Mutual Learning Programme

Mutual Learning Programme DG Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion Peer Country Comments Paper - Finland Towards more flexible and individual integration processes for asylum seekers and refugees Peer Review on 'Labour market inclusion of international protection applicants and beneficiaries' Madrid (Spain), 23-24 May 2016 Written by Sari Pitkänen May 2016

EUROPEAN COMMISSION Directorate-General for Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion Unit A1 Contact: Emilio Castrillejo E-mail: EMPL-A1-UNIT@ec.europa.eu Web site: http://ec.europa.eu/social/mlp European Commission B-1049 Brussels

EUROPEAN COMMISSION Mutual Learning Programme DG Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion Directorate-General for Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion Peer Review on 'Labour market inclusion of international protection applicants and beneficiaries' May, 2016 Madrid (Spain), 23-24 May 2016

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Table of Contents 1 Situation of asylum seekers and refugees in the country... 1 2 Assessment of the policy measure... 3 3 Assessment of the success factors and transferability... 7 4 Questions... 8 Annex 1: Example of relevant practice... 9 Annex 2: Summary table...10

1 Situation of asylum seekers and refugees in the country 1 This paper has been prepared for a Peer Review within the framework of the Mutual Learning Programme. It provides information on Finland s comments on the policy example of the Host Country for the Peer Review. For information on the policy example, please refer to the Host Country Discussion Paper. Refugee status is granted to those who are given asylum or accepted by Finland under the refugee quota. An asylum seeker can also obtain a residence permit on the basis of subsidiary protection or humanitarian protection, but will not have refugee status in that case. Finland accepts for resettling in a third country under the so-called refugee quota persons whom the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has designated as refugees or other foreigners who are in need of international protection for resettlement. Parliament decides annually in connection with the approval of the state budget how many quota refugees Finland will accept. Since 2001, the number of quota refugees has been 750 per year and since 2014, due to the severe situation in Syria, 1 050. The Finnish Immigration Service (Migri) is responsible for the selection of quota refugees. The selection is done on the basis of interviews and documents, after which refugees are admitted to Finland under the refugee quota and granted refugee status and a residence permit. A spouse or a registered partner, children under the age of 18 and a guardian of a child under 18, who have a family member living in Finland, are able to apply for a residence permit on the basis of family ties. A person can apply for asylum in Finland if he/she resides outside home country or permanent country of residence due to a just reason to fear of being persecuted of one s origin, religion, nationality, membership in a certain social group or political opinions. Migri determines whether an asylum seeker is allowed a refugee status when it makes a decision on his/her application. Since 2000 Finland has received annually 1 500 6 000 asylum seekers. However, the number increased notably in 2015. In 2015 there were 32 476 asylum seekers and in total 7 466 decisions were made. Of them 3 168 individuals withdraw their application for asylum, 1 628 cases were granted international protection, 1 307 were declined, 1 094 cases were dismissed and 215 individuals got other residence permit issued in the asylum process. In 2015, most asylum seekers came from Iraq (70 %), Somali and Afghanistan. In addition, there has been secondary migration from Russia to Northern Finland, but it has ended after both states signed a mutual agreement to restrict this. Asylum seekers are allowed to engage in paid employment in Finland without a residence permit three months after submission of the asylum application. However, it is required that a person has a valid travel document that has entitled him/her to cross the border. Without such a document s/he may engage in paid employment in Finland without a residence permit six after submission of the asylum application. Migri may certificate an individual s right to paid employment. An asylum seekers right to work is valid until his/her application has been processed. The entire process may take 0.,5-2 years. Employment challenges for asylum seekers and refugees are: limited permit to work before getting residence permit, illiteracy of some asylum seekers and difficulty to learn Finnish language, difficulties to get recognition of qualifications and previous work experience, high general unemployment rate and labour market change, in which the availability of low-skilled work decreases and the amount of service and high-skilled occupations increases. 1 Senior researcher Ulla Buchert has been co-writer of the Peer Review Paper May, 2016 1

There s also discrimination in the labour market, which pushes people belonging to ethnic minorities to work in entry-level jobs and prevents their career development in spite of their education level. Also graduates of training programmes in English have problems to find employment studies due to Finnish language requirements. May, 2016 2

