Promising Practice

Profile and pathway of job seekers in the Brussels Region: Monitoring by national origin

Actiris, the Brussels Regional Employment Office, developed a study to understand specific barriers facing job seekers by monitoring their national origins, and mechanisms of discrimination on the basis of origin and sex.
Country
Belgium
Type
Institutional and structural guidelines
Build institutional capacity
Facilitate effective use
Operational guidelines
Ensure comprehensiveness
Mainstream equality data
Enhance validity and reliability
Ensure representativeness
Improve comparability
Mainstream intersectional approach
Category
Age
Racial or ethnic origin
Sex
Includes multiple / intersectional discrimination

 


In this page:


Why was the practice needed?

Actiris, the Brussels Regional Employment Office, developed a study to understand specific barriers facing job seekers by monitoring their national origin. The practice was needed to enhance the understanding of the pathways of jobseekers and their integration into employment, the mechanisms of discrimination based on origin and how it intersects with other variables such as sex, age and education.

How was it implemented?

Data were provided by the Bank for Social Security register after a political agreement to mobilise the origin variable, leading to the introduction of federal socio-economic monitoring. The study cross-referenced the Actiris jobseekers' database with the data warehouse of the Bank of Social Security register by combining data on the individual's current nationality, their nationality at birth and the nationality at birth of their parents.

The study report produced after the analysis showed the need to cross-reference sex and origin to identify specific employment barriers facing women and men of non-EU origin.

The main challenges were the process of anonymising data from the Bank of Social Security register and the lack of ethnicity data collected by institutions.

Outputs

  • Report – Profile and pathway of job seekers in the Brussels Region: Monitoring by national origin (June 2019)

Key success factors

  • Cross-referencing sex and origin allows identification of specific employment barriers
  • Cross-referencing level of education and origin allows identification of jobseekers’ specific needs for upskilling and reskilling

Technical information

  • Data sources covered: Administrative data
  • Areas of life covered: Employment
  • Target audience: Jobseekers registered with Actiris
  • Duration: 12 months
  • Geographical scope: Brussels Region
  • Leading institution: Actiris
  • Other organisations involved/consulted: Bank of Social Security register, Unia/Belgian Ministry of Employment, Institute for Gender Equality, Talent.brussels, Université libre de Bruxelles, Vrije Universiteit Brussel
  • Financial & human resources: Budget: Data not provided; Source of the budget: Regional budget; Staff: 1 part-time employee level A for 12 months

Contacts

Actiris
ksenhadji@actiris.be
www.actiris.be