Working opportunities in Scandinavia for Non European Students

The motivation behind writing this post is my recent interaction with different employers and students in Norway and Sweden. I have this feeling that cross-cultural communication and understanding can make both employers and the students comfortable during the recruitment process. As I have personally experienced the environment and the circumstances in which the foreign students pursue their education and apply for jobs, therefore I am sharing my thoughts about that.

I still remember when I graduated from school; I accidentally attended a seminar organized by a student visa consultant. I was never interested to move abroad and had never given a thought about it either. The consultant told people so many success stories without mentioning the real challenges of living a life abroad. I was a teenager. I got impressed by his speech. And I know that these kinds of businesses in all under developed countries contribute a lot in students’ mobility all over the world. The reason I mentioned them is that they always present studying abroad as an investment to earn a lot of money. Therefore I have hardly met any student that came to Scandinavia for just learning, they always have a hidden objective of staying and working and payback all the expenses of their education.

Many years later when I completed my Bachelors in Engineering, moving abroad for work or study was very popular. People were using big amount of savings, loans, selling their properties to pay the Human resource consultants for working in the Middle East. And a lot of them were planning for studying in United Kingdom, Canada, Australia or USA. The study visa process of all English speaking countries is very expensive and complicated. Every year they are making it more and stricter to limit the students to just education. Before students used to work part-time to pay their tuition fees and now because of laws and abundance of students, it is getting almost impossible. A middle class graduate cannot even imagine about studying in these countries. They demand a long history of a huge amount of money in your bank account to get a study visa, and there is no chance of work therefore you have to have enough money to pay all tuition fees as well. You have to provide all details of your family income, expenses and make them believe that you are just going there for studies. It is a complete process of self humiliation. At the end of education, there were some graduate visas, which they have stopped now. So investment in education is not profitable anymore. Therefore English speaking countries, education has become a luxury for rich people of under developed countries. I would like to mention some bright students who get scholarships and for them it is a different story.

The other way they see was to go to Middle East, work a lot there for a few years on a relatively low salary and then go as a skilled immigrant to these English speaking countries. Or make enough money in Middle East and then go for studying in those countries. In short for a person with the best education in under developed countries, it can take up to more than 5 years of continuous struggle to get settled in a developed country. A few can get lucky, but the mainstream is following this way. Every year this mainstream is increasing and the governments in foreign countries are reducing all possible way to stop this inflow of people. This is a story of the best talent in those countries and the rest, you can imagine.

Now it comes to the rest of the world. There is an additional challenge. It is language. Some people used to take French or German language courses during their bachelors so that they can go to Europe for studying. China, Russia and Far East Asia became popular later on. Many universities in the rest of the world started teaching masters courses in English. Therefore people changed their direction as well. Majority of these people were from middle class.

Swedish, Finish, Norwegian and Danish universities became very popular due to the free education and there was a big in flow of applications to these countries. Later on Denmark introduced tuition fees, all the pressure went to Swedish, Finish and Norwegian Universities and Swedish universities also decided to introduce tuition fees on non-European students. The purpose of writing about the study visas is that because almost all the people I met from under developed countries who are working in Scandinavia came here for studying. Even a lot of people from central Europe working here were university students here.

Now the real story job; all the bright students that applied to Scandinavia and after compete with thousands of other students get admission and move here. Most of them knew it before that it is going to be expensive to live here. I have already written about accommodation, food and other challenges, therefore I will focus on just job.

A student is allowed to work as much as he can in Sweden and Norway. There is no limit of working hours, but the biggest challenge was to find a job. After the financial crises the unemployment in Sweden was very high and due to a lot of students it was also not possible to get a reasonable job. Distribution of advertisements, restaurants and the newspapers distribution were the only sources of income for foreign students. There were also a lot of Swedish students in the town, but they already get some stipend and loans from the government, some European exchange students were having some financial support as well. The rest of the free movers were the most poor and tired people in the class. They could not socialize with other students due to jobs or cost of socializing. The salaries from restaurant jobs were between 40-60 SEK per hour, by advertisement job (Reklam) they used to get around 20-40 SEK per hour. The distribution of newspaper was the highest paying job, people used to get between 7 - 11 thousand Swedish kroner after tax. But it was a 7 days job; you start in the middle of the night and finish in the early morning. The weather conditions are tough and people faces serious health problems after working for a while. And your studies and social life suffer a lot. After working whole night it is hard to concentrate on the lectures the next morning.

After graduation there were no work permits in Sweden. People used to take another admission to continue their part time work or they used to apply for Denmark green card scheme. Denmark was in need of labor and they had this scheme for job search purpose. Denmark took a lot of foreign master’s graduate from Sweden through this scheme. But these guys again had to go through learning language and stuff. There are hundreds of people who have Masters in Engineering and medicine from Sweden and are doing restaurant, cleaning and newspaper distribution jobs in Denmark. Why these people do not go back? Because they get motivated by a few successful fellows who score a professional job in Sweden or Denmark and they know that if they will go back it will be hard to get a job in here. In short the numbers of unsuccessful stories are huge as compared to the successful stories. But they keep on struggling. Some give up and go back to their native counties or some other countries and some stop trying and just work.

Besides Danish green card scheme there was another work permit in Sweden. It was for the people who have completed 30 Ects in Sweden and then get a job that can pay minimum 13000 SEK before tax. Many of the people that were working for newspapers distribution, a few from restaurant and cleaning jobs got these work permits. Later on many people did a deal with restaurant and cleaning company’s owners to get these work permits, I mean they were getting fewer salaries, but the employers were paying the taxes. So Swedish migration board made many professions black listed. Now the employer has to provide a lot of details of his income as well to apply for a work permit for a foreign worker. 

The people, who got Swedish work permit, now have to work for at least 4 years to get a permanent residence. So all these skilled educated people are now doing odd jobs for the sake of a permanent residence status in Sweden. These numbers are big as well. The inflow of international students has already reduced remarkably due to the high amount of tuition fees. Some of these people on work permits are already trying to take language courses, and applying every now and then. Swedish industry has its basis on Engineering and Technology; therefore most of the universities are offering courses in these fields. That results in abundance of local graduates for the jobs. After them it is much easier to hire a European citizen and in the end the last option is a non-European citizen. Only large corporations can afford to go through all documentations.

There are a few other ways to get settled much faster than learning and work hard. But there is a question about ethics. First way is to marry a local. Swedish government has a lot integration plans for the common law partners of the Swedish citizens. They are eligible to get unemployment benefits and also the employment office helps them to get a job. The second category is people on asylum on the basis of some reason. They get paid, they get paid to learn the language, they get a permanent residence faster than a highly educated professional

Every year a non-European spend in Scandinavia cost them a lot until they get a job. The cost of one month is equal to the cost living of the over half of the year in their home country in some cases. Many job coaches stress on the socializing, ignoring the fact those Scandinavian countries are one of the most difficult places on earth to socialize, it takes a long time and money to become a part of this society.

After a critical discussion, I want to suggest the ideal way. If you want to get a good student life and job in Scandinavia, earn enough money before you come. Always take admission in the best reputed universities and the courses that have high demand in here. Live like a Scandinavian, do good studies and in the end you will get a good professional job. If not you will have a great experience of living abroad. Otherwise you will have to live like a struggling alien with very little knowledge about the society.

In the end there are many questions about these top talents from middle class in under developed counties. Do the employers know anything about what they gone though when they read their CV?  What is the real value of these people? Are they superior, inferior or equal than a local student who has hardly faced any big financial, social or legal challenge during their whole life? Why education has been made a business than a social learning?