Labor-market exposure as a determinant of attitudes toward immigration

Francesc Ortega and Javier Polavieja

No 2009-14, Working Papers from Instituto Madrileño de Estudios Avanzados (IMDEA) Ciencias Sociales

Abstract: This paper re-examines the role of labor-market competition as a determinant of attitudes toward immigration. We claim two main contributions. First, we use more sophisticated measures of the degree of exposure to competition from immigrants than previously done. Specifically, we focus on the protection derived from investments in job-specific human capital and from specialization in communication-intensive jobs, in addition to formal education. Second, we explicitly account for the potential endogeneity arising from job search. Methodologically, we estimate, by instrumental variables, an econometric model that allows for heterogeneity at the individual, regional, and country level. Drawing on the 2004 European Social Survey, we obtain three main results. First, our estimates show that individuals that are currently employed in less exposed jobs are relatively more pro-immigration. This is true for both our new measures of exposure. Second, we show that the protection granted by job-specific human capital is clearly distinct from the protection granted by formal education. Yet the positive effect of education on pro-immigration attitudes is greatly reduced when we control for the degree of communication intensity of respondents' occupations. Third, OLS estimates are biased in a direction that suggests that natives respond to immigration by switching to less exposed jobs. The latter finding provides indirect support for the endogenous job specialization hypothesis postulated by Peri and Sparber (2009).

Keywords: immigration attitudes; labor market; job-specific human capital; communication skills; international migration (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F1 F22 J31 J61 R13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009-10-21
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hrm, nep-lab, nep-mig and nep-pol
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Published in Labour Economics 19(3), June 2012: 298-311

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Related works:
Journal Article: Labor-market exposure as a determinant of attitudes toward immigration (2012)
Working Paper: Labor-Market Exposure as a Determinant of Attitudes toward Immigration (2009)
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