The context is stark. Global forced displacement rose from roughly 40 million people in 2012 to 108.4 million in 2022, and Sweden’s foreign-born population now stands at around two million residents, approximately 20 percent of the population. Yet integration into the Swedish labour market remains slow. The average refugee waits about three years for a first job, and after fifteen years in the country only 59 percent of refugee women are established in working life, compared with 82 percent of native-born women. Women with refugee backgrounds face the longest periods of inactivity, and once employed they risk double discrimination based on both ethnicity and gender, which can mean exclusion from workplace networks, blocked promotions, and lower pay.

Previous research has catalogued the barriers and facilitators of labour market entry: higher education speeds the transition, language learning and vocational training help, and strategies such as volunteering, using social networks, and accepting low-quality survival jobs are common. But the Swedish team wanted to move beyond this structural accounting. Drawing on the sociologist Vanessa May’s conceptualisation of belonging and on Yuval-Davis’s politics of belonging, they reframed the question. Belonging, they argue, is not a fixed end-state achieved once someone is employed. It is a dynamic, continually negotiated process shaped by interactions, emotions, and power dynamics, and it captures dimensions of integration that employment statistics cannot see.

The researchers recruited eleven women aged 22 to 44, all from non-European countries, all with work experience in Sweden and all able to speak Swedish. They had lived in Sweden between three and ten years and were recruited through a local church, a Swedish for Immigrants (SFI) school, and Women On Wednesdays, a networking organisation for foreign women. Each participant took part in a life-story interview lasting between 60 and 130 minutes, with a median of 100 minutes, and face-to-face sessions included a deliberate coffee break to ease conversation. The transcripts were analysed using reflexive thematic analysis in an abductive logic, moving back and forth between the women’s narratives and the theoretical concepts of belonging until four robust themes emerged.

The first theme, navigating language and everyday communication, revealed how deeply linguistic hierarchies structure workplace life. The women described Swedish as the currency of participation, the language that opened doors to recognition and trust. One participant initially refused to learn the language because she did not see her future in Sweden, but a difficult first job changed her mind. If you cannot speak Swedish, she explained, someone else can go to the boss faster and tell what happened, and that is unfair. The study found that formal language instruction was insufficient on its own; workplaces became crucial arenas where women gained confidence by being surrounded by Swedish-speaking colleagues and given opportunities to speak and be heard.

The second theme concerned the embodied negotiation of cultural norms. Women described adjusting dress, gesture, tone, and even humour as they learned Swedish workplace codes. One participant explained that her hijab was part of her identity but not always a religious statement; at work it signalled her boundaries, such as not hugging colleagues, and when those boundaries were respected she felt safe and accepted. She also noted that some immigrant women removed the hijab to avoid discrimination or missed opportunities. Others described learning to interpret jokes and indirect communication over months of listening and observation. The researchers interpret these accounts as a gradual, embodied learning process in which women remained authentic to themselves while navigating expectations implicitly coded as Swedish, exposing the conditional nature of inclusion.

Relational belonging emerged as perhaps the most powerful force in the women’s trajectories. Informal mentors, Swedish families who extended invitations, internship supervisors who helped write CVs and served as references, and community organisations all filled gaps that formal integration programmes could not. Crucially, the quality of relational encounters mattered more than mere access to networks. Trust, moral affirmation, and sustained interpersonal investment enabled women to move from isolation toward participation, and some described these relationships as forming a new family. Many women then turned around and supported others, organising study groups, book circles, and introductions to networks, describing the satisfaction of giving back once they had received help themselves.

The sensory and temporal dimensions of belonging proved equally striking. Several women described visceral, physical reactions at moments of recognition: one trained nurse from Iran cried the first time she took a blood sample during her internship, shattering an internalised label that she could not handle anything. Others described shaking with nerves before colleagues began to trust them, and then trusting themselves more in turn. These affective moments, the researchers argue, show that belonging is not merely cognitive but corporeal, and that affirmation in hierarchical workplaces is often sporadic and must be repeatedly earned. Temporally, the women’s narratives traced a journey from dependency to independence, from waiting to strategic action, with civil society organisations acting as anchors that helped re-establish daily rhythms and future-oriented aspirations.

The study’s implications are pointed, particularly as Sweden’s government shifts toward stricter migration and integration requirements emphasising language, self-sufficiency, and reduced asylum-related immigration. The authors argue that policies equating labour market participation with integration miss the point: workplaces must actively cultivate cultural, relational, sensory, and temporal belonging through mentorship programmes, early access to meaningful work, and managers who understand that inclusion depends on respecting difference rather than demanding assimilation. Belonging, the findings insist, is an evolving process rather than an achieved state, one that shapes identity, agency, health, and the capacity to imagine a future. When a woman can say, as one participant did after many rejected applications, that she declared she would work at a certain company someday and last week signed the contract, the pathway to working life has done more than deliver a paycheque. It has delivered a self.

Subject of Research: Immigrant women's experiences of belonging during their pathways into working life in Sweden

Article Title: Belonging as a part of the pathway to working life: immigrant women’s experiences in Sweden

Article References: Lydell, M., Garell, C., Lindgren, E.-C., Zimmerman Nilsson, M.-H., & Hertting, K. (2026). Belonging as a part of the pathway to working life: immigrant women’s experiences in Sweden. BMC Public Health, 26(1), Article 2808. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-026-29688-w

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1186/s12889-026-29688-w

Keywords: belonging, integration, immigrant women, Sweden, labour market, refugees, qualitative research, thematic analysis, workplace inclusion, language learning, social networks, public health