Suchergebnisse

This article analyses the labour market integration of newly arrived immigrants in the UK labour market, based on data from the UK Labour Force Survey. We focus on immigrants who arrived in the United Kingdom since 2000 and distinguish different cohorts based on the year of their arrival in the country. We examine the extent to which these new arrivals were able to enter work and move up into skilled jobs, and analyse the sectors of the economy that have proved most amenable to this progression. The analysis indicates that these new arrivals fared relatively well in the workforce. In part as a result of their relative youth and high education levels, many new arrivals (especially those from the European Union and in particular the EU10 countries) moved straight into work.

In this paper, we use repeated cross-sectional survey data to study the labour market performance of refugees across several EU countries and over time. In the first part, we document that labour market outcomes for refugees are consistently worse than those for other comparable migrants. The gap remains sizeable even after controlling for individual characteristics as well as for unobservables using a rich set of fixed effects and interactions between area of origin, entry cohort and destination country. Refugees are 11.6 percent less likely to have a job and 22.1 percent more likely to be unemployed than migrants with similar characteristics. Moreover, their income, occupational quality and labour market participation are also relatively weaker. This gap persists until about 10 years after immigration. In the second part, we assess the role of asylum policies in explaining the observed refugee gap. We conduct a difference-in-differences analysis that exploits the differential timing of dispersal policy enactment across European countries: we show that refugee cohorts exposed to these polices have persistently worse labour market outcomes. Further, we find that entry cohorts admitted when refugee status recognition rates are relatively high integrate better into the host country labour market.

We develop a model to understand the trade-offs faced by an elected representative in supporting an amnesty when a restrictive immigration policy is in place. We show that an amnesty is more desirable the more restricted are the occupational opportunities of undocumented immigrants and the less redistributive is the welfare state. Empirical evidence based on the voting behavior of U.S. Congressmen on the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 provides strong support for the predictions of our theoretical model.