Immigrant Assimilation Research Articles

Exploring economic assimilation of immigrants and their descendants in France: recent insights

ABSTRACT This paper examines the labour market performances of immigrants and their descendants in France by applying a series of empirical Tobit II models on a recent TeO2 database. Our work questions the labour market participation and wage disparities of these groups compared to native-born individuals by controlling different individual attributes, such as gender and educational level, and job characteristics, such as the firm size or the type of job. It also introduces information on ethnic origins and location. Our study provides crucial insights into the labour market performances of immigrants and their descendants in France. It reveals that disparities manifest primarily in labour market participation rather than wages. It also underscores that high-skilled workers’ wages do not converge as immigrants consistently yield lower returns on education than natives. Our findings underscore the heterogeneity within the immigrant group based on origins criteria. The performances of immigrants with African and Northern-African origins are lower than those of other groups of immigrants.

Changing the pace of the melting pot: The effects of immigration restrictions on immigrant assimilation

This paper investigates the effects of restrictive immigration policies enacted in the US in 1921 and 1924 to explore the effects of immigration restrictions on recent immigrants using full-count US Census data and variation across national origins in the exclusionary policies. Immigrants more affected by the quotas were more likely to become naturalized citizens. Immigrants from countries that subsequently had migration reduced by the Acts were also more likely to marry someone born in the United States. The evidence in this paper, taken together, shows that the Immigrant Exclusion Act hastened the assimilation of already-landed immigrant men and impacted their short and long-run family outcomes.

Migrants from a Different Shore: Earnings and Economic Assimilation of Immigrants from China in the United States

Using data from 1980, 1990, and 2000 U.S. censuses, as well as the 2010 and 2019 American Community Surveys and the 1993–2019 National Survey of College Graduates, we investigate the performance of Chinese immigrants in the U.S. labor market over the past 40 years since China initiated its economic reforms and open-door policy in 1978. The results indicate that by 1990, Chinese immigrants’ earnings surpassed those of immigrants from other countries, and by 2010, they exceeded the earnings of U.S.-born workers. Our Oaxaca-Blinder and Quantile decomposition analyses suggest that a significant portion of the earnings advantage held by Chinese immigrants, compared to other immigrant groups and U.S.-born workers over time, can be attributed to differences in observable characteristics, with education being the most crucial factor, both at the mean and across the earnings distribution. By employing national surveys that provide data on college graduates, we demonstrate that attaining the highest degree earned in the U.S. is associated with higher earnings for Chinese immigrants compared to all other immigrants. Furthermore, the difference in returns to U.S.-earned highest degrees can account for this earnings advantage. (JEL J31, J61, J24)

The intergenerational (Im)mobility of immigrants

This paper studies the influence of pre-migration social background on the long-term economic assimilation of immigrants. I use unique French survey data to trace family histories over three generations, before and after migration. While many immigrants experience an occupational downgrading at migration, their children benefit from various characteristics associated with the high socio-economic status their family had in the origin country. As a result, characteristics of immigrant grandparents are highly predictive of their grandchildren’s educational attainment.

Job ladders and labour market assimilation of immigrants

Using Danish linked employer–employee data, this study examines the importance of access to higher-paying firms in the wage assimilation process among immigrants during their 25-year tenure in Denmark. Upon their arrival, immigrant workers in Denmark earn substantially lower wages than their native counterparts. However, this wage gap diminishes rapidly within the first 5–10 years, particularly among more disadvantaged immigrant groups (non-OECD and female immigrants). Immigrants who enter the labour market early have higher earnings capacity than those who enter later, but this trend reverses after 15 years. The transition to higher-paying firms constitutes a crucial factor in wage assimilation during the initial 5 years, yet it does not account for wage growth beyond this period. Additionally, this study offers suggestive evidence that Danish firms’ wage policies vary based on the duration since migration, and these differences significantly contribute to the wage assimilation process.

HOW AI CAN REDUCE UNEMPLOYMENT RATE AMONG VULNERABLE POPULATION OF NEW IMMIGRANTS: ASSIMILATION ISSUES RESOLVED WITH AI

The relevance of this study is to examine the role of artificial intelligence (AI) in the assimilation of vulnerable immigrant groups, in particular, in facilitating their integration into labour markets of new countries and reducing unemployment. The purpose of the article is to identify opportunities and mechanisms for using AI to support immigrants' adaptation, as well as to analyse policies and programmes aimed at attracting and developing immigrant talent in the field of AI. The study uses general scientific methods of analysis, synthesis, comparison and generalisation to evaluate available information, statistics and practical examples. The results of the study demonstrate that artificial intelligence has significant potential to support the assimilation of vulnerable categories of immigrants, facilitate their integration into new socio-economic conditions and reduce unemployment among them. Through the use of innovative AI tools and technologies, immigrants can access personalised educational resources, labour market information, and cultural nuances, which will greatly facilitate their adaptation. An analysis of the impact of AI on immigrant assimilation has shown the effectiveness of online courses, mentoring programmes, and specialised training modules in providing the necessary knowledge and skills to successfully enter the labour market of a new country. In particular, advanced training and retraining programmes available through AI platforms have proven to be highly effective in providing immigrants with relevant competencies and facilitating their professional development. Particular attention was paid to the US policy aimed at attracting and supporting skilled immigrants in the field of AI. The paper shows that the active use of AI in the process of immigrants' adaptation facilitates their rapid integration into the new society and plays a crucial role in reducing the unemployment rate among this group. The practical significance of the publication is to provide recommendations for the development of effective strategies for using AI in the process of immigrant integration.

Earnings assimilation of post‐reunification East German migrants in West Germany

AbstractWe investigate the wage assimilation of East Germans who migrated to West Germany after reunification (1990–99). We compare their wage assimilation to that of ethnic German immigrants from Eastern Bloc countries and international immigrants to West Germany who arrived at the same time. The analysis uses administrative as well as survey data. The results suggest that East Germans faced significant initial earnings disadvantages in West Germany, even conditional on age and education. However, these disadvantages were smaller than those of international immigrants, supporting the beneficial role of cultural similarity. The earnings gap relative to West German natives narrowed over time for all immigrants. These findings are robust to controlling for potentially endogenous return migration and labor force participation. Controls for fixed effects reveal that positive assimilation for East German and international immigrants was concentrated among highly educated immigrants.

First- and Second-Generation Women’s Economic Assimilation: An Analysis of Longitudinal Earnings Records

Abstract Research on the economic assimilation of immigrants and their descendants has disproportionately focused on men. In this study, we examine the life-course employment and earnings trajectories of first- and second-generation women using a restricted-use dataset linking individual respondents of the Current Population Survey (CPS) to their tax earnings records. We compare the age-specific probability of employment and annual earnings of women of each immigrant generation by race and ethnicity from early to middle adulthood covering a span of 20 years. We consider alternative explanations for observed disparities including differences in the level of education and the timing and response to childbearing. Our analyses reveal distinct patterns across immigrant generations and ethnoracial groups. We find that first- and second-generation women are assimilating economically at a fast pace although significant ethnoracial differences remain. First-generation Hispanic women in particular experience low employment and earnings growth. Second-generation women have higher employment rates than later-generation Whites and avoid the dip in employment trajectories in early and middle adulthood experienced by the latter group. The higher employment rates of second-generation women cannot be fully explained by differences in educational attainment or the presence of young children.

Debunking Immigration Myths: A Review Essay of Streets of Gold: America’s Untold Story of Immigrant Success

This essay reviews Streets of Gold: America’s Untold Story of Immigrant Success by Ran Abramitzky and Leah Boustan. This elegantly written book, whih is a must-read for anyone interested in the topic of immigration, walks the reader through a history of US immigration, examining patterns of immigrant assimilation from the mid-nineteenth century to today. The book challenges two myths about US immigration. First, it shows that historical European immigrants did not always arrive poor and quickly climb the economic and social ladder. Second, it documents that the pace of immigrant assimilation today resembles that prevailing at the turn of the twentieth century. (JEL J15, J18, K37, N31, N32, Z13)

Testing the Hypothesis of the Economic Assimilation of Immigrants: Türkiye Case

The labor market adaptation of foreign-born individuals in Türkiye is examined in this research. It tests the Immigrant Assimilation Hypothesis for Türkiye with this aim. The primary research question of this work is, " In Türkiye, could foreign-born people improve their labor market outcomes more rapidly than native people?" Thus, this paper's goals include determining the wage disparity between native-born workers and immigrants and the takeover point. TurkStat's Household Labour Force Surveys, conducted between 2009 and 2020, are used for this purpose. First, the logistic regression method assesses the disparities between labor force participation and employment rates of natives and immigrants. Then, the ordinary least squares method assesses the wage disparity between native-borns and foreign-borns. The main results of this approach are that immigrants' earnings are equalized in 20-25 years after migration, which is also the takeover point against natives. This investigation shows that the wage penalty for recent immigrants is 20%. As a result, after spending years in Türkiye, immigrants integrate into the labor market.

An unlevel playing field: Immigrant assimilation and welfare utilization

This paper investigates the existence and mechanisms of segmentation in the welfare assimilation process of first-generation immigrants in the Netherlands. Using longitudinal administrative data (2007–2015) from Statistics Netherlands (CBS), we estimate the welfare utilization trajectories of migrants over the working-age life course vis-à-vis two reference groups representing different economic segments from the population, namely: average Dutch natives and Dutch natives with low education level. Empirical evidence shows a predominant trend of mainstream assimilation; however, two findings with more concerning implications should be highlighted. Welfare assimilation into the economically disadvantaged segment is found to concentrate among first-generation immigrants characterized by structural and human capital disadvantages, despite the notable extent of upward intragenerational mobility observed. In the worst-case scenario, there seems to be a lack of welfare assimilation to the comparison segments, raising concerns over the prospective emergence of marginalized ethnic groups at the bottom of the economic ladder. The implications of this finding are twofold. Firstly, automatic closing of the migrant-native gap over time should not be presumed in the absence of a level playing field for all regardless of their migration backgrounds. Secondly, systematic discrepancies observed between refugees and other types of migrants in terms of welfare assimilation patterns and determinants point to the need to have a clear distinction between immigration policy and refugee policy, which explicitly avoids bundling all migrants as one homogenous group.

How language usage shapes the public acceptance of immigrant assimilation: the case of China

ABSTRACT Previous studies have suggested that immigrants using the language of their host country can increase native citizens’ support for immigration. However, it is unclear whether the language effect differs in the developing world with limited immigration experience, and the underlying mechanism is also debatable. Incorporating the stereotype content model (SCM), our study proposes that language usage can increase immigrants’ perceived warmth and competence, affecting the local public’s immigration approval in different ways. We conduct a survey experiment with over 2100 respondents in China by randomly assigning participants to a treatment in which they view a video clip of a Caucasian immigrant speaking English, accented Chinese, or fluent Chinese. Our results show that speaking Chinese increases the public acceptance of an immigrant by 3–5 percentage points, while no significant effect arises between accented and fluent Chinese. Mediation analysis indicates that both assimilationist (cultural) and instrumental (economic) concerns drive the results.

Differences in Time to Reported First Arrest by Race, National Origin, and Immigrant Generation: A Test of Assimilation Theories

This study examines immigrant assimilation theories by focusing on arrest during adolescence and adult life using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997, a nationally representative panel study that follows children from adolescence through adulthood. The analysis compares outcomes for the first and second-generation of Mexican origin and other parts of Latin America to third- and fourth-plus generation (1) non-Hispanic white, (2) non-Hispanic black, and (3) Hispanic respondents. This investigation employs survival analyses to account for the timing of arrest and other events (e.g., graduation, childbirth, and employment). Results indicate the first generation, both of Mexican and Other Hispanic origin, are less likely to experience arrest than their higher-generation counterparts, regardless of race/ethnicity of the comparison group.

The Role of Firms and Job Mobility in the Assimilation of Immigrants: Former Soviet Union Jews in Israel 1990-2019

The Role of Firms and Job Mobility in the Assimilation of Immigrants: Former Soviet Union Jews in Israel 1990-2019

Модели противодействия сегрегации этноконфессиональных иммигрантских районов в Дании и Швеции

The article explores the immigration and integration strategies of Denmark and Sweden while assessing their efficacy. The two countries, sharing historical, cultural, social and economic similarities, face a common challenge: the formation of ethnoreligious enclaves primarily inhabited by individuals with a Muslim background. Due to the recent European migrant crises, there has been a notable increase in the number of migrants, leading to stricter integration policies in the Scandinavian countries. Yet, governmental approaches to address the segregation of immigrant areas vary between Denmark and Sweden. Denmark has adopted a stringent immigration policy promoting cultural assimilation of immigrants from non-Western countries, whilst Sweden follows a liberal approach advocating cultural and ethnic diversity within society. The evolution of immigration and integration initiatives in Denmark and Sweden has been reconstructed through the analysis of official documents and critical examination of political discourses. It is noted that Swedish authorities are increasingly incorporating Denmark’s more radical approaches to address migration issues within their political programmes. Despite the results of Denmark’s anti-immigration policies and the reduction in the number of segregated immigrant areas, a myriad of issues persist due to EU immigration policies. The problem of forging a new civic identity rooted in the linguistic, religious and cultural homogeneity of Danish society amidst its multiculturalism remains relevant. Thus, Sweden is formulating its own anti-segregation programme, taking into account both the successes and shortcomings of Danish immigration and integration policies. Another important conclusion is that these nations have started to pay special attention to ethnic and religious criteria when identifying ‘parallel societies’.

Do Segmented Assimilation Theory and Racialized Place Inequality Framework Help Explain Differences in Deaths Due to COVID-19 Observed among Hispanic Subgroups in New York City?

This article studies the differences in the correlation between deaths and the Hispanic share for different Hispanic subgroups in New York City. Such differences are predicted by Segmented Assimilation Theory as different assimilation paths. The study is carried out at the level of PUMAs, and it is argued that such geographic locations are macro-level factors that determine health outcomes, as the theory of Racialized Place Inequality Framework claims. The study presents a spatially correlated model that allows to decompose the spatial effects into direct and indirect effects. Direct effects are linked to the macro structure where the individual lives, while indirect effects refer to effects in the adjacent macro structures where the individual lives. The results show that both types of effects are significant. The importance of the direct effects is predicted by RPIF, while the importance of the indirect effects is a new result that shows the complexity of the effects of macro structures. The article also shows results for subsamples that allow to test the importance of different factors that have been linked to the excess deaths observed among Hispanics. The effects of such factors are also found to be heterogenous among the different Hispanic subgroups, which also provides evidence in favor of the Segmented Assimilation Theory. Access to health insurance and doctor density are found to be the most important elements that serve as protective factors for all Hispanic subgroups in New York City, signaling its importance in achieving assimilation for Hispanic immigrants to New York City.

Italian Immigrants Culture in New York: A Comparative Study on The Godfather II and Mean Streets Through the Lens of Audiovisual Language

This study explores the dynamics of cultural integration, assimilation, and identity formation of Italian immigrants in American films in the 20th century. It makes a comparative analysis of two iconic films, The Godfather II and Mean Streets, through the lens of audiovisual language. Drawing upon the semiotics theory, mirror theory, and root theory, this research aims to analyze the dynamic changes in culture, economy, and emotions experienced by Italian immigrants. The study is anchored in three key aspects. First, it focuses on the identity politics of Italian immigrants in the United States, with a spotlight on second-generation immigrants. Unlike the first generation, they retain a strong sense of separation from their Italian roots, exhibiting few traces of a transitional identity arc. The second aspect revolves around the directors reconstruction of national history in a global context and its connection to the Mafias influence on economic predicament. Lastly, by looking into the narrative symbols in these films, this research continuously explores the emotional dynamics in the process of cultural integration.

Born Again French: Explaining Inconsistency in Citizenship Declarations in French Longitudinal Data

Citizenship is a fundamental boundary in contemporary societies that entails rights, a sense of belonging, and social status. Drawing on longitudinal census data, this article tracks individual changes in self-reported citizenship over 30 years in France. Respondents choose one of three categories: “French by birth,” “became French,” or “foreigner.” The first category should be stable over the life course: one is born, but cannot become, “French by birth.” Yet, our findings indicate that about 19 percent of foreign-origin respondents in a given census switch to “French by birth” declarations at the next census, in a process we call reclassification. Immigrant assimilation variables, such as nativity and length of stay, and events such as intermarriage, naturalization, and residential mobility, trigger reclassification. Yet reclassification is also higher among individuals with lower socioeconomic status and respondents of African and Southeast Asian origin, as well as those with origins in former French colonies. These findings suggest reclassification is a byproduct of immigrant assimilation, which triggers feelings of national identity, as well as status upgrading, whereby disadvantaged and discriminated groups change their citizenship declaration to compensate for low social status. Empirically novel, reclassification offers original theoretical insights into the meanings of citizenship, civic stratification, and boundary-crossing.

Hispanic Men’s Earnings Mobility Across Immigrant Generations: Estimates Using Tax Records

Abstract Whether immigrants and their descendants are catching up socioeconomically with the rest of society is a fundamental question in the study of immigrant assimilation. In this paper, we examine the progress that Hispanic immigrant men make catching up with the earnings of later-generation Whites across generations. We rely on data from multiple years of the Current Population Survey linked with individuals’ tax earnings. This unique dataset allows us to overcome some important limitations of previous studies that employ a synthetic generation approach in which individuals born approximately one generation earlier are used as proxies for actual parents. Our matching strategy also enables us to identify the exact third generation and evaluate the contribution of ethnic attrition to estimates of intergenerational mobility. Second-generation Hispanic men are found to experience lower mobility than later-generation Whites for most values of parental earnings. However, their lower mobility can be explained by their immigrant parents’ lower education levels. In contrast, third-generation Hispanic men experience lower mobility even after accounting for parental education and ethnic attrition. This finding is consistent with a stalling or reversal in the socioeconomic progress of Hispanics beyond the second generation.

Immigrant assimilation in health care utilisation in Spain

Abundant evidence has tracked the labour market and health assimilation of immigrants, including static analyses of differences in how foreign-born and native-born residents consume health care services. However, we know much less about how migrants’ patterns of healthcare usage evolve with time of residence, especially in countries providing universal or quasi-universal coverage. We investigate this process in Spain by combining all the available waves of the local health survey, which allows us to separately identify period, cohort, and assimilation effects. We find robust evidence of migrant assimilation in health care use, specifically in visits to general practitioners and emergency care and among foreign-born women. The differential effects of ageing on health care use between foreign-born and native-born populations contributes to the convergence of utilisation patterns in most health services after 15 years in Spain. Substantial heterogeneity by the time of arrival and by region of origin both suggest that studies modelling future welfare state finances would benefit from a more thorough assessment of migration.