the occupational integration of male migrants in western european countries: assimilation or...

The Occupational Integration of MaleMigrants in Western European Countries:Assimilation or Persistent Disadvantage?

Gabriele Ballarino* and Nazareno Panichella*

ABSTRACT

This paper looks at the migrants’ occupational integration process. Two main theoreticalperspectives are tested: the first one (assimilation view) claims that in the short-run migrantsare penalized, but as they settle in the receiving country they get integrated into the hostsociety; the second one (segmented assimilation view) claims that disadvantages persist in thelong-run. EU-LFS and ESS data are described and modelled, in order to compare the labourmarket performances of migrants in four European old-receiving countries (Germany, France,Great Britain and Sweden) and in two new-receiving countries (Spain and Italy) both in ashort-term and in a long-run perspective. We find that a) in the short-run, migrants’ labourmarket condition is worst with respect to the natives; b) this gap decreases with oldermigrants; c) the ethnic penalty disappears with the second generation, when they achieve alevel of education comparable to that of the natives.

POLICY IMPLICATIONS

• Labour market policies appear to face a trade-off: policies oriented towards the flexibiliza-tion could improve migrants’ occupational integration, but such policies are also likely toincrease the risk of poverty for the natives.

• In the case of the Southern new-receiving countries, a similar tradeoff could emerge forpolicies aiming at stopping the underground economy.

• Concerning integration in the long run, our results definitely point to the importance ofeducation. We would suggest policies oriented towards a full educational integration of themigrants’ offspring, since such policies could eliminate the gap separating them from thenatives.

INTRODUCTION

The European migration history after WW2 is quite complex: some countries experienced largeimmigrations in the second half of the last century, others have predominantly been a source ofemigrations, and still other others have changed from emigration to immigration countries (Dust-mann and Frattini, 2011). In general, after the Second World War, two main periods of interna-tional migration can be distinguished. The first took place after 1945 and was driven by the huge

* University of Milan.

doi: 10.1111/imig.12105

© 2013 The AuthorsInternational Migration © 2013 IOM

International MigrationPublished by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. ISSN 0020-7985

industrial growth of Central and Northern European countries, like Germany, France and the UnitedKingdom. These movements were due to a substantial economic expansion combined with a seri-ous labour shortage within the native population. While (former) colonial powers like France andthe UK drew principally on their ex-colonies to satisfy demands for unskilled labour, other coun-tries (Germany, Austria, the Scandinavian countries) recruited workers mainly from SouthernEurope (Italy, Spain, and Greece) and Turkey. The migrants arrived to work in semi- or unskilledblue collar jobs, usually in the manufacturing and construction sectors, and most of them acquiredpermanent residence. The second international migration wave began in the 1980s and is still goingon. In this period, the “old” receiving countries – those which had received migrants since the endof the WW2 – became the destination of many migrants coming largely from Eastern Europe.Moreover, in the last decades Southern European countries such as Italy, Portugal, Greece andSpain changed from emigration to immigration countries. The large underground economy of thesecountries played an important role as a pull factor, attracting migrants from Eastern Europe andfrom Africa, Asia and Latin America.The literature on the integration of immigrants into European host societies is quite rich as far

as the old receiving countries are concerned, but there is not much about the newer receiving ones,and quantitative comparative analyses including both types of countries are scarce. Moreover, theinstitutional features of the labour market of the receiving countries are seldom taken into account,despite their obvious importance for policies. This article takes a step in this direction, by analy-sing the occupational integration of male immigrants in both types of country. It also takes intoaccount the migration history of the individuals, in order to see how integration patterns evolveover time and whether these change as a function of national migration history and labour marketregulation.The next section briefly describes the relevant literature, outlining the two competing hypothesis

concerning the integration of immigrants. The third section presents the research hypotheses anddesign, and the fourth describes the data and variables used. The fifth section reports the empiricalresults, while the sixth draws some conclusions and policy implications from the findings.

