Migrant Wages Research Articles

On the up and up: the job mobility of skilled return migrants

Abstract This paper examines the labor market incorporation of skilled Indian migrants returning home after working in the United States. I analyze a novel dataset of 7,177 time-varying transnational employment histories from LinkedIn using logistic regression and survival analysis. I find that skilled Indian migrants experience occupational upgrades when re-entering their home labor market, buoyed by foreign human capital and compensating for US legal status restrictions. While immigrants often face initial occupational downgrades and job mobility constraints in foreign labor markets, return migrants experience stability, promotions and accelerated rates of job mobility at home. The paper contributes to the literature on return migration, a significant but understudied dimension of international migration due to data constraints. I offer LinkedIn employment histories as digital data source to address these limitations and leverage their rich spatio-temporal information. These data help expand prior research on return migrant wages to broader questions about transnational migrant career trajectories. The findings shed light into where high-demand migrants might maximize their career growth, and have implications for understanding the policies shaping the recruitment and retention of skilled workers in the global labor market.

Digital inclusive finance and migrant wages: Evidence from over 700,000 internal migrants in China

This study examines the effect of digital inclusive finance (DIF) on the wages of Chinese migrants. Utilizing data from Peking University's DIF index and China Migrants Dynamic Survey (CMDS) with over 700,000 internal migrants, our study shows that DIF has a significant and positive impact on migrant wages, especially for DIF usage depth. This effect is more pronounced for migrants who are males, have an urban hukou, and with younger ages. Our mechanism analysis suggests that broadening migration distance, facilitating entrepreneurship and business activities, and enhancing residential stability are potential pathways through which DIF stimulates the growth of migrant wages.

Global education trajectories and inequality: STEM workers from China to the US

ABSTRACT The United States has become reliant on workers from abroad to meet its demand for the knowledge-based economy. However, some migrants may face an earnings deficit relative to similar US-born workers. This paper examines the sources of the deficit and asks whether we should expect the initial deficit to disappear with education attainment and work experience in the US. They are challenging to answer as few data sources measure and track market experiences and educational trajectories of migrants over time. Migration and educational trajectories which reflect the country's source of formal educational credentials as well as other forms of capital may explain the deficit, this study applies sequence analysis to the National Science Foundation’s ‘National College Graduate Survey’ to examine earnings differences between China- and US-born STEM workers. After identifying the dominant migration-education profiles for these STEM workers, I show that the wages of migrants with exclusively China-based education are 5–25% lower than those of workers with at least some US-based education, even among workers who are otherwise similar in terms of experience, legal status, employer type, occupation, degree level and time since migration. These findings point to significant and lasting penalties due to non-US education.

The migrant pay gap in Spain: Where do the differences come from?

AbstractThis paper focuses on the migrant pay gap in Spain. Going beyond descriptive evidence of the differences between immigrants and nationals in terms of wages, we analyse which part of the gross wage is most affected by features that cannot be captured using econometric models. Relying on microdata from the Wage Structure Survey, we divide the total gross wage into two main parts: base wage and wage supplements. Then we decompose the migrant wage gap into the explained and the unexplained terms, using a simple decomposition methodology, the Oaxaca-Blinder model. Our results show that a part of the differences in wage supplements does not seem to be explained by the set of control variables introduced in the model and that this effect is more pronounced when only men are considered. These findings offer a new perspective on the migrant pay gap in Spain and point to the importance of wage-setting practices related to wage supplements in explaining (and widening) the total migrant pay gap in our country.

The impact of labor mobility with fellow townsmen on the wages of rural migrants: evidence from China

Labor mobility is an inherent component of economic development and labor market changes. With globalization and urbanization, labor mobility is on the rise in many developing countries, and it is of great significance to study the economic outcomes and poverty alleviation effects of this phenomenon. This paper explores the impact of labor mobility on the wages of rural migrants when they move out with their fellow townsmen (folks from the same county). The study uses the China Migrants Dynamic Survey (CMDS) data and applies the Propensity Score Matching (PSM) method for empirical analysis. Our results suggest that labor mobility with fellow townsmen significantly increases the wages of rural migrants. The paper shows two promotion mechanisms: mobility with fellow townsmen affects the wages of rural migrants by improving their ability to search for information and negotiate wages. Heterogeneity analysis indicates that mobility with fellow townsmen significantly increases the wages of rural migrants engaged in producer service, consumer service, blue-collar occupations, and working in state-owned and private enterprises. Furthermore, it has a more positive impact on the wages of older rural migrants from an intergenerational perspective. Interestingly, rural migrants may “give up” part of their wages to care for their families when they move with their spouses, parents, or children. Therefore, the government needs to take effective policy measures to promote the employment service system and improve the labor rights and interests protection mechanism for rural migrants.

