Immigrant/Native Labor Market Inequalities: A Portrait of Patterns and Trends in France and the United Kingdom, 1990-2007

This article gives insights into immigrants’ incorporation into the French and British labor markets in the 1990s and the 2000s, using British and French Labor Force Surveys harmonized by the authors. It compares inequalities in earnings and employment between natives and immigrants in the two countries, but also among immigrant groups. These two countries are among the most commonly included in comparative studies of immigration, but we still have surprisingly little comparative evidence on immigrants’ socioeconomic disadvantage. The results suggest that labor market inequality is sharper in the UK, especially with respect to earnings. More precisely, the most underprivileged immigrant groups in the UK (Pakistanis, Bangladeshis) are disadvantaged to a greater extent than their counterparts in France (Turkish and African immigrants). At the same time, diversity within the immigrant population is much more marked in the UK; some groups have very little labor market disadvantage or even do better than natives, which is almost never the case in France. The French labor market is characterized by a significantly higher level of gender inequality, particularly in earnings, and this compounds the labor market disadvantage of immigrant women

Varieties of Inequality: Allocation, Distribution, and the Wage Disadvantages of Immigrant Workers

In this paper, I ask how immigrant/native-born wage gaps differ in two institutionally distinct receiving societies in Western Europe: Sweden, with a comparatively equal wage structure, and the United Kingdom, with a comparatively unequal wage structure. Using large, nationally representative data sets and focusing on 30 immigrant groups that reside in both countries, I document two distinct kinds of inequality between immigrant and native-born workers. In terms of wage percentiles, immigrants fare unambiguously better in the UK, net of human capital, demographic characteristics, and sending country. That is, immigrants achieve higher relative positions in the British labor market than in the Swedish labor market. But immigrant/nativeborn gaps in terms of real wages are at least as large in the UK as in Sweden, and for some groups larger, because overall earnings inequality is so high in the UK. These findings suggest that policies to improve immigrant pay must consider immigrant-specific barriers in the labor market and the detrimental effects of earnings inequality for immigrant workers

Varieties of Inequality: Allocation, Distribution, and the Wage Disadvantages of Immigrant Workers

In this paper, I ask how immigrant/native-born wage gaps differ in two institutionally distinct receiving societies in Western Europe: Sweden, with a comparatively equal wage structure, and the United Kingdom, with a comparatively unequal wage structure. Using large, nationally representative data sets and focusing on 30 immigrant groups that reside in both countries, I document two distinct kinds of inequality between immigrant and native-born workers. In terms of wage percentiles, immigrants fare unambiguously better in the UK, net of human capital, demographic characteristics, and sending country. That is, immigrants achieve higher relative positions in the British labor market than in the Swedish labor market. But immigrant/nativeborn gaps in terms of real wages are at least as large in the UK as in Sweden, and for some groups larger, because overall earnings inequality is so high in the UK. These findings suggest that policies to improve immigrant pay must consider immigrant-specific barriers in the labor market and the detrimental effects of earnings inequality for immigrant workers

The Obama Effect on Perceived Mobility

Using American General Social Survey data from 1994 to 2018, this paper examines how Americans of different racial backgrounds perceive their past intergenerational mobility and their, and their children’s, prospects for future mobility, before, during, and after Barack Obama’s presidency. We find that White Americans are generally less positive than Black and Latinx Americans about mobility, especially their children’s mobility prospects. However, racial gaps in optimism widened considerably during the Obama presidency, due to a significant decline in White respondents’ perceived mobility. A more detailed analysis of White respondents’ views by levels of racial resentment and political partisanship shows that the Obama-era dip among White respondents is concentrated among those who are racially resentful and among Republican voters, two groups that substantially overlap. For these two groups, perceived future prospects for their and their children’s mobility increased again during the Trump administration. Black and Latinx respondents’ perceptions of mobility are stable across all earlier presidential administrations, but decline somewhat with the Trump presidency

Inequality in Transition? Educational Stratification and German Unification

This research examines educational stratification cross-nationally through the context of German division and unity. Drawing on representative German Social Survey (ALLBUS) data from 1991-1998 on cohorts schooled in the 1980s and 1990s, the analysis explores educational inequality at the secondary school level with respect to social origins and gender in four settings: the late state socialist German Democratic Republic, the immediate pre-unification setting Federal Republic of Germany, and the two halves of a now-united Germany. The paper includes a discussion of possible underlying reasons for the major finding of the descriptive analysis: a lack of variation in the parameters of educational inequality, despite varied and changing institutions and ideologies

Social Cohesion and Host Country Nationality among Immigrants in Western Europe

This chapter examines the relationship between the citizenship status of immigrants in western Europe and their social integration, using the European Social Survey. The findings suggest a complex relationship between immigrant naturalisation and various measures of social cohesion

Immigrant/Native Labor Market Inequalities: A Portrait of Patterns and Trends in France and the United Kingdom, 1990-2007

This article gives insights into immigrants' incorporation into the French and British labor markets in the 1990s and the 2000s, using British and French Labor Force Surveys harmonized by the authors. It compares inequalities in earnings and employment between natives and immigrants in the two countries, but also among immigrant groups. These two countries are among the most commonly included in comparative studies of immigration, but we still have surprisingly little comparative evidence on immigrants' socioeconomic disadvantage. The results suggest that labor market inequality is sharper in the UK, especially with respect to earnings. More precisely, the most underprivileged immigrant groups in the UK (Pakistanis, Bangladeshis) are disadvantaged to a greater extent than their counterparts in France (Turkish and African immigrants). At the same time, diversity within the immigrant population is much more marked in the UK; some groups have very little labor market disadvantage or even do better than natives, which is almost never the case in France. The French labor market is characterized by a significantly higher level of gender inequality, particularly in earnings, and this compounds the labor market disadvantage of immigrant women