THE INTEGRATION OF IMMIGRANTS IN THE HOST SOCIETY

The integration of immigrants has been analysed from many points of view, inspiring a number ofdifferent economic and sociological theories.1 Very generally speaking, two main views of the pro-cess can be distinguished: the assimilation and the segmented assimilation views.2 Both agree onthe short-run outcomes of immigration, observing that in general immigrants experience some kindof occupational penalization in the receiving countries for various reasons.Firstly, some aspects of human capital are country specific (Borjas, 1994). Language may be a

huge early problem. Often immigrants have less education than natives, particularly immigrantsfrom third-world countries coming to industrialized countries. Moreover, as is currently the case inmost Western European countries, educational certificates obtained in the immigrants’ countries oforigin are often not recognized in the host country.Secondly, besides language and formal school certificates, other forms of occupationally relevant

resources are often country specific: most migrants have limited knowledge of the functioning ofthe labour market of their new homeland, and thus face greater difficulties than natives in finding ajob matching their skills and expectations (Chiswick, 1978; Kogan, 2007). Thirdly, most immi-grants lack family support, and therefore urgently need a job to sustain themselves and to earnsome money to send back home. This leads them to enter readily available but low-skilled andlow-paying jobs (Kalter and Kogan, 2006; Dustmann, 2000), particularly in those countries whereimmigrants have less access, or no access at all, to welfare benefits.

2 Ballarino and Panichella

© 2013 The Authors. International Migration © 2013 IOM

Another mechanism leads to short-term and therefore suboptimal labour market choices: oftenmigration is not expected to be permanent, which makes both immigrants and their employersreluctant to invest in country-specific human capital (Dustman, 2000). For example, immigrantsmay seek high monetary returns in the short run (e.g. by working anti-social hours) rather than takingjobs that offer better medium-term prospects but lower immediate monetary returns (Heath andRidge, 1983). Finally, disadvantages may also result from discriminatory practices by singleemployers or institutions or both, particularly if immigrants are visibly (i.e. racially) different fromthe native population (Burstein, 1994). Practices of this kind can, of course, be based on limitedrationality mechanisms – statistical discrimination (Arrow, 1972; Aigner and Cain, 1977) ormonopsonistic discrimination (Madden, 1973) – as well as on a “taste for discrimination” (Becker,1971), that is an explicit ideology of racial supremacy.This much the two competing perspectives mentioned earlier have in common, the difference

between them emerges when the long-run situation of immigrants is considered. According to theassimilation view, in the long run the situation of migrants changes substantially as they settle inthe receiving country and (most of them) gradually get integrated in the host society. However,according to the segmented assimilation view, there is no reason to expect, as the previous hypoth-esis does, that the early disadvantages experienced by migrants substantially decrease over time.In fact the differences between the two perspectives boil down to different assumptions aboutthe mechanisms underlying social and economic integration and in particular, the relative size ofthe impacts these mechanisms have.The assimilation view gives more weight to human capital-related mechanisms, and human capi-

tal differences between immigrants and natives which tend to diminish over time (Chiswick, 1978;Alba and Nee, 1997). The language of the host country can gradually be learned, although at aspeed depending on the linguistic differences between it and the immigrants’ mother language.Immigrants can then acquire local education and training for themselves and, more often, for theirchildren. Discriminatory practices regarding the children of immigrants should also gradually disap-pear: as the general situation of migrants improves, both statistical discrimination and ideologies ofracial supremacy become weaker under the pressure of market competition and universalistic ideol-ogies. As the children of immigrants become educated in the host country and their human capitalbecomes identical to that of the natives, as they obtain fluency in the language of the original popu-lation and achieve degrees fully recognized in the labour market, their integration into the nativepopulation can become complete.The segmented assimilation view, however, gives more weight to the social mechanisms which

make the initial disadvantages suffered by immigrants permanent over time (Ambrosini, 2005).Despite the diminishing gap in informal and formal human capital, the short-term occupationalstrategies of immigrants may trap them permanently in secondary labour markets, with low-payingjobs and few opportunities for upwards social mobility. The social networks of immigrants mayplay a similar role: once an immigrant arrives in a new country, the chances of finding a job oftendepend on help from her network (family, friends or immigrants from the same ethnic group), butin this way she is likely to find a job similar to the jobs held by those in her network, mostly onthe lower ranks of the occupational stratification. Ethnically homogenous ties can thus diminish theopportunities for upward social mobility, providing employment in niches or ethnic enclaves thatnatives do not occupy (Portes, 1995). Discriminatory practices, whether based on statistical discrim-ination or racist ideologies, tend to be strongly path-dependent and survive over time, even whenthey entail economic inefficiency (Arrow, 1972). Thus the second generation will also, even whenschooled in the host country, experience ethnic penalization when entering the labour market.This very brief account makes quite clear there are no theoretical grounds to judge a priori

between the two perspectives, as the individual features of migrants interact with the societal fea-tures of the receiving countries (Portes and Rumbaut, 2001). From the point of view of laboursupply, the literature reviewed above suggests that mechanisms related to individual human and

The occupational integration of male migrants in Western European countries 3


social capital play a major role; the educational system is surely a major factor in the process,since this is where individuals get much of their skills and large parts of their social networks. Inparticular, for heavily tracked school systems, immigrants are likely to concentrate in the lower,vocational tracks, which can act like a diversion mechanism, moving them into the lower seg-ment of the labour market (Shavit and M€uller 2000) and this decreases the potential assets inhuman and social capital of immigrants, making the occupational assimilation process longer andharder.The next section discusses factors related to labour demand and presents our empirical strategy.

