Unregistered work among refugees: Evidence from a list experiment in Germany

Annabelle Doerr, Carina Hartmann and Christoph Sajons ()

Working papers from Faculty of Business and Economics - University of Basel

Abstract: The integration of refugees in host countries' labor markets is complicated by structural barriers, missing formal qualification and language deficiencies. This leads to widespread concern that refugees may end up in informal and precarious employment relationships. Empirical evidence on the prevalence of unregistered work is missing, however, due to the sensitive and illegal nature of this phenomenon. In this paper, we conduct a list experiment to measure unregistered work among refugees in Germany. Our results indicate that 31% have had experience with an unregistered job since their arrival. Refugees who report that they do not have work permission show a significantly higher likelihood of experiencing unregistered work. Furthermore, the lack of post-secondary education and vocational degrees, and a low German proficiency predict the risk to work without registration.

Keywords: Unregistered work; Informal employment; List experiment; Refugees; Germany; Survey experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C83 J46 J61 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022-01-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eur, nep-exp, nep-iue, nep-mig and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
https://edoc.unibas.ch/86290/1/20220105110004_61d56c24e4236.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bsl:wpaper:2022/01

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working papers from Faculty of Business and Economics - University of Basel Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by WWZ ().