The Reformed Agrarian Structure and Changing Dynamics of Rural Labour Migration in Zimbabwe

This article examines the changing dynamics of rural labour migration in Zimbabwe following the radical land redistribution since 2000 through the Fast Track Land Reform Programme (FTLRP). Since the colonial period, dispossessed peasants with inadequate land access were forced to offer cheap migrant wage labour for large-scale capitalist farms (LSCFs) and beyond. Despite the wide acknowledgement of the redistributive nature of the FTLRP, there is sparse understanding of how the new land access patterns impacted on rural labour migration. Empirical evidence from Goromonzi and Kwekwe districts demonstrates that while there were many peasant beneficiaries, land shortages were not completely eradicated and the new farm labour markets depended on the super-exploitation of landless migrants. Altogether, the data contradicts the conventional wisdom that views migration as a deliberate diversification strategy of household labour to enhance a livelihood. Rather, resistance to proletarianisation undergirds the struggles of farm labourers as they largely seek autonomous land-based social reproduction outside the wage economy.

Occupational Regulation, Institutions, and Migrants’ Labor Market Outcomes

We study how licensing, certification and unionisation affect the wages of natives and migrants and their representation among licensed, certified, and unionized workers. We provide evidence of a dual role of labor market institutions, which both screen workers based on unobservable characteristics and also provide them with wage setting power. Labor market institutions confer significant wage premia to native workers (4.0, 1.6, and 2.7 log points for licensing, certification, and unionization), due to screening and wage setting power. Wage premia are significantly larger for licensed and certified migrants (10.3 and 6.6 log points), reflecting a more intense screening of migrant than native workers. The representation of migrants among licensed (but not certified or unionized) workers is 15% lower than that of natives. This again implies a more intense screening of migrants by licensing institutions than by certification and unionization.

Vital Labors: Transacting Oocytes across Borders in the Post-Soviet Space

Anthropological accounts of labor mobility in the post-Soviet region have tended to focus on the commoditization, securitization, and illegalization of migrant wage labor, rather than on the generation of surplus through the harnessing of mobile life itself. Bringing together discussions of “clinical labor” (Cooper and Waldby 2014) with analysis of migrant wage work, the essay explores strategies of transnational recruitment for supposed Asian oocyte vendors by Russian, Georgian, and Ukrainian fertility clinics seeking to meet a growing demand for donor eggs for Chinese commissioning couples. In this bioeconomy, value is generated from the differential mobility and transactional value of human and nonhuman bodies, body parts, and genetic material across territorial, administrative, and juridical borders. The essay investigates how the recruitment of oocyte vendors intersects with other unequal circuits of movement to argue for an expanded account of labor migration in the post-Soviet space.

THE FINANCING PRIMARY HEALTH CARE UNDER PANDEMIC THREATS

The pandemic COVID-19 exposes a number of health care problems common for developed and developing countries, creates unprecedented threats and risks and cast doubt on the rightness of widespread approaches to the development of health care and especially primary health care (PHC). The pandemic has shown that even in developed countries the lack of access to first aid for vulnerable groups of the population (pensions, poor, migrants,etc.) can lead to catastrophic consequences for the society. Thus, PHC has indisputable characteristic of a public goods and services - non-excludability. This means that access to PHC must be free and equal to all persons in any region, whether such persons are temporary or permanent residents without exemptions caused by citizenship and social status. Insurance medicine, the source of financing of which is the contributions of insured persons and employers, is not able to provide such access. Thus, the social institutions combining market and non-market principles of financing and providing PHC services must support health care system workable. Budget is a main source of funding PHC service. Also, additional funding of open and equal access to PHC needed. Such funding can support: by earmarked deductions from income of insurance funds; by restrictions of tax evasion by “free-riders” entrepreneurs using unfair low wages of migrants and minorities for rising profits; by the issuing special “green bonds” for finance PHC equipment; and by expansion of activities local charity funds.

Attracting international migrant labor: Investment optimization to alleviate supply chain labor shortages

The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted supply chains globally with a major shortfall being that of labor shortages from production through distribution activities. In this paper, we construct a new supply chain network optimization model that includes both domestic labor and international migrant labor from multiple countries, with the latter made possible through investments in attracting labor subject to a budget constraint. We allow for different wage settings for domestic versus migrant labor and also have the flexibility of providing true information as to the wages of migrants or not. We derive variational inequality formulations of the model, along with qualitative properties, and present an algorithm that yields closed form expressions for the underlying problem variables at each iteration. The model is one of the very few variational inequality operations research models with nonlinear constraints. Three series of algorithmically solved numerical examples, motivated by a high value agricultural product — that of truffles, demonstrate the insights in terms of profits, prices, product path flows, and investments, with variations in the data including that of truthful and untruthful wages being used to attract migrant labor.