EMPIRICAL STRATEGY AND RESEARCH HYPOTHESES

To decide between the two perspectives, time is the major issue, as the passing of time fosters inte-gration. Over longer periods, immigrants may collect the resources needed for a good labour mar-ket performance, both as individuals and as a social group. The research design therefore includesa dichotomy between old – present for a longer period – and new or recent migrants. However,immigrant inclusion in the labour market is influenced not only by the characteristics of immigrantsthemselves, but also by basic features of the host society (Kogan, 2007). In order to have a widepicture of the integration process of migrants in Europe, we analyse the occupational outcomes ofnew immigrants, old immigrants and the offspring of immigrants (second generation) in selectedWestern European countries.Countries have been chosen according to two dimensions. First, both new and old receiving

countries are included. When a country has a long immigration history, specific policies (e.g. bilateralagreements between host country and country of origin) may favour the occupational integration ofimmigrants. Moreover, old receiving countries are characterized by denser ethnic networks; so newimmigrants, in their attempt to enter the local labour market, are more likely to find support fromlocal networks of already settled fellow countrymen. Conversely, the networks and the support willbe weaker in the new receiving countries.The second dimension regards labour market institutions, therefore we include countries with dif-

ferent labour market regulations. In “liberal market economies” (Hall and Soskice, 2001), such asthose of the United Kingdom or Ireland, labour markets are characterized by high labour flexibility,weak industrial relations and a market-based social insurance. But in “coordinated market econo-mies”, such as those of the Scandinavian or Continental countries (Germany, France, Italy), labourmarkets are relatively rigid, labour costs high and social insurance is either employer-based or uni-versal. Kogan (2007) argues that strict employment protection legislation, imposing high firingcosts on the employers, may be a deterrent in hiring immigrants, since the expectation of highercosts, due to a possible mistake in the hiring process, can lead employers to stronger statistical dis-crimination and thus to the systematic preference of native to immigrant workers. A strict labourmarket regulation may indeed accentuate the outsider status of an immigrant population and favourits relegation to the secondary segment of the labour market. Vice versa, a flexible labour marketregulation may alleviate the insider-outsider cleavage (Lindbeck and Snower, 1988), indirectly pro-moting the inclusion of immigrants in the labour market. However, in some coordinated marketeconomies, especially in Southern Europe, a rigid legal labour market regulation is associated witha sizeable “black” economy, where the labour market is informally regulated in a very flexibleway, leading to unskilled, poorly paid, and dangerous employment (Ambrosini, 1999; Reyneri,2001). Of course migrants are typically pushed towards this lower segment of the labour market(Colombo 2012), and the extent and success of their integration can be determined by the relativesize of these secondary segments, which offer good employment opportunities but few opportuni-ties of getting a good job (Ambrosini, 2001; Reyneri and Fullin, 2011b).



Table 1 shows the countries included in the analysis, classifying them by migration history andlabour market regulation. The UK is an old receiving country with a liberal market economy;France, Germany and Sweden are old receiving countries with a coordinated market economy; Italyand Spain are new receiving countries with a coordinated market economy but also a huge under-ground economy, thus favouring the immigrants’ access to employment.Four main hypotheses can now be formulated.

a) If there is no “migration penalty” as such, but differences between immigrants and native work-ers can be explained (completely) as the outcome of compositional factors (e.g. migrants are, onaverage, less educated than natives), then suitable controls should remove all of the differencesbetween migrants and natives as far as labour market positions are concerned. According to thishypothesis, which can be called the composition hypothesis, once compositional factors have beenadequately controlled for, there should be no differences in labour market integration, ceterisparibus, between natives and immigrants.