2 Assessment of the policy measure Finland has about 40 years of experience of international protection, but the amount of refugees and asylum seekers has remained rather small. In comparison to Spain, also in Finland processes for asylum seekers and refugees are based on co-operation of central, regional and local authorities. Unlike in Spain, in Finland employment services are provided centrally by the state. However, the state buys part of the required services from other public as well as private and third sector service providers. Also the system for refugees and asylum seekers is much more centralised than in Spain. The Ministry of the Interior is responsible for the formulation of immigration policy and for drafting legislation related to immigration and citizenship. Migri, which operates under the Ministry of the Interior, issues the first residence permits, processes applications for asylum, steers the work of reception centres, makes decisions on refusal of entry and deportation, is responsible for the processing of citizenship applications and the issue of alien passports. The Ministry for Employment and the Economy (MEE) is responsible for the general development, planning and guidance of the integration policy and taking care of coordination, national evaluation and monitoring of good ethnic relations. In the Ministry, 15 staff members are working in the Integration of immigrants unit, five of them in the Centre of Expertise in Integration of Immigrants. The immigration units of the Centres for Economic development, Transport and the Environment (ELY-centre) operate under the MEE. They carry out tasks related to immigration, integration and good ethnic relations at regional level. The Ministry of Education and Culture develops education and training for immigrants at different levels of education and covers immigration matters relating to culture, sport, youth work and religion. The National Board of Education, subordinate to the Ministry of Education and Culture, is responsible for matters relating to immigrant education and training and for the recognition of qualifications of foreign nationals. After 2018 Ministry of Education and Culture will take over responsibility for the organisation of language studies for illiterate immigrants, which at the moment falls under the remits of the MEE. Recognition of immigrants qualifications and former working careers is carried out by the Public Employment Services offices (TE-offices). The Ministry of Social Affairs and Health is responsible for promoting immigrants' health and welfare including issues relating to immigrants' means of support. Migri is responsible for steering and planning of practical reception operations through reception centres, which are located throughout Finland. In 2014 there were 28 reception centres, but during 2015 the amount rose to 212. In 2015 there were about 20 700 places for adults and about 1 700 places in group homes and support housing units for unaccompanied minor asylum seekers under the age of 18. While staying at reception centres, asylum seekers receive everyday necessities and if needed, social welfare and health care services, interpretation services, financial support and legal aid. ELY-centres are responsible for placement of quota refugees into municipalities as well as of asylum seekers who have been granted a residence permit. Municipalities are allowed to decide whether to receive quota refugees and asylum seekers who have been issued with residence permits, or not. Taking quota refugees and asylum seekers with residence permit is voluntary for municipalities and they can t decide whom they take. Municipalities are expected to provide basic municipal services equally for refugees and asylum seekers who are residents as for other municipal residents. Unlike in Spain, in Finland promotion of immigrant integration is statutory by Act on the Promotion of Immigrant Integration (1386/2010) According to the Act Municipalities, employment and economic development offices and other authorities shall provide immigrants with appropriate guidance and advice concerning measures and services promoting integration and working life. Immigrants are provided with basic information about Finnish society, information about their rights and obligations in Finnish working life and society. May, 2016 3

