UDI have doubled their number of officers in two months. It has provided jobs for many newly graduated social scientists and lawyers.
When the number of asylum seekers coming to Norway was multiplied in the autumn of 2015, the Immigration Departement (UDI) started a large-scale recruitment, the newspaper Dagens Næringsliv writes. In October a number of positions were advertised, demanding a masters degree, and over 700 applicants responded.
200 people were interviewed and 170 of those were hired as social workers in the directorate. The bulk of them were social scientists and lawyers, many of them graduates.
In this way the refugee crisis meant that several graduates who had struggled to get a job found a solution to their problem. Social anthropologist Linda Tang had been seeking work for a year before she got a job at UDI.
– A social scientist often falls between two stools. I’ve been in interviews where I have been asked about my master education, but where I feel they are hinting at “why do you want to work with us when we do not require as long education?”. At other places they are interested in the education, but call for more relevant work experience, she says to DN.
The stack of asylum applications increased from 11,480 in 2014 to 31,145 in 2015. With the appointments also waiting UDI to process 21,000 cases during 2016.
Source: NTB scanpix / Norway Today