b) New immigrants are penalized not just in terms of their individual characteristics, but alsothrough structural features of the receiving countries. However, such penalization can decreaseover time, as proposed by the assimilation perspective mentioned earlier. In particular, when theoffspring of the immigrants gets schooled in the receiving countries, and if their school resultsare equal to those of the natives, no difference in their labour market performance should beobserved. According to this hypothesis, which can be called the assimilation hypothesis, a signifi-cantly lower or no ethnic penalization at all will be observed in the case of old or second genera-tion immigrants.

c) The structural disadvantage perspective suggests, instead, that factors penalizing immigrants’ per-formance in the labour market persist over the long-run, and even over the transition from thefirst to the second generation of immigrants. If this persistent disadvantage hypothesis holds, thenboth old and second generation immigrants will continue to experience labour market penaliza-tion, despite their additional resources when compared with new migrants.

d) Institutions regulating the labour market have a strong impact on the labour market integrationof immigrants, since such institutions define immigrants’ opportunities relative to those of theirnative counterparts. The institutional specificity hypothesis states that the expected differencebetween the probability of being employed of immigrants and natives is less where the labourmarket is more flexible, i.e. in the UK (labour market flexibility) and in Italy and Spain (rigidlabour market, but a huge and unregulated underground economy). However, once immigrantsare employed, the quality of their jobs is expected to be less than the quality of the natives’ jobswhen the underground economy is smaller, i.e. in both the UK and the Continental countries, forstrong labour market segmentation tends to push migrants into the lower segments and make itharder for them to enter the higher segments of the labour market.

TABLE 1

COUNTRIES ANALYSED, ACCORDING TO THEIR MIGRATION HISTORY ANDLABOUR MARKET REGULATION

Labour market regulation

Migration history

New receiving countries Old receiving countries

Liberal market economies United Kingdom

Coordinated market economies France, Germany, Sweden

Southern coordinated market economies Italy, Spain



The empirical analysis is divided in two parts. The first treats the occupational integration of newmigrants in both old and new receiving countries. The second part focuses on labour market inte-gration in the long run, so it analyses the occupational integration of old and second-generationimmigrants only in the old receiving countries. As we compare old and new migrants using cross-sectional data, the analysis is necessarily based on two assumptions, shared by most of the researchin this area (Reyneri and Fullin, 2011a). It is assumed, first, that unobserved characteristics ofmigrants are constant over time (Borjas, 1995); and second, that the return of immigrants to theircountry of origin is not a selective process involving more immigrants who have succeeded (thewinners) or immigrants who remained unemployed for a long time or were not satisfied with theirposition (the losers). In fact, it is yet unclear whether the it is the successful ones or the failingones who return more often, and why.

DATA AND VARIABLES

To study the integration process of migrants we use two different databases. For integration in theshort-run, i.e. in the first ten years after migration, the European Union Labour Force Survey(EU-LFS) data set (2005–2008) is used. The EU-LFS database provides standardized, cross-sectional information on labour force participation, employment and unemployment. However, theEU-LFS dataset is not of much use for studying the integration of migrants in the long run. Firstly, itdoes not contain reliable information on old immigrants, as it includes them in a very broad category(present for more than ten years). Secondly, the dataset gives no information about the migration his-tory of the parents, so only the children of immigrants living with their parents can be identified assecond generation immigrants. For these reasons, when studying the occupational status of ‘old’ andsecond generation immigrants in old receiving countries, the five waves of the European Social Sur-vey dataset (ESS) are used.3 This dataset includes much more detailed information than the EU-LFS,in particular information on parental country of birth and on the individual migration history, also dis-tinguishing those who have been living in the host country for more than 20 years.We distinguish immigrants from the endogenous population using the information on country of

birth, except for Germany where nationality is used, as descendants of German grandparents areautomatically granted German nationality, even when they are born abroad. In the EU-LFS data,immigrants are divided into four categories, according to the country of origin: a) North Americaand Australia; b) EU15; c) other European; d) Africa, Asia and Latin America. Results for the firstand the second group are not reported, since those immigrants are very different from the others, inparticular because their average employment condition is similar to that of the native population, ifnot more favourable. When we analyse the integration of both old migrants and second generationusing the ESS data, the same strategy has been followed. However, the low observed frequenciesin the samples constrain to collapse categories c) and d) into a single one. Given the different time-span of the analysis, in this case individuals whose parents were born in Southern European coun-tries (Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain) are also included in this group of immigrants from poorercountries.In order to look for patterns of integration over time, two strategies are followed, depending on