The initial assessment of an immigrant, who is an unemployed jobseeker, is initiated by the TE-office (Finnish PES). In case an immigrant receives social assistance from a municipality, it is initiated by the municipality. An integration plan - a personalised plan covering the measures and services provided -is drawn up. Aim of the integration plan is to support the individual immigrant in acquiring a sufficient command of the Finnish or Swedish language acquiring other skills and knowledge required in society and working life, and promoting his/her opportunities to play an active role in society as an equal member of the society. The integration plan can also include teaching in the immigrant s mother tongue, studies familiarising the immigrant with society, the teaching of reading and writing skills, studies complementing basic education, integration training and other personalised measures facilitating integration. An integration plan for a family is drawn by the municipality in multi-sectoral cooperation, if deemed necessary in light of the overall family situation. Reasons for this include the need of supporting parents in guiding the development of the child or the young person, and parents need for support and training. Finnish National Board of Education has collected good practices of recognition of qualifications for immigrants. Practices are applied to refugees and asylums seekers as to any other immigrants. Based on the Integration Act, local-level authorities have to develop integration as multi-sectoral cooperation involving the municipality, the employment and economic development office, the police and organisations, associations and bodies providing measures and services promoting integration. The municipality and the employment and economic development office are jointly responsible for arranging measures and services which promote and support integration, as well as for immigrants guidance and monitoring. In Finland there are many integrative services for refugees and asylum seekers. There s e.g. instruction preparing for basic education for pupils with an immigrant background whose Finnish or Swedish language skills and/or other abilities are not sufficient to study in a pre-primary or basic education group. For adult immigrants there are integration and literacy trainings. All these trainings are based on the national core curriculum that is a framework around which local curricula are designed. Both refugees and asylum seekers with a residence permit are entitled to use the service offer of the Finnish Public Employment Services, such as vocational labour market training, work try-out, job search training and wage-subsidised work. However, those measures have so far not been very successful in helping to integrate immigrants into the labour markets. Even though emphasis has been put on enhancing the employability of immigrants, the integration training was not successful in providing language skills that are sufficient for the labour market; and the pathway to employment has been long for refugees and asylum seekers. There have also been obligated groups like parents (mainly women taking care of children at home) who have lacked possibilities for integration training and after that to employment. It should not be forgotten that there are also groups for instance victims of torture who are not able to cope successfully weekly full-time integration training for psychological reasons. Based on the Integration Act and Government programme, the Government Integration Programme was launched. In the first programme phase between 2012 and 2015, integration measures were targeted at the employment of immigrants and at supporting immigrant children, young people, families and women. A second Government Integration Programme phase for 2016-2019 is under planning main emphasis, key targets, measures, areas of responsibility and resources are discussed. Main targets of the Programme are to promote a humanitarian discussion culture and decrease racism, bring immigrants and their culture for enhancing an innovation capacity of Finland, promote multiagency of integration of immigrants and increase co-operation between the state and the municipalities in acceptance of asylum seekers. Partnership programs with cities May, 2016 4

of metropolitan area were designed to implement the measures of the government programme. In the Integration Act there s also guidance for municipalities to prepare their integration programmes for promoting integration and for strengthening multi-sectoral cooperation. Municipal integration programmes are approved by the municipal councils and reviewed at least once every four years. In Finland refugee services have been developed in many ESF-funded projects, including The ESF-funded Haapa-project, which collected good practices of health and psychosocial services for the most vulnerable groups of refugees (2010-2014). The Sylvia-project, which offers additional support for municipalities for locating larger amount of refugees than usual. It was financed by EFR in 2013-2015 with about 3 million and by AMIF in 2015-2016 with about 3,7 million. The ALPO-project (2008-2014), which developed the support structure for guidance and supported the development of skills for immigrants arriving in Finland. Sub-projects of ALPO developed a register of visits to clients by immigrants' guidance services, and a guide containing basic information on Finnish society to be distributed to foreigners moving to Finland. As stipulated in the Integration Act, a data system for TE-offices regarding immigrants training, and a system for initial evaluation and testing of language skills were also developed. The Kohtaamo-project, which developed Ohjaamo : one-stop shop guidance centres that are new, low-threshold guidance services for young people. Especially in metropolitan area a lot of clients of one-stop shop guidance centres are immigrants. The Home in Finland project (2015-2017), which aims at developing high quality integration services to enhance the participation of immigrants and to facilitate immigrants access to education and employment. The project is divided in two sub-projects which are called Good Path and Good Start: - Within Good Start, subprojects develop a service model including guidance and counselling, initial assessment of skills and initial integration training for the beginning of the integration period for all immigrants above 17 years of age. Experiences of these pilot projects will be used for designing a nationwide model for initial stage integration services. - The Good Path subprojects aim to expand the activities of the Ministry of Employment and the Economy s Center of Expertise in Integration nationwide. In the subprojects seven regional coordinators identify training needs of employees working with immigration in the public sector and NGOs, also identifying good practices and effective processes and disseminate research based information and statistics. Another reason for unemployment of immigrants is discrimination. Finland is taking attention to prevention of racism especially in prevalent time of economic recession. The Finnish government has a Non-Discrimination Ombudsman, who is an independent and autonomous authority aimed to advance equality in Finland and to prevent and tackle discrimination. There are also several multi-sectoral groups such as the Discrimination Monitoring Group, coordinated by the Ministry of the Interior. The group monitors the implementation of fundamental rights and international human rights conventions. For the sixth time, the Finnish government has also appointed the national Advisory Board for Ethnic Relations ETNO, for another four-year term (2016 to 2020). ETNO works under the auspices of the Ministry of Justice and its mission is to promote cooperation between immigrants, ethnic minorities, public authorities, political parties and NGOs. A network of experts in ETNO can make proposals to promote immigrants' and ethnic minorities' participation and exercise of influence, and build an atmosphere of positive May, 2016 5