Does Personality Matter? Noncognitive Skills and the Male Migrant Wage Gap in Germany

Wage gaps between migrants and natives persist in Germany, and traditional human capital endowments or work environments only partially explain these gaps. This article investigates whether noncognitive skills contribute to explaining male migrant wage gaps in Germany. While the economics literature shows that noncognitive skills affect educational and occupational outcomes, such as gender wage gaps, it is unclear if the same applies to the migrant wage gap. To address this lingering question, we analyze risk preference and the “Big Five Personality Dimensions,” a psychological concept categorizing an individual's personality into five factors. In doing so, we show that male migrants and male German natives differ in their average noncognitive skills and that these skills significantly relate to wages. The results of Oaxaca–Blinder wage decompositions reveal that noncognitive skills significantly contribute six percentage points to explaining the male migrant wage gap in Germany. We conclude that noncognitive skills are important predictors of heterogeneities in labor market outcomes.

Wage Differences between Polish and Romanian Intra-EU Migrants in a Flexi-Secure Labour Market: An Over-Time Perspective

By merging longitudinal register data and a customised survey, this article explores whether sectoral segmentation, migrants’ pre- and post-migration human capital and social structures, shape wages of Polish and Romanian long-term migrants to Denmark. Pronounced wage differences in favour of Polish migrants are evident in the first two years in Denmark, notwithstanding the same regulatory context under the free movement of labour in the EU. Wage differences persist – albeit at a considerably lower level – throughout the eight-year period, mainly because of significant sectoral segmentation. Sectoral segmentation not explained by demographics, pre-migration human capital or crisis effects, might indicate categorical stereotyping by employers. Regarding (co-ethnic) social networks, at least for the early stages of migration, the study does not find significant effects on wages. While the evidence shows a positive return on wages of formal higher education taken post migration, this is not the case for further training and Danish language education.

Categorical Distinctions and Claims-Making: Opportunity, Agency, and Returns from Wage Negotiations

In this article, we examine wage negotiations as a specific instance of claims-making, predicting that the capacity to make a claim is first a function of the position, rather than the person, and that lower-status actors—women, migrants, fixed-term, part-time, and unskilled workers—are all more likely to be in positions where negotiation is not possible. At the same time, subordinate-status actors may be less likely to make claims even where negotiation is possible, and when they do make wage claims they may receive lower or no returns to negotiation. Analyses of wage negotiations by more than 2,400 German employees largely confirm these theoretical expectations, although the patterns of opportunity, agency, and economic returns vary by categorical status. All low-status actors are more likely to be in jobs where negotiation is not possible. Women, people in lower-class jobs, and people with temporary contracts are less likely to negotiate even when given the opportunity. Regarding returns, agency in wage claims does not seem to improve the wages of women, migrants, or working-class individuals. The advice to “lean-in” will not substantially lower wage inequalities for everyone, although men who lean in do benefit relative to men who do not.

Does Aversion to Price Risk Drive Migration? Evidence from Rural Ethiopia

I investigate whether a rural household's aversion to commodity price volatility drives out‐migration. Adapting the standard agricultural household framework, I model a rural household's migration decision making under uncertainty in commodity prices and migrant wages. Empirical results indicate that a greater household‐level aversion to price risk is significantly related to a higher likelihood of out‐migration. Moreover, the significant relationship between aversion to price risk and migration is more pronounced in villages that lack daily markets and food aid, implying that the negative welfare effects of food price volatility may be amplified by underdeveloped market mechanisms and poor local infrastructure. A battery of robustness checks and falsification tests provide strong suggestive evidence to conclude that migration is a household strategy to manage price risk. This article is among the first to highlight the link between price risk and migration, and complements the literature on income risk and migration.

Impacts of social networks on floating population wages under different marketization levels: empirical analysis of China’s 2016 national floating population dynamic monitoring data

ABSTRACT This paper establishes a measurement model to examine the impacts of social network heterogeneity on the wages of the floating population, and the different impacts under different levels of marketization. The main findings are: (1) Social network heterogeneity can increase the wages of the floating population, which is particularly significant for urban-urban migrants with non-agricultural registration; (2) The effect of social network heterogeneity on the wages of the floating population is due to the different levels of marketization of the destination market of inflows. The levels of marketization vary from place to place: in cities with low marketization levels, the homogeneous social networks can increase the wages more than the heterogeneous social networks. With marketization levels increase, social networks can increase the employment wages of migrants through three stages: the stage of the homogeneous social network is stronger than heterogeneous social network; the stage of no significant difference between homogeneous social network and heterogeneous social network; the stage of heterogeneous social network is stronger than homogeneous social network. In general, for the wages of rural-urban migrants with agricultural hukou, homogeneous social networks and marketization levels have a substitutional relationship, while heterogeneous social networks and marketization levels have a complementary relationship.

