Occupational Attainment Among Children of Immigrants in Norway: Bottlenecks into Employment––Equal Access to Advantaged Positions?

Abstract

Labour market opportunities among children of immigrants is a crucial test of long-term structural integration of ethnic minorities, since these individuals have acquired linguistic fluency, educational qualifications, and work experience specific to their parents' destination country. Using comprehensive Norwegian administrative data on birth cohorts 1965-1982, this article examines whether second-generation immigrants experience disadvantages in access to employment and advantaged occupational positions compared to native peers with similar educational qualifications and social origins (N ¼ 107,362). The results show that non-European ethnic minorities experience weaker labour market attachments relative to the native majority. Once employment is secured, however, there is no evident pattern of ethnic disadvantage in access to advantaged occupational positions. Insofar that ethnic stratification is reproduced between immigrants and their children in Norway, this appears not to happen via differential allocation to occupational positions, but primarily within the educational system and at the entrance to the labour market.