attitudes between different population groups. Moreover, there are seven regional advisory boards for ethnic relations, and the Finnish Diversity Network, coordinated by Finnish Business and Society. As there is SIRIA in Spain, Finland has special registers for following up refugees and asylum seekers. The Register of Aliens controlled by Migri is used for the processing, decision-making and control of matters relating to the entry into and departure from Finland and residence of aliens in the country, ensuring the security of the state, carrying out a basic security investigation and an extensive security investigation, the processing and decision-making of matters related to the acquisition, retention and loss of Finnish citizenship and the determination of the citizenship status. Migri maintains also the Customer register for asylum seeker reception (Umarek) that comprises the national sub-register and the sub-registers of reception and organisation centres. The national sub-register is maintained for purposes of managing, steering, planning and monitoring the representation of children applying for asylum without a guardian. The sub-register is used for steering, planning and monitoring the reception and assistance of international protection applicants, recipients of temporary protection and victims of human trafficking. It is planned that the client register of TE-offices (URA) would be connected to Umarek in order to automatically receive information about residence permits of asylum seekers and improve recognition of qualifications and employability of asylum seekers. May, 2016 6

3 Assessment of the success factors and transferability Spain and Finland have a similar approach in providing services for refugees and asylum seekers in co-operation between national and regional level. Finland faces similar challenges in providing comprehensive services for refugees and asylum seekers across the country. The state covers the costs of the reception of refugees for municipalities with about 100 000 million /year. In total, Finnish state uses about 200 000 million /year for integrative measures of refugees and other groups of immigrants and there s about 10 million /year ESF-project funding for development work. Even through this compensation system, it has been hard to get municipalities to locate refugees. There s also a lot of variation in quantity and quality of services for refugees and asylum seekers in municipalities. People working in basic services don t have enough expertise for encountering refugees. One way to overcome this is a national directive for reception of refugees and asylum seekers made by MEE and Migri. Since April 2016 ELY-centres are responsible for finding places for asylum seekers in municipalities and do it in co-operation with reception centres and municipalities in this process. There has to be a regional strategic plan and co-operative group for locating asylum seekers to municipalities. In Finland, immigrant trainings are based on the national core curriculum, which affects their quality positively. In Spain, one of the main aims is to increase employability of asylum seekers. In Finland the national dgiven on April 2016, states that municipal services and public employment services provided by the state should happen in parallel. The aim is to coordinate and facilitate the process of integration, and to enable signing up as client into TE-office simultaneously with moving into the municipality. The information gained through the initial assessment carried out by PES will be utilised in the planning of service provisions, and locating asylum seeker into municipalities. More emphasis has been put on decreasing the numbers of homeless immigrants, as a lack of residence decreases their chances to find employment. There are a lot of NGO s in Finland. The Finnish Red Cross takes part in the reception of quota refugees and is the main provider of reception centres in Finland. Yet, the involvement of NGO s in the immigrant issues in general has been rather low. The state has been the main operator in refugees and asylum seekers issues. Therefore, emphasis has been put on multisectoral co-operation and strengthening the role of NGO s in integration of immigrants. Finland could learn something from experiences of Spain in this regard. Unlike in Spain, in Finland social dialogue about employment of refugees and asylum seekers with trade unions and employers organisations is scarce. There are projects like the ESF-funded Working in Finland - project (2016-2018), in which social dialogue with trade unions and employers is developed in the metropolitan area. On the other hand, it helps integration into working life that an employer must verify that a foreign employee has the required employee s residence permit. The Government Integration Programme and the Partnership Programme of Integration plays an important role in developing co-operation and services for refugees and asylum seekers in Finland. The partnership programme promises more and improved initiatives for integration and participation. Statutory networks and programmes may also be a possibility to be used in Spain to increase the stability of development of services. The content of the individual integration services Finland is also similar to Spain. Refugees and asylum seekers with residence permit receive employment benefit and discretionally extra- or travelling expenses while they participate in the measures. In Finland, recognition of qualifications and previous work experience has been developed, which is complemented by targeted integration training. This is offered by vocational upper secondary education institutions for clients of TE-offices (Finnish PES). May, 2016 7

