Natives’ attitudes and immigrants’ unemployment durations

Abstract

Which factors determine the performance of immigrants in the destination country labor market? Evidence in the literature suggests that discrimination may be a barrier to the economic assimilation of immigrants. However, depending on their country of origin, immigrants are heterogeneous with respect to the discrimination they face. This paper investigates how the attitude of natives affects immigrants’ unemployment duration in Germany. Using individual level panel data from the German Socio Economic Panel from 1984 to 2012, we employ survival analysis methods to model immigrants’ unemployment duration. We find that lower trust levels of natives towards the citizens of a given country, measured using Eurobarometer surveys, positively influence the unemployment duration of immigrants originating from this country. We show that this result is not driven by origin-specific unobserved heterogeneity, and that it is robust to different definitions of unemployment and different specifications. The results of our paper highlight the fact that immigrants face different obstacles depending on their origin when it comes to integrating destination country labor markets