Immigrant Naturalisation, Employment and Occupational Status in Western Europe

Rezart Hoxhaj, Maarten Vink and Tijana Prokic-Breuer

No 2019/16, RSCAS Working Papers from European University Institute

Abstract: Does citizenship facilitate access to employment and higher status jobs? Existing case studies have produced mixed results across mostly single case studies in Europe and North America. To investigate whether this heterogeneity depends on varying institutional and socio-economic conditions, in this paper we analyse the labour market outcomes of immigrants who have naturalised in 13 West European countries. Our empirical analysis draws on data from the 2014 European Labour Force Survey Ad Hoc Module on immigrants. In order to cope with the selective nature of the naturalisation process, we employ a bivariate probit model that accounts for unobserved characteristics of naturalising immigrants. Our main results show a positive relationship across these destination countries between citizenship and the probability of employment for both immigrant men and women, as well as between citizenship and occupational status for men. Liberalising the access to citizenship does not diminish the positive returns on employment from naturalisation. For immigrant men there is evidence of a trade-off between easier access to citizenship and the returns on occupational status.

Keywords: Citizenship; Employment; Job status; Western Europe (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J15 J61 K37 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eur, nep-int and nep-mig
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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