The Impact of Worker Effort on Public Sentiment Towards Temporary Migrants

Temporary and circular migration programs have been devised by many destination countries and supported by the European Commission as a policy to reduce welfare and social costs of immigration in destination countries. In this paper we present an additional reason for proposing temporary migration policies based on the characteristics of the foreign labor-effort supply. The level of effort exerted by migrants, which decreases over their duration in the host country, positively affects production, real wages and capital owners' profits. We show that the acceptance of job offers by migrants result in the displacement in employment of national workers. However it increases the workers‟ exertion, decreases prices and thus can counter anti-immigrant voter sentiment. Therefore, the favorable sentiment of the capital owners and the local population towards migrants may rise when temporary migration policies are adopted.Migration, Exertion of effort, Contracted Temporary Migration

The Impact of Worker Effort on Public Sentiment Towards Temporary Migrants

Temporary and circular migration programs have been devised by many destination countries and supported by the European Commission as a policy to reduce welfare and social costs of immigration in destination countries. In this paper we present an additional reason for proposing temporary migration policies based on the characteristics of the foreign labor-effort supply. The level of effort exerted by migrants, which decreases over their duration in the host country, positively affects production, real wages and capital owners\' profits. We show that the acceptance of job offers by migrants result in the displacement in employment of national workers. However it increases the workers\' exertion, decreases prices and thus can counter anti-immigrant voter sentiment. Therefore, the favorable sentiment of the capital owners and the local population towards migrants may rise when temporary migration policies are adopted.Migration, Exertion of effort, Contracted Temporary Migration

The Social Assimilation of Immigrants

Policy makers in migrant-receving countries must often strike a delicate balance between economic needs, that would dictate a substantial increase in the number of foreign workers, and political and electoral imperatives, that typically result in highly restrictive immigration policies. Promoting integration of migrants into the host country would go a long way in alleviating the trade off between economic and political considerations. While there is a large literature on the economic assimilation of immigrants, somewhat less attention has been devoted to other – and equally crucial – dimensions of migrants’ integration, namely the process of social assimilation. The aim of this paper is to take a close look at migrants social integration into the host country. We rely on the European Community Household panel (ECHP), which devotes a full module to the role and relevance of social relations for both migrants and natives. An innovative feature of this analysis is that it relies on migrants perceptions about their integration rather than – as is typically the case in most opinion surveys – on natives attitudes toward migrants. The main results of the paper can be summarized as follows. First, migrants – particularly from non EU origins - are at a disadvantage in the fields of social relations. Even after controlling for their individual characteristics, such as age, education, family size, and employment status, they tend to socialize less than natives. Second, migrants tend to converge, albeit quite slowly, to the standard of natives. This finding highlight the risks of short term migration, where migrants tend to be constantly marginalized. Third, education has a significant impact on the type of social activities that individuals undertake. More educated people tend to relate somewhat less with their close neighbourhood, but quite intensively with the broader community. The implication for policy makers concerned about the creation of ethnic enclaves is to promote education among immigrants’ community.

Skilled Foreign Workers in Italy: an Alternative Measurement Method

The issue of high skilled migration is of increasing importance in the policy debates in a diverse set of countries, however, very little is know about the effects and the magnitude of high skill migration also because data on this topic are very scarce. The debate about the effect of immigration in Italy has been exclusively focused on the unskilled immigrants and their effect on the labour market, almost nothing is known about the skilled foreign workers. The phenomenon is not so important as in other countries (i.e. U.S., UK and Germany), however, the share of foreign workers among white collars and managers is constantly increasing in the last years; moreover, it is often declared by employers a shortage of skilled manual workers that can only be satisfied by foreign workers. As the Eurostat Labour Force Survey, one of the few dataset available to study this issue, cannot be used because foreign workers are underrepresented for southern European countries like Italy, we propose here an alternative method based to the salary paid to the worker. We use the distribution of individual wages, after controlling for observable individual and firm characteristics, to measure skill that is defined as unobservable "ability" for which the worker receives a wage premium over the main wage paid to workers with similar observable characteristics. Descriptive statistics on the characteristics of skilled immigrants confirm the shared knowledge that there is a demand for highly specialised manual workers which is satisfied by experienced male workers coming from non European countries. Moreover a simple test is carried out to investigate which are the motivation of mobility inside Europe, and the effect of European integration policy and international trade.Migration, skilled labour.

The Impact of Worker Effort on Public Sentiment Towards Temporary Migrants

Temporary and circular migration programs have been devised by many destination countries and supported by the European Commission as a policy to reduce welfare and social costs of immigration in destination countries. In this paper we present an additional reason for proposing temporary migration policies based on the characteristics of the foreign labor-effort supply. The level of effort exerted by migrants, which decreases over their duration in the host country, positively affects production, real wages and capital owners' profits. We show that the acceptance of job offers by migrants result in the displacement in employment of national workers. However it increases the workers' exertion, decreases prices and thus can counter anti-immigrant voter sentiment. Therefore, the favorable sentiment of the capital owners and the local population towards migrants may rise when temporary migration policies are adopted.migration, exertion of effort, contracted temporary migration