the data constraints. The EU-LFS data does not allow us to look at the long run, but for immigrantswho arrived 10 or fewer years ago, detailed information about the length of the stay is available; ithas thus been coded into five 2-year categories, from 1–2 years of stay to 9–10 years. We alsoincluded a dummy variable for immigrants who have been in the host country 11 years or more(results not shown).In the ESS data, “old” immigrants are defined as those who have stayed in the receiving country

for 20 years or more. Moreover, the ESS data reports the occupational outcomes of second



generation immigrants, i.e. immigrants’ children grown up and schooled in the receiving countries.We distinguish between children whose parents are both foreign-born (generation 2) from thosewith only one foreign-born parent (mixed generation). Thus, we define as children of immigrantsthose individuals whose parents were both born abroad. Also in this case, those respondents whoseparents were born in North and Western Europe, North America and Australia are included in aseparate control category (results are not shown).There are two outcome variables. The first is employment condition, measured by a dichoto-

mous variable coded 1 for the employed and 0 for those who are unemployed but looking for ajob. For the latter category we apply the standard International Labour Organization definition ofunemployment, excluding all who are not in the labour force, whether studying, looking afterthe home, retired, disabled, or otherwise not active. Our second dependent variable regards thequality of the job, coded 1 for stable jobs with an Isco 88 score greater than 8, and coded0 for: a) unemployment; b) unstable jobs; c) jobs (stable or unstable) with an Isco 88 code lessthan or equal to 8. We prefer this measure to other possible ones (for instance the ISEI or theSIOPS indices, see Ganzeboom and Treiman 1996) as more suited to one of the research ques-tions, namely whether immigrants are permanently trapped into the lower segments of the labourmarket.The first control variable is an individual’s higher school title, coded into three categories. The

first category includes persons with lower secondary education or less (ISCED 0–2); the secondcategory consists of those who have attained upper secondary education or post-secondary non-tertiary education (ISCED 3–4); while respondents in the third category possess a tertiary educationcertificate (ISCED 5–6). Included in the models are control variables for age group (3 categories:15–35, 36–45, 46–55) and marital status (divorced/widow, single or married).We limit ourselves to male immigrants of working age (15–55): since migration is a gendered

process, we think it is better analyse men and women separately, and space limitations do not allowthe inclusion of both genders. To test the hypotheses proposed above, a set of logit models are esti-mated for each country, including dummies for region, quarter of the year and their interactions, tocontrol for business cycles and labour market contingencies. As the EU-LFS design includes apanel component, repeated observations are eliminated from the analytical sample. In the ESS,wave and region are controlled for. Results are presented below by graphs showing the associationbetween immigrant status and the dependent variable of interest in the form of average marginaleffects.4

EMPIRICAL RESULTS

Descriptive statistics show that, as expected, new immigrants are penalized in all countries (seeAppendix tables A1 and A2). This result is confirmed by multivariate analyses controlling for age,education, family status and labour market fluctuations. Results are presented in Figure 1, wherethe dark portion of the bar measures the “ethnic penalty” for the probability of being employed,while the whole bar (dark+white) measures the “ethnic penalty” for the probability of getting agood job. It is easy to see that the composition hypothesis does not get much support from thisanalysis, as in all the countries a migration penalty exists even when controlling for education. Theonly exception to this pattern are non-EU15 European immigrants in the UK, whose employmentperformance cannot be distinguished from that of the natives.5

The size of the immigrants’ disadvantage in term of employment opportunities is clearly larger inGermany, Sweden and France - i.e. in those countries where a strict and effectively enforcedemployment protection legislation regulates the labour market – than in the other countries. From apolicy perspective, it can be added that in these old receiving countries the high unemployment of



new migrants is a new problem, unknown to the previous wave of immigrants, who came fromSouthern Europe during the 1960s and 1970s (Kogan, 2011).In Italy and Spain however, where the informal labour market is relatively large, immigrants are

less penalized, as already noted by previous research (Reyneri and Ambrosini, 2005, 2011a;Bernardi et al., 2011). The same happens in the UK, where labour markets are flexible. As notedabove, in the UK, migrants from Eastern Europe have no penalization at all. The UK is also theonly country where these Eastern European immigrants are better off than their counterparts fromAfrica, Asia and Latin America.Thus, the institutional specificity hypothesis presented above receives support, for new migrants

appear to have better employment opportunities where the labour market is more flexible, especiallyin its lower segment. Functional equivalence patterns are at work, as this kind of flexibility can bethe outcome of either explicit policies, as in the UK, or of an informal “grey economy” reactionagainst very rigid formal labour market regulations, as in Italy and Spain. But in strictly and effec-tively regulated labour markets like the French, German and Swedish ones, high firing costs areimposed on the employers, and this may act as a deterrent in hiring immigrants.In general, the patterns of the probability of getting a good job (defined as a stable job with an

