Over the past two decades, Iceland has experienced an unprecedented increase in its immigrant population, necessitating development of comprehensive and context-sensitive integration policies and practices. Within this context, it is crucial to gain a deeper understanding of immigrant women's integration strategies and experiences, particularly within the essential domain of economic integration. This is especially important given their heightened vulnerability during periods of crisis, including pandemics. This paper seeks to advance understanding of the lived experiences of immigrant women in Iceland from the perspective of immigrants themselves. It focuses on how gender, ethnicity, religion, motherhood, and immigration status shaped their trajectories of economic integration during the COVID-19 pandemic and the recovery period. This study addresses two primary research questions: (1) What are underlying and pandemic-driven factors influencing immigrant women's experiences within the economic domain of integration in Iceland's northern communities? (2) What are the constraints associated with immigrant women's economic integration during crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic, and what are the strengths (facilitating factors)? Drawing on qualitative research methods, this study is based on in-depth, semi-structured interviews conducted in 2022 and 2023 with immigrant women residing in smaller, remote urban and rural communities in the Northeastern Region of Iceland. Utilizing both strength-based and deficit-based analytical approaches, this paper provides a comprehensive examination of key strengths and constraints shaping immigrant women lived experiences, analyzed through the lens of both underlying and pandemic-driven factors within the economic domain. The study findings reveal that, despite the Icelandic government's strong commitment to gender equality in the labor market and its comprehensive welfare system and support programs, significant constraints to immigrant women's economic integration persisted throughout the COVID-19 pandemic and its aftermath. These constraints were primarily linked to language barriers, informal, nepotism-driven employment practices, gender biases, and limited labor market opportunities within the Arctic economy, especially for highly educated female immigrants.
Rozanova-Smith et al. (Thu,) studied this question.