Refugee men and women in the segmented VET market in Germany: on their career prospects and the role of resource inequality

Abstract Vocational education and training (VET) systems are characterized by both gender-specific occupational segregation and vertical occupational segmentation, leading to considerable differences in income and employment stability prospects across individual training occupations. For refugee men and women in particular, whose labor market positioning is crucial for their socio-economic integration in the host country, it is therefore not only important that they enter VET, but also which specific occupation they enter. This article investigates, first, whether the dual training occupations pursued in Germany by men and women with a refugee background differ from those pursued by those from the majority population in terms of prospective income and employment stability; and second, whether these differences are mediated by variations in search and application strategies as well as network resources, on the one hand, and differences in school-leaving qualifications, on the other. Drawing on data from the BA/BIBB Applicants Survey and the Refugee Migration Study ( N = 6,055), the results show that men and women with a refugee background are more likely to enter training occupations with significantly lower occupation-specific salaries than their counterparts in the majority population. Refugee men also tend to pursue occupations with higher occupation-specific unemployment rates, whereas no such difference is found for women. These disparities are only marginally mediated by variations in search and application strategies and network resources, but are largely explained by differences in school-leaving qualifications. When controlling for these resources, women with a refugee background are more likely to enter training occupations with even lower unemployment rates than women from the majority population.