Labour Market Integration in Finland: Agency as Framework for Third Country Female Immigrants

Over the years labour market intergration of immigrants has been at the forefront of research and integration policy debates in Finland. However, more strikingly is the gap in labour market integration between male and female migrants coming from third countries. Third country national immigrant women considered as non-european nationals face several challenges such as language barrier, lack of educational skills as well as cultural differences in gender roles which affects their working life integration in Finland. An ethnographic study during my masters research with in-depth interviews were conducted with twelve third country immigrant women from different countries living in Helsinki to gain in-sight into their lived-experiences in labour market intergration. The narratives reveal that despite constraining forces (like cultural differences in gender roles or language barrier) besetting third country immigrant women, manifest agency through their concious actions plays an important role in deciding the outcomes of their working life incoporation process and this tends to result in changing gender roles for them as home contributors in host society. Thereby, dispelling the idea of immigrant women as passive subjects in the migration and integration processes but rather as concious actors. These findings, together with reflections on the value of adopting an agency theoretical perspective, led to several recommendations for research.