Mass migration and labor market incorporation: Soviet immigrants in Israel

Abstract

Most of the completed research on processes of immigrant assimilation, accommodation, and conflict assumes a context in which the host population is much larger than the immigrant population. As massive immigration streams become more common, this assumption is usefully relaxed, and one might accordingly wish to investigate cases in which the immigrant group is large enough to have potentially destabilizing effects on the host country's labor market. This chapter explores that possibility by analyzing a sample of 115,425 immigrants to Israel. Soviet Jewish immigrants in Israel form a particularly instructive group since the volume of the Soviet migration stream has varied greatly over time, with the most recent wave reaching enormous numbers relative to the size of the host population. Results of regression analysis indicate that, after controls are applied, the pattern of incorporation for Soviet immigrants who arrived in Israel during the recent, large wave of migration is indeed unlike that of any other group at any other point in time.