During 2007 we mainly focused on fulfilling our first target, which was an analysis of the structure of employment of foreigners and an analysis of the demand for a foreign workforce. Our aim was to provide an insight into the process of hiring foreign employees with the main focus on the demand-side of the labour market. We mainly examined employers’ motives to employ foreigners including the recruitment and matching processes. At the same time, we aimed at identifying the role of employers in the social integration of immigrants, taking into account the generally accepted premise that labour market integration is a key factor for social integration. In this perspective, the employers implicitly constitute important agents of social integration. We based our demand-side analysis on the survey data of our representative sample of 1,002 employers that legally employ foreigners in the Czech Republic.

Our research activities involved also an analysis of the employment of foreigners in the Czech Republic. In this area we mainly focused on characteristics of the foreign workforce (e.g. their country of origin, socio-demographic characteristics, geographical distribution) and on characteristics of their jobs (e.g. their distribution across sectors of economy and quality of employment). This part of the research was conducted through two types of analysis. The first was based on aggregated statistical data available from the Czech Statistical Office and the Research Institute for Labour and Social Affairs Prague, which allow tracing the development of foreign employment and its main characteristic. These data relate to employed as well as self-employed foreigners in the Czech Republic. This part of the analysis was published as the research paper “Analysis of foreign employment in the Czech Republic – position of foreigners on the labour market and conditions for their economic integration”. The second type of analysis was based on survey data on employers of foreign workers. A questionnaire involved questions related to characteristics of foreign employees and selected indicators of quality of work. By questioning 1,002 employers we indirectly obtained data on 15,500 foreign employees and their working positions, which allowed a broader generalisation. Results of this analysis were included in the research paper “Employers of foreigner workers in the Czech Republic and their role in the process of social integration”, which presents findings from the survey.

In order to achieve our research objectives, we carried out the following activities:

1. Pilot study and preparation of the questionnaires. The pilot study served to identify the accessibility of information in the field, to deepen our understanding of the research topic and therefore also to increase the quality of our research tool (questionnaire). Based on a study of literature we had earlier prepared an interview guide, which we used in the pilot study consisting of 13 interviews with employers of foreigners. Afterwards, we formulated the first version of a questionnaire that was tested.

2. Pilot test of the research instrument. The questionnaire was tested on 10 employers and our findings led us to formulate the final version of the questionnaire. The test revealed a need to change several questions (e.g. questions which were not clear for the respondents, questions with missing options for answers etc.). The final version of the questionnaire was used by an external agency commissioned to conduct the data collection.

3. Selection of company for data collection. We approached 12 specialized agencies during 2006 in order to identify those interested in data collection for our project. In 2007 we sent a call for proposal to eight agencies that had previously shown their interest. The selection was based on 3 criteria: 1) price, 2) experience in the field of data collection and 3) reference. Proposals were submitted by 8 agencies, out of which three were approached in the second round of the selection process. In the second round we made an assessment of re-designed proposals submitted by selected agencies and we finally chose the agency “Focus” as the data collector for our survey.

4. Sampling and data collection. The sampling followed a request we made in 2006 to the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs to gain access to administrative data on foreign employment in the Czech Republic. Data on employment of foreigners exist; however, they are not accessible to the public. Following our request, the ministry provided two separate set of data:

   1. Data on 2,700 employers, who received permit to employ foreigners in 2006

   2. Data on 10,300 employers, who in 2006 were employing non-nationals from EU/EEC, Switzerland and foreigners with permanent residents in the Czech Republic (i.e. foreigners who can be employed without a specific permit).

Both data sets included only basic identification (name of the employers, sometimes also their location). The samplings as well as data collection were carried out by the agency “Focus”. The data collection turned out to be a difficult process requiring a high level of flexibility by the data collector, great commitment of interviewers and two rounds of fieldwork. In total 1,002 questionnaires were gathered.

5. Data analysis. The data was analysed utilising the SPSS program. The analysis was divided into topics following our research questions as follows:

   1. Identification of employers of foreign workers (Robert Trbola)

   2. Employers’ motives to hire foreigners (Pavel Kofroň)

   3. Recruitment of foreign workers (Pavel Kofroň)

   4. Structure of foreign employment (Robert Trbola)

   5. Quality of employment of foreigners (Miroslava Rákoczyová)

   6. Social integration (Jiří Vyhlídal)

These topics are elaborated in individual chapters of the research paper “Employers of foreigner workers in the Czech Republic and their role in the process of social integration”.

In addition to the quantitative analysis, we also carried out qualitative interviews with the employers of foreigners in order to deepen our understanding of the research topic. Following the character of information gathered by the interviews, the qualitative analysis focused on the issue of motivation for hiring foreign employees and the obstacles that employers face in this process. The qualitative analysis was combined with findings from the survey data and it was presented in form of an article named “On motivation of employers to hire immigrants”, which was published in a professional Czech magazine “Fórum sociální politiky”.

During 2007 we also conducted several activities, which relate to successive phases of the project. The essay “The Ukraine as a source country of migration”, which focuses on one of the most significant group of immigrants in the Czech Republic, is one of them (it will be published in May 2008). Concurrently, we started to prepare the methodology for our research activities in 2008 – we formulated the interview guide with foreigners and developed a mechanism designed to coordinate the data collection. The members of the research team were also actively participating in conferences organized both in the Czech Republic and abroad. The poster presentation submitted for the conference “Social Exclusion and the Changing Demographic Portrait of Europe – the 4^th International Conference of the EAPS Working Group” in Budapest on September 6-8^th, 2007, is available on our webpage. Due to a delay in the data collection in 2007, we had only a limited opportunity to present our findings. We expect further activities in this field in the following years.