ISCO code > 8) are similar to those of employment. However, Figure 1 makes it clear that, in allobserved countries, the gap between natives and migrants is much larger: full occupational integra-tion provided by a stable and relatively qualified job is much more difficult to attain for immigrantsthan participation in the labour market. Germany, where the difference between the two penalties isat its lowest, is an outlier to this pattern. Correspondingly, the differences among countries in theprobability of getting a good job are smaller than those for being employed, but the overall patternstill holds, and countries with less rigid labour market regulations, particularly the UK and Spain,show lower penalties for immigrants than countries with tighter labour market regulations.

FIGURE 1AVERAGE PARTIAL EFFECT OF BEING EMPLOYED AND AVERAGE PARTIAL EFFECT OF BEING

EMPLOYED IN A GOOD JOB (STABLE POSITION AND ISCO88>800) OF NEW MIGRANTS (IN OLD ANDNEW RECEIVING COUNTRIES) BY COUNTRY OF ORIGIN. BINARY LOGISTIC MODEL, EU-LFS DATA

–.4

–.2

0–.

4–.

20

Other Europe AfAsLa Other Europe AfAsLa Other Europe AfAsLa

France Germany Italy

Spain Sweden Uk

Employed Good job



As noted above, the EU-LFS data only allow us to observe the integration of immigrants in thelabour market for a relatively short time period. Figure 2 graphs the main results of a second set ofmodels, which refer only to new immigrants (from other EU countries, Africa, Asia and LatinAmerica arriving 10 or fewer years ago). The bars report the average marginal effect of an interac-tion parameter between migration status and length of stay in the country, measuring how theethnic penalty changes over time, again with full controls.Quite obviously, the probability of being employed generally increases with the number of years

since immigration, but the ethnic penalty still persists, even among those who have already spent aconsiderable amount of time in the host country. However, the probabilities of both employmentand getting a good job increase regularly over time only in the German case, and to some extent inSweden. It should be noted that these countries, both with relatively rigid labour markets, are alsothose where the occupational penalty for the newly arrived migrants is largest. As suggested by theliterature, in countries with high job security, employers are more likely to hire workers on thebasis of ascriptive signals, such as gender, race or migration status (Gangl, 2003). Moreover,the same labour market regulations may decrease the number of low-paying jobs at the bottom ofthe occupational hierarchy, which are the jobs potentially more easily available to new immigrants.In order to look at the occupational integration of immigrants in the long run, we now move to

the ESS data, which allow us to distinguish three groups of immigrants: second generation (withboth parents born abroad); old migrants (who are in the host country for over 20 years), and aresidual category including the new migrants.6 It has to be noted that in the ESS analysis the “newmigrants” category is defined differently from in the EU-LFS analyses: it now includes thosemigrants who have lived in the host country for less than twenty years. Figure 3 shows the esti-mates of the disadvantage of those categories with respect to the natives in the probability of being

FIGURE 2AVERAGE PARTIAL EFFECT OF BEING EMPLOYED AND AVERAGE PARTIAL EFFECT OF BEING

EMPLOYED IN A GOOD JOB (STABLE POSITION AND ISCO88>800) OF NEW MIGRANTS (IN OLD ANDNEW RECEIVING COUNTRIES) BY YEARS OF RESIDENCE IN THE COUNTRY. BINARY LOGISTIC

MODEL EU-LFS DATA

–.5

–.3

–.1

.1–.

5–.

3–.

1.1

1/2 yr. 3/4 yr. 5/6 yr. 7/8 yr.9/10 yr. 1/2 yr. 3/4 yr. 5/6 yr. 7/8 yr.9/10 yr. 1/2 yr. 3/4 yr. 5/6 yr. 7/8 yr.9/10 yr.

