The EU is home to 21.6 million third-country nationals, accounting for 4.2% of the total EU population. In 2018 only, an estimated 2.4 million migrants arrived to the EU-28 from non-EU countries. Despite diverse educational backgrounds, working experiences and reasons for coming to the EU, migrants tend to have worse employment outcomes in comparison with native-born citizens.
In 2018, the EU unemployment rate for people aged 20 to 64 was 12.2 % for those born outside the EU, 6.1 % for the native-born population and 6.8 % for those born in another EU Member State. Similar situation is with other ethnic minorities as for example Roma population. One third of the surveyed Roma household members (34 %) declare themselves to be ‘unemployed’ in the EU according to FRA report from 2019. It is well-documented by research in all EU countries that employment is the single most important factor in securing the integration of migrants and ethnic minorities into society and there is a clear co-dependency relationship between employment and social inclusion1. Available research at the European level demonstrates that migrants and ethnic minorities want to work while they are legally entitled to employment. However, there are several distortions in the labour market context which hinder them from getting an employment due to discrimination and unequal access to labour market opportunities
This discrimination due to ethnic and racial origin is extensive and includes the whole chain of employment and promotion opportunities, wage disparities, overqualification, job insecurity, etc. Most of the initiatives and projects for promoting ethnic inclusion in the workplace are aimed at the target group itself, namely migrants and ethnic minorities (micro-level), i.e. informing them about their rights, equipping them with necessary qualifications, etc. Some of the projects are of strategical character (macro-level) aimed at policy and strategy development to create pre-requisites for inclusive labour markets at the legislative level. However, the meso-level (the organisational level), where the employment actually takes place, is still under-researched and there is a strong need to focus on employers as main responsible for promoting diversity management and inclusion in the workplaces.
Micro-businesses and SMEs, including NGOs represent 99% of all enterprises in the EU,3 employ 67% of the workforce in the private sector, account for 58% of the total turnover and create 4 million new jobs every year4, and thus are an important arena for employment of migrants and ethnic minorities5. Thus, employers at SME and NGOs are an important target group for preventing discrimination based on ethnic origin via promoting diversity management and inclusion at the workplace.
The partnership of the DIME project is a mixture of SMEs and NGOs in cooperation with Business College holds a solid competence in diversity management both via prior project activities and in everyday work. Moreover, the participating countries have challenging situation with migrants and/or ethnic minorities as well as good practices for solutions. In Sweden, app. 17 % of the population have migrant origin and about 10 % in Italy. About 10.33 % of population in Bulgaria are Roma, Finland has a big Roma minority and developed successful strategies for inclusion when app. 90 % of migrants get job after app. 10 years. This partnership intends to develop evidence-based methodology and training for employers of SMEs and NGOs.
