France
For more than thirty years, immigration policies and regulations in France have become increasingly restrictive, which makes life for all foreigners more precarious, complex, costly in terms of time for regularizing or keeping one migrant’s legal status. Concerning the labor market, the state promotes a policy of selective migration through for example the Law of 24 July 2006. This legislation privileges the movement of skilled or highly skilled migrants while restricting the free movement of people who are considered as low-skilled and are confined in certain sectors or precarious and seasonal labor activities.
The legal categories of migration in their residence permit are increasing in numbers. They define the nature and rights to work during their stay (“students”, “temporary migration for work”, “permanent migration for work”, “family reunification”, “talent” etc.). The switch from one classification to another implies very complex paper works, even though migrants may belong to several categories simultaneously or successively over the course of their lives. It tends to produce in diversified ways, temporally or definitively, the “irregular migrants” and implies a control on migrants, documented or undocumented, who should overcome numerous barriers in the very complicated administration system, especially for newcomers: papers from their employers who should encounter with their employees the same difficulties; get an appointment where they can deliver the papers for apply, which is almost impossible in some regions in France; etc. Even the highly skilled migrant cannot escape from these difficulties. Moreover, family obligations and multiple tasks of mothers limit their labour market mobility.
In the informal economy, particularly the care-related services, migrant women are highly concentered. Lots of them are engaged in undeclared work and jobs for different reasons: some have no choice since they don’t have the residence permit or work authorization, or their employers don’t want to offer them a contract, while others choose to do so to earn a (better) living. Despite the legal proceedings, many are undocumented migrants working with a contract under another person’s name.
Regularization of residence status represents an important stage in migrant women’s trajectories. It allows them to access the most formal segments and forms of service provision. With a serious job offer in the shortage occupation lists and paper justifying their work in the past years from their employers, the regularization of their status is possible. While in reality, the number of regularization related to employment is reducing in the last several years, partly due to a general difficulty to obtain an appointment in the police office. For the government, it’s a consequence of Covid-19 crisis where the public services are saturated. Although the supplementary barriers for migrants are observed in terms of access to information and their rights (ex. Face-to-face services reduced; services online generalized which are difficult to get access to; digitalization of public services without taking into account the digital fracture for some socio groups; etc.)
Access to skills training and qualifications is an important precondition for involving women in long-term mobility in the formal activities in the labour market. The question remains how accessible they are for migrant women since the training has been reduced because of budgetary constraints. The AFPA (l’Agence nationale pour la formation professionnelle des adultes - the National Agency for Adult Professional Training) offers vocational training leading to qualifications, certified by a professional title from the Ministry of Labor. It provides for example a tailored project for refugees during two years named “HOPE”, particularly in certain groups of occupations where the enterprises look for qualified workers. This project offers professional training, language training (including the acquisition of specialist occupational language and institutional language), housing solutions and social worker’s support.
Getting access to labour market and have mobility is not always about permit, skills, degrees or working experiences. Migrant women have serious drawbacks in their professional life even though they are highly qualified: recognition of existing qualifications, limited access to public sector jobs, multiple challenges due to strict visa and residence permit requirements, family responsibilities in childcare, discriminations related to their gender, origin, religion etc. Policies focusing on these barriers should be made to facilitate access into the labour market and their long-term mobility by migrant women.
References
Promoting Integration for Migrant Domestic Workers in Europe: A Synthesis of Belgium, France, Italy and Spain
https://ecommons.cornell.edu/bitstream/handle/1813/87675/ILO_Promoting_integration_for_migrant_domestic_workers_in_Europe.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y
This study examines the migrant domestic workers and underlines the main barriers that domestic workers encounter frequently in different EU countries.
Migrant Women\'s Access to Labour Market in six European cities: a comparative approach
https://docs.euromedwomen.foundation/files/ermwf-documents/8162_4.231.migrantwomen%E2%80%99saccesstolabourmarketin6europeancities.pdf
This report offers a comparative approach on migrant women’s integration into the labour market in six European cities, through the angle of the gendered impact of integration policies on migrant women’s employment.