Working conditions and their impact on work satisfaction in migrating and non migrating workers. Factor structure of the Polish version of the Working Conditions Questionnaire

BackgroundThe study compares the impact of working conditions and wages as predictors of work satisfaction of Poles, working in Poland and abroad. Although the work environment plays a crucial role in determining the work sat-isfaction of migrants, most mention higher income abroad as the main migration motive. The increased in-come may not boost the work satisfaction however, because during migration the wage reference point chang-es. Based on those observations, it was assumed that working conditions will have a greater impact on mi-grants’ work satisfaction than nominal earnings. Additionally, migrants, while having higher nominal wages, should subjectively judge them as lower.Participants and procedureTwo samples – 351 subjects working in Poland, and 158 working in the UK and Germany – were analyzed. Everyone filled in an online survey including questions about their work environment and income, the Polish versions of the Working Conditions Questionnaire and the Work Satisfaction Scale. The results of the structural analyses (EFA and CFA) and between-sample measurement invariance of the Working Conditions Question-naire were obtained. Migrants and stayers were compared using a Kruskal-Wallis ANOVA. The impact of work-ing conditions and wages on work satisfaction was analyzed with multiple linear regression.ResultsThe factorial structure of the Working Conditions Questionnaire in the Polish version is comparable to the Span-ish original. Additionally, the nominal wages were perceived as higher for migrants than stayers. The reverse was true for subjective wage evaluations. Some working conditions were shown to have a significant impact on work satisfaction.ConclusionsThe Polish version of the Working Conditions Questionnaire is an internally consistent and reliable tool for measuring work properties. Higher nominal wages of migrants do not lead to their higher work satisfaction. Working conditions are a better predictor of work satisfaction than wages for all analyzed groups.

Gender Pay Gap Among Urban-Urban Migrant Workers: Pakistan's Two-Tier Urban Labor Market

Urban-urban migration has socio-economic and demographic consequences on the labor markets. It affects job mobility and gender-balance in the urban workplace. This study analyzes the gender wage gap among urban-urban migrant workers in Pakistan. The study used the most recent Labour Force Survey, a nationally representative dataset, to identify the determinants of wages for male and female migrant workers separately. The wages of urban-urban female migrants tend to be 45% lower than their male counterparts. The results indicated disparities in working hours and human capital endowment as some of the contributing factors to the increasing gender wage gap. This research calls for implementing drastic measures, i.e., gender-insensitive capacity building of urban migrant workers, workplace incentives for women, and enhancement of women leadership roles, to reduce gender inequalities in the urban labor market.

Exploitation and Low Wages of Labor Migrants in Gulf Countries

Migration towards the countries for economic reasons has different diverse outcomes for individuals. The present articles discuss the situation of those who migrated for economic stability of their left behind families. The issues faced by the laborers in middle east were explored through case study method from those who visited back home after expiry of visapermits. The migrants were selected from District Dera Ghazi Khan which has thousands of left behind families. Findings show that the Kafala system provides the migrants an opportunity to work and earn but lots of issues have been faced by such migrants in the countries of destination. They are bound to do as per the requirement of the sponsors because disobedience cause their departure from earning opportunity and the country as well. They have been exposed to harsh treatment and payed irregularly and withholding of payments is used as a tool to control.

Civil engineers encouraged to help protect migrant worker lives and wages in the Gulf

Charlotte Broyd of Engineers Against Poverty says civil engineering consultants and contractors can make a real difference to improving the lives of migrant construction workers in Gulf Cooperation Council countries, whose wages are frequently paid late or not at all.

Labor and behavior determinants of remittances in Saudi Arabia

AbstractSaudi Arabia is the second largest sender of international remittances. These remittances constitute large foreign capital inflows to labor‐exporting remittee economies. This study is the first to structurally decompose remittance dynamics into behavioral and labor market outcomes of migrants. Remittance outflows are decomposed into migrant labor supply, unemployment and participation rates, wage earnings, and the marginal propensity to remit (MPR) out of migrant earnings. The estimates suggest that migrant labor supply is highly elastic. The important driver of remittance dynamics is the MPR, migrant wages, and the labor supply of migrants. The MPR is found to respond counter‐cyclically to foreign gross domestic product.