Ethnic Identity and Immigrants' Labour Market Outcomes

Matloob Piracha, Max Tani, Zhiming Cheng and Ben Zhe Wang ()
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Ben Zhe Wang: Macquarie University, Sydney

No 14123, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: The objective of this paper is to analyse how immigrants' ethnic identity correlates with their labour market outcomes. More precisely, we estimate the role of ethnic identity in employment, wages, under-employment (i.e., they would prefer to work more hours but are not given the opportunity), three measures of job satisfaction, overeducation and wages. We further explore whether economic downturn has a differentiated impact on these measures. Using Australian longitudinal data, we find that ethnic identity is strongly associated with employment and wages as well a number of job satisfaction measures. We then split our data and repeat the estimations for before and after the Great Financial Crisis of 2008-09. We find important differences in the way ethnic identity is associated with different measures of labour market outcomes under different economic conditions. Finally, we explore the mechanisms through which some of results could be explained.

Keywords: overeducation; job quality; ethnic identity; assimilation; employment; wages (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F22 J15 J16 J21 Z13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 32 pages
Date: 2021-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lab
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Published - revised version published as 'Social Assimilation and Immigrants' Labour Market Outcomes' in: Journal of Population Economics , 2023, 36, 37 - 67

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Working Paper: Ethnic identity and immigrants' labour market outcomes (2021)
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