Migrant and native interaction : labor market and marriage market

The more we study the migration phenomenon the more we understand how deep rooted in its understanding is the sentence: countries of destination thought they had let in workers and they discovered instead that they had let in human beings. Much attention is paid to the economic effects of migrants in countries of destination. But relatively little attention is paid to extremely important socio-political and demographic effects. Migration and integration policies are, also, evaluated in economic terms: do migrants increase welfare costs; do they displace native workers; do they favor economic growth etc. European researchers have neglected many key aspects of family-related migration, lagging behind, in this respect, North American and Latin American research (e.g., Boyle 2002; Falicov 2007; Glick 2010). With this policy brief, we would like to point out the multiple effects that foreign workers can have in non-economic areas. In particular, we would like to point out that a policy designed to take care, for instance, of the elderly through foreign labor can have externalities on the marriage market. Hence, a correct evaluation of a policy needs to be more comprehensive and to look at all the implications of a given decision.The MPC is co-financed by the European University Institute and the European Unio

Are Immigrants Competing with Natives in the Italian Labour Market? The Employment Effect

Gavosto, Venturini, Villosio (1999) find that the impact of foreign workers on the wage of natives was positive. Such a result was partly to be expected, and therefore the effect of immigrants on native employment is analyzed here. Two aspects of the unemployment experience are taken into account: i) displacement risk, measured by the probability of moving from employment into unemployment; ii) job-search effectiveness measured by the probability of moving from unemployment into employment within one year. The quarterly Labour Force Survey data (ISTAT) from 1993 to 1997 was used. The transition probabilities depend on two sets of independent variables at time t: the individual characteristics and the external conditions of the market. A probit model was applied for repeated-cross-sections on ?specific? local areas in order to control for possible autocorrelation and endogeneity. The results show that in the northern part of Italy, where most immigrants are located, the share of immigrants has no effect or a complementary effect on the probability of finding a job for workers looking for a new job while for people looking for a first job (the young) a negative effect is detected only in 1993 while the effect is positive in the most recent periods. For native transition from employment to unemployment a complementary effect prevails, while there is a negative effect only in the manufacturing sector in Northern Italy for 1996. This effect, however, is possibly due to other factors, i.e. the spread of temporary contracts in that area during that year

Do Foreigners Replace Native Immigrants? Evidence from a Panel Cointegration Analysis

This paper examines the impact of the immigration of foreigners on domestic labour mobility. Since David Card's seminal study on the regional labour market impact of the Mariel Boatlift it is controversial whether domestic labour mobility equilibrates economic conditions across cities and regions. However, there is little or no evidence that natives leave destinations where migrants tend to cluster. In this paper we reconcile the existing evidence by taking another route. We analyze whether the immigration of foreigners replaces domestic mobility from poor to rich regions. We focus on Italy, which is characterized by market differences in earnings between the North and the South. Based on a panel cointegration approach we exploit the variance of international and internal migration over time for identifying potential displacement effects. The main finding is that, conditional on unemployment and wage differentials, the share of foreign workers in the labour force of the destination regions discourages internal labour mobility significantly. As a consequence, spatial correlation studies which use the variance of the foreigner share across region for identifying the wage and employment effects of immigration, tend to understate the actual immigration impact.international migration, domestic migration, labour markets, panel cointegration, Italy

Italian migration

Italy is a country with a long history of emigration and a very short experience of immigration. The paper first surveys the Italian emigration pattern describing the characteristics of the Italian emigrants (age, sex, skill level), their area of origins and the directions of their movement. The determinants of the migration choice are then analyzed as well as the policies affecting the decision to migrate. The end of the first section provides an analysis of the emigration effects in the areas of origin, namely the positive effect of the remittances and the changes in the composition of the remaining population. The second section surveys the recent Italian immigration phenomenon with a description of the immigrant characteristics, such as area of origin, sex, age, and location in the country. Special attention has been given to the illegality issue because the majority of the immigrants became legal by applying for an amnesty. The determinants of the emigration in the country of origins and the effects in the destination close the picture. The conclusion provides a look at the future and the policy changes that should be adopted

The social assimilation of immigrants

The aim of this paper on the social assimilation of immigrants is to take a close look at migrants'social integration into the host country. The authors rely on the European Community Household panel (ECHP), which devotes a full module to the role and relevance of social relations for both migrants and natives. An innovative feature of this analysis is that it relies on migrants perceptions about their integration rather than - as is typically the case in most opinion surveys - on natives attitudes toward migrants. The main results of the paper can be summarized as follows. First, migrants - particularly from non-EU origins - are at a disadvantage in the fields of social relations. Even after controlling for their individual characteristics, such as age, education, family size, and employment status, they tend to socialize less than natives. Second, migrants tend to converge, albeit quite slowly, to the standard of natives. This finding highlights the risks of short term migration, where migrants tend to be constantly marginalized. Third, education has a significant impact on the type of social activities that individuals undertake. More educated people tend to relate somewhat less with their close neighborhood, but quite intensively with the broader community. The implication for policy makers concerned about the creation of ethnic enclaves is to promote education among immigrants'community.Population Policies,International Migration,Anthropology,Voluntary and Involuntary Resettlement,Human Migrations&Resettlements