The Effect of Migration Experience on Occupational Mobility in Estonia

Pille Motsmees, Jaan Masso () and Raul Eamets

No 14, Discussion Papers from Central European Labour Studies Institute (CELSI)

Abstract: The existing literature on return migration has resulted in several studies analysing the impact of foreign work experience on the returnees’ earnings or their decision to become self-employed; however, in this paper we analyse the less studied effect on occupational mobility – how the job in the home country after returning compares to the job held before migration. The effect of temporary migration on occupational mobility is analysed using unique data from an Estonian online job search portal covering approximately 10–15% of the total workforce, including thousands of employees with temporary migration experience. The focus on data from a Central and Eastern European country is motivated given that the opening of labour markets in old EU countries to the workforce of the new member states has led to massive East-West migration. We did not find any positive effect of temporary migration on upward occupational mobility and in some groups, such as females, the effect was negative. These results could be related to the typically short-term nature of migration and occupational downshifting abroad as well as the functioning of the home country labour market.

Keywords: occupational mobility; temporary migration; Central- and Eastern Europe (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F22 J62 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013-07-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lab, nep-mig and nep-tra
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://celsi.sk/media/discussion_papers/DP14.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: The Effect of Migration Experience on Occupational Mobility in Estonia (2013)
Working Paper: THE EFFECT OF MIGRATION EXPERIENCE ON OCCUPATIONAL MOBILITY IN ESTONIA (2013)
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:cel:dpaper:14

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Discussion Papers from Central European Labour Studies Institute (CELSI) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Martin Kahanec ().