France Germany Italy

Spain Sweden Uk

Employment Good job



employed. Model 1 refers to the unconditional estimate, while model 2 uses the full set of controls,including education, which were detailed above. Confidence intervals are relatively large, becauseof the low observed frequencies, but the general pattern points to an improvement over time of theemployment opportunities of immigrants, giving some support to the assimilation hypothesis. InSweden this is very clear. In the UK there is no migration penalty at all. In the UK and in France,however, the second generation seems to be still at disadvantage. These findings, consistent withthose of other studies (Cheung, 2012 for the UK; Silberman et al., 2007 for France), point to a pos-sible marginalization of a part of the second generation immigrants and are generally in line withthe persisting disadvantage hypothesis. In fact, ethnic riots have been taking place in both countriessince the late 1970s. However in model 2, when education is controlled for, the effect becomesstatistically not significant (p = 0.202 for UK; p = 0.364 for France).Some further support for the assimilation hypothesis comes from the analysis of the probability

of getting a good job, i.e. one of middle-to-high qualification, which gives access to full economicand social integration into the host society. The relevant results from this analysis are shown inFigure 4. In Sweden both “older” and second generation immigrants are quite integrated in thelabour market, as their occupational chances are quite close to those of the natives. It is interestingto note how the rather bad situation of the first generation – see Figure 1 above – is counterbal-anced by the assimilation of the second generation (as found by Jonsson, 2007, p. 500).In the UK also we see full occupational integration on the part of immigrants. Thus, similarly to

other studies (Cheung and Heath, 2007; Cheung., 2012), we find ethnic penalties for the secondgeneration in UK with respect to unemployment but not with respect to the opportunities of gettinga good job. One possible explanation refers to the fact that in the UK the second generation ofmigrants are less willing to accept low-skilled jobs than the first one. Moreover, as Cheung and

FIGURE 3AVERAGE PARTIAL EFFECT OF BEING EMPLOYED OF NEW MIGRANTS, OLD MIGRANTS ANDSECOND GENERATION IN OLD RECEIVING COUNTRIES. BINARY LOGISTIC MODEL, ESS DATA

–.2

0.2

–.2

0.2

New migr.(0-20 yr.)

Old migr.(>20yr.)

Gen.2 New migr. (0-20 yr.)

Old migr.(>20yr.)

Gen. 2

France Germany

Sweden UK

Model 1 Model 2



Heath (2007) claimed, they may also have raised their reservation wage closer to the level of theirwhite British peers.In France and Germany the assimilation of the second generation appears to be conditional on

education: when education is controlled for, in France the gap is no longer significant, while inGermany the point estimate even shows an advantage for the offspring of immigrants. This is nosurprise, for the German labour market is known for the comparatively high relevance ofeducational qualifications (Mayer et al., 2007), and previous analyses on different data showed thesame pattern (Kalter and Granato, 2007). Educational qualifications appear to be the majorobstacles to economic success for second-generation immigrants in Germany, thus confirming theimportance of the labour supply factors referred to above.Generally speaking, these results provide partial support for the institutional specificity hypothesis:

institutions clearly matter. However, while the first half of the hypothesis was fully supported, for aderegulated and flexible labour market helps the short-run integration of immigrants, the second halfwas not supported. We hypothesized that in the long run countries with a regulated labour marketwould show a better integration of immigrants, our results show this to hold for Sweden, but not forFrance and Germany, while in the UK immigrants show an occupational performance no worst thanthe natives’, with the notable exception of the second generation.

CONCLUSIONS

In the short run, new migrants are penalized in terms of both employment opportunities and theprobability of getting a good job. This difference in employment opportunities cannot be explained

FIGURE 4AVERAGE PARTIAL EFFECT OF BEING EMPLOYED IN A GOOD JOB POSITION OF NEW

IMMIGRANTS, OLD AND SECOND GENERATION IMMIGRANTS IN OLD RECEIVING COUNTRIES.BINARY LOGISTIC MODEL, ESS DATA.

–.2

0.2

–.2

0.2

New migr.(0-20 yr.)

Old migr.(>20yr.)

Gen 2. New migr. (0-20yr.)

Old migr.(>20yr.)

Gen. 2

France Germany

Sweden UK

Model 1 Model 2



by their lower level of education. In fact, entering education into statistical models of occupationalattainment reduces the migration penalty, but does not remove it completely. Thus we can rejectthe composition hypothesis.Several differences among countries have been noted. In both the new receiving countries consid-