4 Questions What kind of incentives exist to support the co-operation between national and local level (e.g. financial support, national directions)? Are there any practical examples of co-operation with labour market organisations? Are there any notable differences between sectors, industries and occupations? What actions has Spain taken to tackle illegal immigrant employment? May, 2016 8

Annex 1: Example of relevant practice Name of the practice: Employment oriented modular integration training for immigrants Year of implementation: 2016 Coordinating authority: Ministry of Employment and the Economy and Finnish National Board of Education Objectives: The general objective is to provide more flexible and effective integration training, that is better adapted to different groups of asylum seekers. This includes language training and other integrative studies for asylum seekers living in reception centres while waiting for relocation to a municipality. Another objective is to train and develop national services of TE (Finnish PES) offices so that they are able to carry out validation and recognition of qualifications of asylum seekers. Moreover, the aim is to develop more working life oriented integration training and improve immigrants chances for entrepreneurship. Main activities: Finland has used a modularised integration training with three pathways depending on whether the participant is a fast or a slow learners. A new activity is a possibility to use an orientation module. This can be used in a situation where an asylum seeker already has a residence permit, but is still waiting for location in a municipality or waiting for the start of integration training. An orientation module takes from two to five weeks. It can include recognition of qualifications and previous work experience, so that the contents of actual integration training can be individually tailored. The recognition of qualifications and previous work experience is done in various of way, e.g using assessments based on professional field. The length of integration training will be the same as before, from three to maximum five years, but its content is planned in a more flexible and personal way. After the optional orientation module there s a module of language studies and Finnish culture. It will be possible to organise modules flexibly, e.g. combining them in a better way for vocational education, education for entrepreneurship, voluntary work, distance learning and voluntary learning between official training modules. Between the modules there will be measures that increase the employability of asylum seeker, for instance work try-outs and job search training. The aim is to provide integration training in a vocational training environment, and to foster the learning of the occupational language during the integration training. A new feature is the possibility to take part in integration training as part-time student. Earlier, the requirement to study fulltime hampered participation of e.g. parents with little/many children and persons with health problems. Results so far: A new regulation for the modular integration training was launched in April 2016 and competitive tendering of training is ongoing in ELY-centres. May, 2016 9

Annex 2: Summary table Labour market situation in the Peer Country Finland accepts refugees under the refugee quota of UNCHR. The Finnish Immigration Service (Migri) takes a decision about the inquiry after investigation. In 2015, about 32 500 asylum seekers came to Finland, of which about 1 600 got asylum based on international protection. 1 050 quota refugees were admitted additionally to the usually accepted 750. The labour market situation is difficult in Finland and unemployment is high. Difficulties to learn the language, labour market changes and decrease of low skilled jobs impede immigrants employment. Also discrimination weakens the possibilities of refugees and asylum seekers to employ themselves or start a business. Assessment of the policy measure Like Spain, Finland is a country with a multi-sectoral system for refugees and asylum seekers. On the other hand, the system is in general more centralised, e.g. employment policies and services are national, not regional. The state commissions part of the required services to other public, private and third sector service providers. The Ministry for Employment and the Economy has the main responsibility for the integration policy and monitoring of good ethnic relations. Integration policy is done in co-operation with other ministries, regional administrators (ELY-centres) and municipalities. Co-operation in integration and provision of services is statutory by the Act on the Promotion of Immigrant Integration. The legislation foresees that refugees and asylum seekers with a residence permit are entitled to an initial assessment and a personalised integration plan, according to which measures like integration training are organised. Integrative process and systems for refugees and asylum seekers are developed in ESF-funded projects. In Finland there are multi-sectoral groups for the development of immigration services and prevention of discrimination. There are two distinct registers: a Register of Aliens and a Customer register for asylum seekers. Assessment of success factors and transferability In Finland the state compensates the costs of refugee reception to the municipalities. A national directive regulates the allocation of refugees and asylum seekers to municipalities, and states that the provision of municipal services and employment services provided by the state should happen in parallel. A new flexible and working-based model of integration training is under development. All these measures aim to improve the integration process and the employability of refugees and asylum seekers. May, 2016 10

Questions What kind of incentives are there to support the co-operation between national and local level (e.g. financial support, directives or other guidance from national level)? What kind of practical examples are there to illustrate the co-operation with labour market organisations (e.g. differences between sectors, industries and occupations)? What kind of actions has Spain taken to tackle illegal immigrant employment? May, 2016 11