Young Migrants in the Belgian Labour Market: Integration, Discrimination and Exclusion

Abstract

It is not always possible to compare the situations of young migrants or young people from ethnic minorities in the labour markets of different European states. Such comparative analysis is difficult, basically because of the multiplicity of legal definitions of foreigner and of the terminology of nationality, which cover situations on grounds that differ enormously from one state to another. The same difficulty arises with the analysis of the labour market: the relationship between the education and production systems is so dependent on the type of structure and formation of nation-states that the international comparison of the job situations of young people, for example, is extremely complex. Such a comparison requires an initial step involving adjustment of the perception of how national realities come about. If a subject for study such as an international comparison of discrimination against foreigners in the labour market is to be established, it must necessarily involve the reconstitution of the structural elements of the labour market and of the composition of the populations within it. What might, in fact, look like a difference attributable to the characteristics of individuals — for example, young people have a lower unemployment rate in Germany than in France — may simply be a manifestation of a structural difference in the way the transition from school to work is organised.