Ávarp félags- og vinnumarkaðsráðherra á norrænni ráðstefnu í Reykjavík um raddir innflytjenda

Dear guests and Nordic colleagues and friends,

Welcome to this conference. I am happy to see how many are attending this presidential event of Nordic cooperation today, because I understand it is fully booked with participants from all the Nordic countries, which is excellent because we have an important task ahead of us. 

Today you will share knowledge, stories and best practises across countries based on the “Voices of people with immigrant backgrounds”. These voices have been mapped out in Iceland, all this year, by The Educational Training Service Centre and Nordisk Vuxens Lærings-network (NVL) - their Nordic partners. 

They have been using various methods to collect data and approach different target groups with interesting research questions. Hopefully, we can all continue to build upon their interesting findings and your discussions today – in order to improve our language learning systems and overall services to immigrants who come to our countries to work, study and strive for a better life. 

We all share the same objective to facilitate language learning and language teaching for immigrants, as an important part of inclusion and integration into society, -  so that they will have the necessary tools, pathways and understanding to be active participants in our societies - and a chance to flourish.

Immigrants formed 16,3% of the population in Iceland in January 2022. That makes the immigration population growth one of the fastest in the OECD countries as it was 8% of the population in 2012. 

Most immigrants in Iceland are Polish or one third of all immigrants. As we welcome the newcomers there are also challenges that we must overcome together. 

Therefore, I am proud to say that the ministry is currently working both on a National Strategy for immigration issues and undergoing a deep review of the OECD on matters of immigrants in Iceland. 

We are also reforming our adult education system as it is of great importance that we not only receive but provide real possibility for integration for our immigration population, and learning and teaching Icelandic is a key here. 

But, integration is a two-way street and for a successful growth we need to include immigrants in both development of projects and of solutions aimed to facilitate integration. We as a small nation need to invest in this so we can enjoy the knowledge and education our newcomers bring to Iceland.

As the Minister of Social Affairs and Labour in Iceland I am responsible for Adult Education. The Act on Adult Education, from 2010, focuses on adults without formal qualifications or a reduced capacity for study or work. And the latter includes teaching Icelandic to immigrants – though vaguely written in the legislation. After last elections in 2021, the government decided to take steps in trying to adapt education and training for adults – to a greater extent – to the changing labour market needs. 

I believe it is a great strength to connect Adult Education better with labour market issues, without loosing sight of general, broad based educational goals, that help us to learn, develop and thrive in modern society. 

In my ministry we are putting an extra effort and focus on integration and diversity issues, - and they are high on the political agenda.

Currently we are re-evaluating and re-structuring our adult education system in cooperation with all relevant stakeholders and we do aim for new legislation next year. We want to make the adult education system more accessible to immigrants, refugees and people with disabilities. 

We are also working on an overall policy for immigrants and integration issues in widespread cooperation and it remains to be seen how we integrate language learning into other systems and services provided to immigrants. The new and overall picture has not been drawn up yet.

There is not a one solution that fits all. Therefore we need various recognised pathways that are systematically mapped out and effectively introduced to immigrants.  
And in order to have solid knowledge to base our future policies and decisions on, my ministry has also initiated several research initiatives - carried out by several universities in Iceland: 

•Immigrants´ views towards learning and living, 
•measuring quality standards in teaching Icelandic outside the formal school system and 
•re-evaluating the support system to teach and train Icelandic. 

The results of these surveys are expected soon and this conference will also be a valuable contribution to our future decision making. 

I believe this conference has all the potential to give us valuable input for our next steps because we can always do better when we give us time to listen to the users voices - because too often these voices tend to get lost. 

I wish you the best in coming up with solutions to adapt to our systems, support the best ways to teach and train languages and by that clarify the benefits of speaking our languages - in all its diversity. 

Let´s do that today. I hope you will have a fun and fruitful day ahead of you.