Context: This study examines how employers and workplace stakeholders perceive the re-entryof skilled migrants into their vocational fields after relocating to Sweden. It assesses their def-initions of an employable migrant and the inclusion strategies they recognise.Approach: The concepts of employability and inclusion are utilised to analyse the empiricalmaterial. Qualitative semi-structured interviews were conducted with two company owners,two mentors, and a regional coordinator.Findings: The results indicate that employable migrants are expected to adapt to workplaceculture, learn the language, and comply with legal requirements. Their competence, proactivity,creativity, and willingness to acquire new skills are valued. Inclusion strategies focus on lan-guage acquisition, social interaction, and support from management and colleagues, while rec-ognising the policies and training programs provided by society. The responsibility for inclu-sion often falls on migrants, rather than addressing systemic barriers, framing workplace inte-gration as an individual duty.Conclusion: Achieving inclusion necessitates balancing personal effort with structural changeto create more equitable workplaces.

Support from other people has been identified as one of the key factors facilitating migrants’ access to their previous vocational area in their new country (Eliasson et al., J Educ Work 35(8): 828–842). In this text, migrants’ descriptions of encounters that have influenced their paths to education or employment are studied in depth. The encounters are analysed through theories of social identity construction (Jenkins, Social identity, 2004) and from a class, gender, and ethnicity perspective. The material consists of 20 interviews with migrants who have a professional education from their home country and have gained access to their previous vocational area in Sweden. The result shows that encounters can lead to direct access to education and workplaces, but also function as support and encouragement that strengthen the migrant’s fighting spirit. In other words, successful encounters may lead to successful inclusion into working life. Aspects of ethnicity and profession (class) are visible in the analysis of the encounters, while gender is less visible since the respondents are working in traditionally masculine- or feminine-coded sectors. Resistance to other people’s negative constructions of the respondents’ identities is visible in many narratives, which also seems important to their persistence in job searching. 

This is an open access book which focuses on different aspects of education, employment, and successful integration of migrants in three countries: Norway, Sweden, and Switzerland. The chapters in this book reflect on these issues from micro, meso and macro perspectives; some are based on interviews with migrants and people who work with them, others on documents and literature about migration. There are different pathways for skilled migrants to vocations. Some start working in their previous vocations after arriving in the new environment. Some re-enter their professions but on a lower level. Some can re-train themselves in a new vocation, and some will go to further education, as studies in different chapters of this book suggest. Common for successful integration seems to be several intertwined factors: the target language competence, strong motivation and agency, supporting networks and supporting persons, as well as structural opportunities of the new environment. The book’s editorial board takes an eclectic view, hoping to start an academic debate about what ‘successful integration’ means. While discussions about the integration of migrants tend to focus on integration failures, there are millions of migrants, in different countries, who have successfully integrated into their new societies. 

This article focuses on ‘successful migrants’, who have succeeded in gaining employment in Sweden in their previous vocational area. The aim is to describe factors on various levels – individual, organisational and national – that have facilitated migrants’ way back to work as well as their inclusion at workplaces. Twenty migrants and five employers/mentors were interviewed. The overarching theme of facilitating factors concerns language proficiency, individual factors, enabling frameworks, and supporting persons and networks. The migrants’ own ambitions and motivations, and the support they got in interpersonal encounters were especially emphasised as important. In the migrants’ narratives, a central theme in relation to the theoretical perspective was how to deal with threats to their social and professional identity in the new country. For them, maintaining a positive self-image was key to the strength needed to fight for a return to working life. People in the environment were important in this struggle – for positioning them as competent persons and for offering support.

The aim of this conceptual paper is to dwell into the ideological and theoretical roots of the concept social exclusion. In vocational education, the concept is often constructed as a vehicle for social inclusion and it is often taken for granted and rarely defined. In addition, we will introduce other concepts related to social exclusion such as concepts of difference, social division, and differential social exclusion. We will also offer some critical observations about the concept such as it ignores the everyday transnational embeddedness and practices of migrants and will discuss the concepts of transnational relations and the structure of opportunity. In concluding remarks, we offer some ideas about the role of VET in relation to social exclusion and inclusion. 

The purpose of this short paper is to introduce factors that can facilitate or hinder skilled migrants’ access to their previous vocation. The approach employed was based on the literaturereview and some preliminary interviews with the skilled migrants. The results indicate that thefactors are located on different levels; there are individual, organisational and societal factors,which interplay with each other. In addition, the factors have dual nature, and they can bothfacilitate and/or hinder access to vocations. Interviewees have experienced several pathways totheir vocation and the labour market in Sweden. Some have chosen another vocation, and somehave continued their studies to become vocational teachers in their area. To face challenges andto support skilled migrants’ access to their previous vocation and the labour market, actions areneeded on different levels.