ered (Italy and Spain) there is a strong demand for unskilled labour from the underground economy,and in the UK, where there is no strict employment protection legislation, the migration penalty isvery low, but at the same time new migrants have fewer opportunities than natives to get good jobs(defined as stable and qualified ones). In the old receiving countries with more regulated labour mar-kets (Germany, France and Sweden), on the other hand, migrants are strongly penalized in terms ofboth employment opportunities and the probability of getting a good job. As suggested above, thereare a number of reasons why migrants may experience hardships when they enter the labour marketof the host country. In particular, they may lack the country-specific human capital necessary foroccupational integration and economic success. When analyses control for the educational level ofthe individuals, as in the models we presented, this kind of human capital remains unmeasured.Even if the uncertainty of the estimates is quite large because of the low number of cases, with

regard to the occupational outcomes of older and second generation immigrants the results seem toconfirm the institutional specificity hypothesis: the integration process is strongly affected by theinstitutional features of the host countries. In the UK and Sweden the ethnic penalty decreases overtime, thus confirming the assimilation hypothesis. But children of immigrants in these countriesremain at a disadvantage where employment opportunities are concerned, as is also the case in Ger-many and in France, in conformity with the persisting disadvantage hypothesis. Concerning thequality of the job of the employed, in the UK and Sweden evidence supports, again, the assimila-tion hypothesis while the opposite happens in the Continental countries. In the latter, and in partic-ular in Germany, this disadvantage depends, in the analyses, on the educational qualifications ofthe second generation immigrants: once education is controlled for, the chances for a second gener-ation immigrant to get a good job cannot be distinguished statistically from those of the children ofthe natives. Mediation analysis-type arguments suggest that in this case the major obstacles tooccupational integration lie primarily in the educational system – perhaps in its strong stratificationrather than in the labour market itself.Taken together, these analyses generally confirm that in the short-run migrants are strongly

penalized in both old and new receiving countries. Over time, opportunities can improve. Theassimilation hypothesis receives support for the UK and Sweden, while in France and Germanyevidence gives more support to the persistent disadvantage hypothesis. In the latter countries, andin particular in Germany, the school system appears to play a major role in this persistence.Which policies can be proposed on the basis of these findings? Concerning the new migrants, the

comparison among the old receiving countries suggests that policies oriented towards increasing theflexibility of the labour market might improve their short-run occupational integration. Of coursethe same measures might entail social costs for the natives, so policy trade-offs have to be considered.In the case of the Mediteranean new-receiving countries, policy prescriptions are made more

complicated by the relevance of the underground economy as a provider of employment opportuni-ties to migrants. Policies repressing the black economy are likely to eliminate at least some of thebad jobs currently available to immigrants, but could also improve the quality of the jobs remainingavailable. Concerning these countries there is substantial uncertainty on the long-run patterns ofintegration: where the labour market is flexible because of regulation, as in the UK, immigrants farewell, but more research is needed to see which long-run integration pattern is associated with theunregulated flexibility of the underground economy of the Mediterranean countries.Concerning the migrants’ integration in the long run, our results definitely point to the impor-

tance of education. Thus, we would suggest policies oriented towards a full educational integrationof the immigrants’ children. For instance, a tracked secondary school is likely to segregatesecond generation immigrants in the lower tracks, diverting them from the academic tracks and



substantially limiting their social relations with the natives: policy interventions aimed at decreasingsuch segregation might improve the educational achievement of the offspring of immigrants, reduc-ing the gap separating them from the natives. When this gap persists across generations, the hostsocieties would face substantial social and political problems, as educational cleavages cumulatewith ethnic and family background cleavages to produce social and occupational ghettos. But a fullintegration at school might be the basis of a full occupational integration.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

A previous version of this paper has been presented at the ISA-RC28 Spring Conference in HongKong, May 2012, and at the ECSR/EQUALSOC Conference in Stockholm, September 2012. Wewould like to thank all those who intervened in the discussion in the aforementioned conferences,as well as Tommaso Frattini, Hans Schadee and the two anonymous reviewers for valuable com-ments and suggestions.

NOTES

1. The term “integration” here has been used to denote the process of reaching a stable occupational positionin a society. Space does not allow us to enter into the important debate concerning the difference between“integration” and “assimilation”, where the socio-cultural and political features of the integration processare also considered.

2. This has also been defined the “structural disadvantage” view.3. Illegal immigrants are unlikely to be covered in either of these sets of surveys. This is of course a limitation

of our work, one shared with all studies based on multi-purpose general population surveys.4. Coefficients and predicted probabilities are available on request.5. This does not depend on controlling for education, as the descriptive statistics show6. Those who have just one parent born abroad (“mixed generation”) are included in the analysis as a control

dummy, but no results are shown about their occupational performance

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the occupational integration of male migrants in western european countries: assimilation or...

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