Opening the Labor Market to Qualified Immigrants in Absence of Linguistic Barriers

Nicolò Gatti (), Fabrizio Mazzonna, Raphaël Parchet () and Giovanni Pica
Additional contact information
Nicolò Gatti: USI Università della Svizzera Italiana
Raphaël Parchet: USI Università della Svizzera Italiana

No 15631, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: This paper investigates the impact of opening the labor market to qualified immigrants who hold fully equivalent diplomas with respect to natives and speak the same mother tongue. Leveraging the 2002 opening of the Swiss labor market to qualified workers from the European Union, we show that the policy change led to a large inflow of young immigrants with the same linguistic background as natives. This, in turn, produced heterogeneous effects on natives wages and employment. While incumbent workers experienced a wage gain and a decrease in the likelihood of becoming inactive, the opposite happened for young natives entering the labor market after the policy change. This is likely the result of different patterns of complementarity/substitutability between same-language immigrants and natives with different levels of labor market experience.

Keywords: worker substitutability; wage effects; qualified immigration; experience (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F22 J08 J31 J61 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 47 pages
Date: 2022-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-int, nep-lab, nep-mig and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Related works:
Working Paper: Opening The Labor Market to Qualified Immigrants in Absence of Linguistic Barriers (2022)
Working Paper: Opening the labor market to qualified immigrants in absence of linguistic barriers
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