Occupational downgrading of Venezuelan migrants in Colombia: Do work permits Improve occupational mobility?

Andres Garcia-Suaza, Angie Mayo () and Alexander Sarango-Iturralde

No 21028, Documentos de Trabajo from Universidad del Rosario

Abstract: Immigration policies prioritize labor market integration, aiming for high employment rates and leveraging migrant skills to enhance host country productivity. However, migrants often face entry barriers and human capital misallocation. This article examines the occupational downgrading of Venezuelan migrants in Colombia and assesses the impact of work permit policies on mitigating this trend. Our empirical findings highlight significant occupation downgrading, prompting an exploration of the role of work permits. The analysis indicates that permits have expanded employment prospects for migrants who were previously unemployed or engaged in blue-collar jobs, mainly for females and the youngest population. While permits do not significantly reduce occupation downgrading they are associated with more formal job search mechanisms. Moreover, our findings show no significant impact of work permits on the intensity of routinization; instead, there is an increase in the intensity of non-routine analytic and interactive tasks among the youngest workers. This suggests that permits could be complemented with additional instruments to enhance migrant matching in the labor market.

Keywords: Migration; occupational downgrading; labor mobility; work permits (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F22 J24 J61 O15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 46 pages
Date: 2024-02-19
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-int, nep-lab and nep-mig
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://repository.urosario.edu.co/server/api/core ... 79cbb826b57d/content Full text (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:col:000092:021028

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Documentos de Trabajo from Universidad del Rosario Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Facultad de Economía ().