Mid Sweden University

The purpose of this research is studying and analyzing immigrant’s perception of their integration into the labor market in Sweden. It is qualitative study and the data consist from six in-depth interviews with immigrants who live in Östersund, Sweden and arrived to Sweden at least one year ago. The theoretical starting point of the thematic analysis of the collected data is following concepts: social integration and social segregation, discrimination (statistical, preference, ethnical, racial, religious), cultural distance, self-confidence and self-perception, human capital and social capital.The results have shown that the majority of the immigrants perceive themselves as segregated from the Swedish labor market due to the unemployment, discrimination towards them, cultural differences between them and Swedes, the unadjustment to the Swedish society, and the exclusion from the Swedish social network. However, the employment was not considered by all interviewed immigrants as a prerequisite for the integration into the job market in Sweden. Such country-specific skills as Swedish education and Swedish work experience were identified by the interviewed immigrants as important factors for their acceptance by the Swedish employers.