How to Integrate newly arrived refugees into the labour market? an evaluation of the three year Danish integration programme

Abstract
The European countries experience the largest migration flow since World War
II with least a million refugees expected to arrive in 2015. Consequently, policy
makers face the challenge of how to integrate these newcomers into the labour
market. The scientific literature provides limited knowledge about the effect of
policies and integration programmes (UNHCR, 2013). Most previous studies focus
on how general institutional features (e.g. immigration policy, welfare and labour
market institutions) influence the labour market outcomes of immigrants, while
few evaluate the effect of specific policies (for an overview see Diop-Christensen,
2014). To the best of our knowledge, of the latter type of studies, only Rosholm
and Vejlin (2010) focus specifically on the group of refugees (see also UNHCR,
2013).
This paper contributes to filling this knowledge gap by investigating the effect
of different integration measures for newly arrived refugees in Denmark. More
specially, refugees in Denmark participate in a three year integration programme,
which should aid their labour market transition. However, the programme varies
widely in content because the implementation is decentralised to 98 municipalities.
In a first step, we identify the specific nature of this variation by conducting a
survey in all Danish municipalities. This information will be used for constructing
variables (e.g. the use of internship in firms, focus on transferring educational
qualification). Secondly, we analyse the effect of these variables on the duration
until th