HUMAN CAPITAL TRAPS? ENCLAVE EFFECTS USING LINKED EMPLOYER-HOUSEHOLD DATA

Liliana Sousa

Working Papers from U.S. Census Bureau, Center for Economic Studies

Abstract: This study uses linked employer-household data to measure the impact of immigrant social networks, as identified via neighborhood and workplace affiliation, on immigrant earnings. Though ethnic enclaves can provide economic opportunities through job creation and job matching, they can also stifle the assimilation process by limiting interactions between enclave members and non-members. I find that higher residential and workplace ethnic clustering among immigrants is consistently correlated with lower earnings. For immigrants with a high school education or less, these correlations are primarily due to negative self-selection. On the other hand, self-selection fails to explain the lower earnings associated with higher ethnic clustering for immigrants with post-secondary schooling. The evidence suggests that co-ethnic clustering has no discernible effect on the earnings of immigrants with lower education, but may be leading to human capital traps for immigrants who have more than a high school education.

Keywords: migration; ethnic enclaves; neighborhood effects; labor market assimilation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J15 J24 J31 J61 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 44 pages
Date: 2013-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hrm, nep-lab, nep-lma, nep-mig and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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https://www2.census.gov/ces/wp/2013/CES-WP-13-29.pdf First version, 2013 (application/pdf)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cen:wpaper:13-29

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