati More than noise? Explaining instances of minority preference in correspondence studies of recruitment 2020   Fossati, Flavia, Fabienne Liechti and Daniel Auer Can signaling assimilation mitigate hiring discrimination? Evidence from a survey experiment 2020   Auer, Daniel and Didier Ruedin Who Feels Disadvantaged? Reporting Discrimination in Surveys 2019   Auer, Daniel and Flavia Fossati The absent rewards of assimilation: how ethnic penalties persist in the Swiss labour market 2019   Auer, Daniel, Giuliano Bonoli, Flavia Fossati and Fabienne Liechti The Matching Hierarchies Model: Evidence from a Survey Experiment on Employers’ Hiring Intent Regarding Immigrant Applicants 2019   Bernhard, Laurent, Flavia Fossati, Regula Hänggli and Hanspeter Kriesi Debating Unemployment Policy: Political Communication and the Labour Market in Western Europe 2019   Auer, Daniel Language roulette – the effect of random placement on refugees’ labour market integration 2018   Fossati, Flavia Who Wants Demanding Active Labour Market Policies? Public Attitudes towards Policies that put Pressure on the Unemployed 2018   Fossati, Flavia How regimes shape preferences. A study of political actors’ labour market policy preferences in flexicurity and dualizing countries 2018   Auer, Daniel, Giuliano Bonoli and Flavia Fossati Why do immigrants have longer periods of unemployment? Swiss evidence 2017   Bonoli, Giuliano and Flavia Fossati Nazionalità e durata media della disoccupazione in tre cantoni: Ticino, Vaud e Zurigo a confronto 2017   Liechti, Fabienne, Flavia Fossati, Giuliano Bonoli and Daniel Auer The Signalling Value of Labour Market Programmes 2017