Immigrant Volunteering: A Way Out of Labour Market Discrimination?

Stijn Baert and Sunčica Vujić ()

No 9763, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: Many governments encourage migrants to participate in volunteer activities as a stepping stone to labour market integration. In the present study, we investigate whether this prosocial engagement lowers the hiring discrimination against them. To this end, we use unique data from a field experiment in which fictitious job applications are sent in response to real vacancies in Belgium. Ethnic origin and volunteer activities are randomly assigned to these applications. While non-volunteering native candidates receive more than twice as many job interview invitations as non-volunteering migrants, no unequal treatment is found between natives and migrants when they reveal volunteer activities.

Keywords: integration; volunteering; discrimination; immigrants; hiring (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D64 J15 J71 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 12 pages
Date: 2016-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eur, nep-mig and nep-soc
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (36)

Published - revised version published in: Economics Letters , 2016, 146, 95 - 98

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Journal Article: Immigrant volunteering: A way out of labour market discrimination? (2016)
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