This thesis explores the obstacles care workers from refugee backgrounds face when findingemployment in the elderly care sector in Finnish Lapland. This is achieved by using athematic analysis on data gathered through semi-structured interviews of fourteen nursinghomes in eight different municipalities in the Finnish Lapland. Theoretical framework is builton Andrew Abbott’s labour opportunity structure and the arenas of jurisdictional claims ofprofessions in order to analyse and categorise the obstacles identified in the interviews. Theresults show that the shortage of nurses has advanced the refugee workers labour marketposition in the care sector, however the poor language skills together with missingqualifications undermine their recruitment prospects. Lack of educational nursingprogrammes for immigrants resulted in utilising apprenticeships more to train the unqualifiedworkers.