Educational and occupational aspirations of refugees in Switzerland and Canada

The project uses a comparative perspective to understand the role of public policies, mainly asylum and integration policies in shaping refugee educational and occupational aspirations. This is particularly interesting to explore in in the context of two countries with different educational systems. On one hand, Switzerland is a country that relies on its highly developed vocational training system (VET) to integrate youth into the labor force and assure low rates of unemployment. The system is employed by policy makers as an important tool in the implementation of refugee integration policy. On the other hand, Canada is a country with a more traditional educational policy that is based on tertiary education as the main route to integrating the labor market. The expected outcome of this study is that using a developed VET system can be both a blessing and a curse for refugees. A blessing because it provides them with the needed skills to integrate the labor market faster but also a curse because it makes it harder for them to find the needed support to fulfill their academic aspirations.

Faculty Supervisor:

Marie-Jeanne Blain

Student:

Partner:

Université de Lausanne

Discipline:

Sociology

Sector:

Other; Public Service, Policy, and Governance; Education

University:

Université de Montréal

Program: