Labour Market Integration Of Immigrants Research Articles

The Territorial Embeddedness of Novel Labour Integration Policy: Something Old, Something New and Something Borrowed

This paper examines how local governments can develop new practices in labour integration policy through cross-sector collaborations, and the role of territorial embeddedness in enabling them. The paper is informed by three initiatives for labour market integration of immigrants led by the city district of an urban suburb in the city of Göteborg, in collaboration with actors from the public sector, private sector, and civil society. The paper contributes to research into institutional entrepreneurship and local governments. First, it shows the importance of undermining old, or traditional, practices in labour market integration as part of the process of developing new ones. It also reveals how new practices and organizational forms are added to existing ones, instead of replacing them. Thus, expanding the scope of the public sector in the local labour market integration policy field through elaborative rather than radical change. Second, it reveals the importance to diffuse the new practices, beyond the boundaries of the collaboration that facilitates their creation. Third, the paper illustrates how, rather than hindering, the territorial embeddedness of these collaborative coalitions in marginalized urban suburbs provides access to a wide repertoire of resources, practices, and ideas to facilitate change. Paradoxically, the territorial embeddedness also hampered the diffusion of new practices in the broader field of labour market integration.

Non-cognitive skills and labour market performance of immigrants.

This paper investigates how non-cognitive skills relate to the relative labour market performance of immigrants. Using the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) and the Five-Factor Model of personality as a proxy for the non-cognitive skills, we show that these skills matter for the labour market integration of immigrants in the host country. We use two comparison benchmarks. Compared to an average native, immigrants' non-cognitive skills, e.g., extroversion or emotional stability, can lead to 5-15 percentage points lower lifetime employment probability disadvantage implying a better overall integration. Comparing immigrants and natives with the same type and level of non-cognitive skills suggests that returns of extroversion and openness to experience are higher among immigrants, leading to 3-5 percentage points lower lifetime employment probability disadvantage. These results are robust with respect to self-selection, non-random returns to the home country, stability of personality, and estimators. Our detailed analysis suggests that non-cognitive skills (especially extroversion) are substitutes for the standard human capital measures (e.g., formal education and training) among low educated immigrants, while there is no significant relative return of non-cognitive skills among highly educated immigrants.

International trade and labour market integration of immigrants

AbstractWe examine whether international trade improves labour market integration of immigrants in Sweden. Immigrants participate substantially less than natives in the labour market. However, trading with a foreign country is expected to increase the demand for immigrants from that country. By hiring immigrants, a firm may access foreign knowledge and networks needed to overcome information frictions in trade. Using granular longitudinal matched employer–employee data and an instrumental variable approach, we estimate the causal effects of a firm’s bilateral trade on employment and wages of immigrants from that country. We find a positive, yet heterogeneous, effect of trade on immigrant employment but no effect on immigrant wages.

Does free movement of workers boost immigrant employment? New evidence from Germany

Abstract Extending free movement of workers (FMW) to the new Member States from Central and Eastern Europe was one of the most controversial political decisions in the history of the European Union. In this article, we study how the introduction of FMW affected immigrants’ labor market integration in Germany. Using data from the IAB-SOEP Migration Sample,1 we show that the introduction of FMW was associated with a higher influx of skilled workers. Moreover, FMW has increased the probability of labor market entry within one year after arrival by 12 percentage points. Correspondingly, FMW improved welfare not only by increasing the scale of migration but also by raising immigrants’ skill level and reducing the time before entry into the labor market. Our findings thus yield new insights on the beneficial effects of FMW on labor market integration of immigrants in the Common Market.

The occupational attainment and job security of immigrant children in Spain

ABSTRACT Little is known about the labour market integration of immigrants who arrived in Spain at an early age. Using longitudinal data from the Spanish LFS (2008–2016) we find that other things being equal the occupational attainment of Latin American, Eastern European and African 1.5-generation immigrants is similar to that of natives both for men and women. First-generation immigrants, however, suffer a persistent disadvantage even after controlling for sociodemographic factors and, importantly, time in the labour market. We also find that social class position does not protect equally against job loss, with a larger immigrant penalty at the bottom of the occupational structure. We find two different explanations for this depending on migration status. For the 1.5 generation, the higher risk of job loss across occupational groups is explained by compositional differences; while for the first generation, particularly men, it is explained by structural factors such as its persistent concentration over time in more vulnerable economic sectors and fixed-term contracts. Our findings confirm, in line with assimilation theory, that the 1.5 generation achieves better outcomes than the first in the Spanish labour market, likely due to their more favourable entry conditions into employment.

Immigration history, entry jobs and the labor market integration of immigrants

Abstract This article studies the relationship between past immigration experiences of the host country and the way new immigrants enter the labor market. We focus on two countries—Finland and Sweden—that have similar formal institutions but starkly different immigration histories. In both countries, immigrants tend to find their first jobs in low-paying establishments, where the manager and colleagues share their ethnic background. The associations between background characteristics, time to a first job, other entry job characteristics, earnings dynamics, and job stability are also remarkably similar. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that the host country’s immigration history plays a limited role in shaping the integration process.

Employment effects of language training for unemployed immigrants

Proficiency in the host country’s language is an important factor for the successful labor market integration of immigrants. In this study, I analyze the effects of a language training program for professional purposes on the employment opportunities of participants in Germany. I apply an instrumental variable approach and exploit differences in lagged local training intensities. Bivariate probit estimates show that 2 years after the program started, the employment probability of immigrants who were unemployed in 2014 and participated in the program had increased by more than nine percentage points as a result of language training.

Labour market integration of young refugees and asylum seekers: a look at perceived barriers and resources

ABSTRACT Immigration has been increasing at a significant rate over the past decades. The labour market integration of immigrants—especially of young refugees and asylum seekers—is a major challenge for not only the host country but also the immigrants themselves. This study is based on narrative career counselling, specifically the “journey of life” narrative metaphor; it is aimed at exploring the barriers and resources that 14 refugees and asylum seekers (ages 19–25) enrolled in a state integration programme in the French-speaking part of Switzerland perceive in their quest for labour market integration. The results show that language proficiency is the main barrier and that they can rely on a host of resources to achieve sustainable labour market integration.

An Evaluation of the Effectiveness of Labor Market Integration Policies in EU Member States Using PROMETHEE

From an economic point of view, the rational response towards migration is the labor market integration of immigrants. Within the above framework, several actions have been developed by the European Union member states over the last few years, in an effort to integrate migrants to local communities. This paper evaluates the performance of the European Member States as regards to their labor market integration policies using the Zaragoza indicators for employment. Combining those indicators, the data will be processed with the well-known multi-criteria analysis method PROMETHEE. The model will be constituted by the selected years from 2008 to 2017 as 10 successive scenarios, the 28 EU countries as alternatives, and eight criteria. The paper will end up with ten final rankings of the countries, which will be analyzed in detail.

Immigration History, Entry Jobs, and the Labor Market Integration of Immigrants

This paper studies the relationship between past immigration experiences of the host country and the way new immigrants enter the labor market. We focus on two countries—Finland and Sweden—that have similar formal institutions but starkly different immigration histories. In both countries, immigrants tend to find their first jobs in low-paying establishments, where the manager and colleagues share their ethnic background. The associations between background characteristics, time to first job, other entry job characteristics, earnings dynamics and job stability are also remarkably similar. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that the host country's immigration history plays a limited role in shaping the integration process.

International Trade and Labor Market Integration of Immigrants

International Trade and Labor Market Integration of Immigrants

Parties, governments and the integration of immigrants

ABSTRACT Integration of immigrants into the labor market is a sizeable policy concern for developed democracies. This article argues that government type influences immigrants’ labor market outcomes. Since immigrant integration constitutes a multidimensional policy space, differences in party preferences and the dynamics of intragovernmental and legislative bargaining make it hard for coalition and minority governments to implement effective labor market integration policies. Consequently, single-party majority governments are better able to foster the labor market integration of immigrants. Fixed-effects estimations in a panel of OECD countries provide evidence in favor of this argument. A single-party majority government reduces the employment gap between the foreign and the native-born population with several percentage points.

Substantial Labor Market Effects of the Residency Status

This study uses information about the legal status upon arrival to study long-term labor market effects of residency status. I find that immigrants who arrived with a job commitment in Germany gain a long-term income advantage of 18.6% compared with other migration groups. The results underline the importance of initial conditions at arrival for the labor market integration of immigrants. In fact, the residency status at arrival affects employment status and labor market income after decades, while selective out-migration and observable selection are taken into account. Further examinations demonstrate that the effects are driven by occupational choice and education. In particular, immigrants with middle or high education and immigrants employed in white-collar or public service jobs benefit from a job commitment at arrival. The income penalty of asylum seekers is found in each education group.

Labor Market Integration of Skilled Immigrants

This study examined the labor market integration of skilled immigrants in Israel. It delineated the main dimensions of labor market integration in terms of income from work, employment conditions, and work autonomy. A new measure of labor market performance was developed, and the reliability of this measure was supported for different population groups. The study developed a path model of immigrants’ integration explaining how social adaptation affects labor market integration of skilled immigrants of different origin. Based on data from the 2016 Social Survey administered by the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics, labor market integration of immigrants from Europe and America, and the Former Soviet Union (FSU) was examined. A structural equation model was estimated. The study found that all dimensions of labor market performance were positively related to one another. Social adaptation contributed to labor market integration of immigrants, but its effects differed across the groups. Immigrants fully integrated after 25 years of living in Israel regardless of their origin; immigrants from Europe and America integrated quicker in terms of both pecuniary and non-pecuniary dimensions of labor market performance than FSU immigrants did.

Self-employment as a vehicle for labour market integration of immigrants and natives

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of employment protection legislation (EPL) on self-employment in a comparative analysis between immigrants and natives. Specifically, it investigates whether, as a result of more stringent regulations, self-employment becomes a vehicle for better labour market integration for immigrants and natives, and for better matching between the supply and demand of labour and skills.Design/methodology/approachThe authors use OECD indicators on the strictness of EPL, self-employment rates calculated for natives and immigrants from the EU Labour Force Survey and a range of control variables, in a longitudinal study covering 18 European countries over the period 1995–2013. The analysis employs a panel regression with random effects as the baseline model, with country and time fixed effects models serving for robustness checks.FindingsThe results indicate that EPL of regular contracts affects native self-employment positively, with some evidence of a negative effect for immigrants. On the other hand, EPL of temporary contracts positively affects immigrants’ self-employment. These results indicate that a stricter EPL crowds out incumbent native workers from the prime employment segment of regular contracts into self-employment, whereas a similar effect exists for immigrant workers in the segment of temporary contracts. This is consistent with the hypothesis of segmentation of labour market opportunities between insiders and outsiders, with implications for immigration, employment and entrepreneurship policies.Originality/valueThis is the first study to systematically study the effect of EPL on immigrant and native self-employment in a comparative framework. It elucidates to what extent self-employment serves as an alternative channel of labour market integration in response to less and more strict regulation of regular and temporary employment contracts. Distinguishing immigrant and native workers helps us understand how these effects may differ for outsiders and insiders in the labour market, as represented by the two groups.

Employment and Education–Occupation Mismatches of Immigrants and their Children in the Netherlands: Comparisons with the Native Majority Group

This study examines the labor market integration of immigrants and their children in the Netherlands focusing on employment and over- and underqualification. Using data from the first wave of the Netherlands Longitudinal Life-Course Study (NELLS), the analysis shows disadvantages in employment probabilities for men and women from different foreign origin groups compared to the Dutch majority even after accounting for differences in human capital. Ethnic differences in employment probabilities are lower, but still visible, when comparing only respondents who obtained post-secondary education in the Netherlands. Further, first-generation immigrant men from Turkey and Morocco are at higher risk of being overeducated than Dutch majority men whereas this is not the case for second generation men and first- and secondgeneration minority women. Substantial ethnic difference in the likelihood of being undereducated are not prevalent. Having a foreign compared to a Dutch degree is related to lower labor market outcomes, but this negative relation is more pronounced for women than for men. Finally, there is some indication that overeducation is somewhat less common in the public sector than in the private sector, but minorities do not benefit more from this than the Dutch majority.

Labour market integration of immigrants in Portugal in times of austerity: resilience, in situ responses and re-emigration

ABSTRACTThe austerity regime implemented in Portugal to face the financial and economic crisis caused readjustments in the country’s productive structure and labour market with an impact on immigrants’ lifeworlds. This article aims at analysing the consequences of the crisis in the lives of third-country nationals living in Portugal, reflecting particularly on the impact on their integration process, understood as economic incorporation, in a context of increasing work precariousness. Special attention will be given to the resilience of immigrants visible in their responses to the labour market constraints, namely through their choices of geographic (im)mobility and also the implementation of strategies to ‘normalise’ their lives. Starting with a brief reference to the meaning of integration in Portugal in a context of crisis, we draw on data from two research projects, arguing that despite the increased hardship, the resilience of foreign workers is considerable and they still think it is worth coming to Portugal. The strategies adopted may be either in situ or implying onward migration, resulting from the combination of context opportunities and individual agency. Factors like legal status, education and having relatives abroad play a moderate role in this process.

Patterns of Integration: <i>A Longitudinal View of the Labour Market Attachment of Immigrants in Finland</i>

The labour market integration of immigrants is often time-consuming and a socially selective process that depends on macroeconomic, institutional and individual characteristics. In this paper, we studied the labour market integration of immigrants as a longitudinal process through different patterns of labour market attachment. Using information about individuals’ main activity statuses based on the Finnish Longitudinal Employer-Employee Data (FLEED) and using sequence analysis, we followed the labour market transitions of immigrants during the years 2000–2010. The theory on transitional labour markets provides an analytical tool for analysing the heterogeneity of the individuals’ labour market attachment. The results contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of the labour market integration of immigrants.

The Ethnic Penalty in the Italian Labour Market: A Comparison between the Centre-North and South

Analysis of the institutional characteristics and structure of host societies and the labour market has become increasingly important to explain the processes of immigrant integration. From this viewpoint, Italy would appear an optimal case study. Economic and employment imbalances between the Centre-North and the South have represented the background in which the immigrant labour market integration in terms of employment opportunities, distribution by sector, professions and working conditions have historically differed at a territorial level. This article contributes to the debate analysing territorial disparities in terms of ethnic penalty, looking at the employment performances of immigrants compared to natives: an attempt to verify if and to what extent, within the same institutional context, the differentiation of the structure and the informal regulation of the labour market lead to significantly different mechanisms of penalty. Results show that also from this viewpoint, labour market integration of immigrants in the two macro-areas seems characterised by significant differences, which may be summarised in the considerable trade-off between employment entry chances and job quality. A finding that confirms the results of recent comparative analyses between old and new European receiving countries and offers important insights to define a South European model of immigrant employment integration.

Migrant Networks and Labor Market Integration of Immigrants from the Former Soviet Union in Germany

Migrant networks are usually regarded as helpful for the labor market integration of recently arrived immigrants. From a general assimilation perspective, however, it has been questioned whether they are really the right sort of ties to help immigrants succeed in the host society, or whether, instead, they constitute some sort of mobility trap. Empirical evidence from available studies is mixed, and a reference to more general social capital theory suggests that the effect might be contingent on the institutional context of the receiving country, the specific immigrant groups involved, and the particular types of jobs. In this paper, we study the impact of migrant networks on the labor market integration of recent immigrants from the former Soviet Union to Germany. This turns out to be a strategic test case, for both theoretical and methodological reasons. Relying on longitudinal data and using discrete event history models, we show that the findings are different for two distinguishable groups involved, Ethnic Germans and Jewish Quota Refugees, and that whether the effects are positive or negative further depends on whether or not these groups seek entry to higher-status jobs in the professional, managerial, or technical occupations.