During the last decade, all Nordic countries have drawn up strategies for their Artic regions, with several countries even revising these Arctic strategies within this short period of time. It shows that the Arctic region has become a matter of higher political interest; not only at national level, where the focus has shifted from seeing the individual Arctic regions as general development areas to regions with geographic specificities that deserve particular attention at this point in time. The interest does not only lie in the Nordic countries but they are reflecting on other actors' increased interest in the Arctic region; such as strategies drawn up by other circumpolar countries as well as the reason EU attention towards the Arctic regions. What are the goals and priorities in the Nordic national Arctic strategies?
It takes on average five to ten years for a refugee to find work in the Nordic countries. As social inclusion is closely linked to successful labour market integration, and as during this period the refugee represents a cost to society, the question of how to ensure access to the labour market has been a prominent issue on the political agenda. Since the countries show both differences and similarities in their migration policies and practical solutions, the question is how we can learn from each other. In 2016 the Nordic Council of Ministers initiated a co-operation programme designed to support the national efforts on integrationof refugees and immigrants. The Nordic Welfare Centre has the overall responsibility for the main project "Nordic collaboration on integration of refugees and migrants" in close collaboration with Nordregio. The aim of the project is to serve as an idea bank on the integration area, to map out existing knowledge and research, and to expand our common knowledge base on integration. This report was produced by Nordregio on behalf of the Nordic Welfare Centre and is the result of a comparative study of policies and measures in place in the countries for achieving more efficient labour market integration of refugees. Read more at www.integrationnorden.org
This report concludes a three-year foresight process on the topic of future sustainable regional development in the Nordic Arctic (2013–2016), based on the mandate given by the Nordic Council of Ministers' Committee of Senior Officials for Regional Policy to the Nordic Working Group for Sustainable Regional Development in the Arctic. The mandate has been "to provide input to the further development of the NCM Arctic Co-operation Programme by collecting, reviewing and analysing existing information, assessing different preconditions for future development in the area and developing future scenarios. This will contribute to the political debate and give a more holistic overview of the scientific knowledge in the field." The Nordic Working Group decided to implement this task by conducting a foresight analysis. To guide the work of the three-year project, three overarching questions were defined for the foresight analysis. 1. What social and resource conditions can be expected to have a decisive influence on regional development in the Arctic over the next 10, 20 and 30 years? 2. How will the management of these conditions affect the living standards and future prospects for the regions? 3. What are the implications of the identified challenges and opportunities for future planning and regional policy? Previous foresight analyses have been carried out for the North Calotte region as part of the broader geographical area of the Northern Sparsely Populated Areas (Gløersen et al. 2009) and for the West Nordic countries (Gløersen, 2012). However, this is the first foresight analysis that covers the Nordic Arctic region as a whole. It has been essential for this study to adopt a bottom-up perspective in the process with participation from citizens of local communities across the Nordic Arctic in the initial vision phase. As part of the process, specific attention has also been paid to youth participation and local and regional business development potential. As a supple- 1. Introduction ment to the foresight analysis, Working Papers have been produced on the topics of youth perspectives on future development (Karlsdóttir and Jungsberg, 2015) and challenges and opportunities for sustainable business development (Olsen et al. 2016).
