Shortening the path — from the host organisation's side: A demand-side study of internship matching for foreign-born academics

Charlotta Stern and Susanna Allstrin
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Charlotta Stern: The Ratio Institute, Postal: The Ratio Institute, P.O. Box 5095, SE-102 42 Stockholm, Sweden
Susanna Allstrin: The Ratio Institute, Postal: The Ratio Institute, P.O. Box 5095, SE-102 42 Stockholm, Sweden

No 392, Ratio Working Papers from The Ratio Institute

Abstract: Many high-income labour markets combine persistent skills shortages with the underemployment of foreign-born academics, whose qualifications and experience tend to yield a lower return after migration. Work-based internships are a common policy response, expected to help migrants rebuild context-specific human capital, improve host-country language, and access the informal networks through which much hiring occurs. Yet the evidence base is almost entirely supply-side: it examines what internships do for interns, while the organisations that must agree to host them remain largely unstudied. What makes a placement work from the employer's point of view is therefore poorly understood. Drawing on human capital theory, we address this gap through semi-structured interviews with managers and supervisors at 24 Swedish organisations that had hosted one or more foreign-born academic interns through the national programme Korta vägen ("the academic fast track"). Using inductive thematic analysis, we identify factors operating at three levels — individual, organisational, and institutional — that shape how well an intern's human capital can be put to use. Education quality is less salient to hosts than the literature would predict; language matters chiefly as a vehicle for social integration; cultural friction is workable when expectations are made explicit; and institutional rules around credentials and licensing constrain placement quality in regulated professions. Hosts also report substantial, sometimes unanticipated, organisational gains. We argue that demand-side evidence requires human capital theory to be broadened to incorporate language, culture, and social capital if it is to explain matching.

Keywords: human capital; labour market integration; foreign-born academics; work-based internships; demand side; thematic analysis; Sweden (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J15 J24 J61 J62 M53 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 24 pages
Date: 2026-08-19
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