Labor-Market Exposure as a Determinant of Attitudes toward Immigration

Francesc Ortega and Javier Polavieja

No 4519, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: This paper re-examines the role of labor-market competition as a determinant of attitudes toward immigration. We claim two main contributions. First, we use more sophisticated measures of the degree of exposure to competition from immigrants than previously done. Specifically, we focus on the protection derived from investments in job-specific human capital and from specialization in communication-intensive jobs, in addition to formal education. Second, we explicitly account for the potential endogeneity arising from job search. Methodologically, we estimate, by instrumental variables, an econometric model that allows for heterogeneity at the individual, regional, and country level. Drawing on the 2004 European Social Survey, we obtain three main results. First, our estimates show that individuals that are currently employed in less exposed jobs are relatively more pro-immigration. This is true for both our new measures of exposure. Second, we show that the protection granted by job-specific human capital is clearly distinct from the protection granted by formal education. Yet the positive effect of education on pro-immigration attitudes is greatly reduced when we control for the degree of communication intensity of respondents' occupations. Third, OLS estimates are biased in a direction that suggests that natives respond to immigration by switching to less exposed jobs. The latter finding provides indirect support for the endogenous job specialization hypothesis postulated by Peri and Sparber (2009).

Keywords: communication skills; job-specific human capital; labor market; immigration attitudes; international migration (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F1 F22 J31 J61 R13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 44 pages
Date: 2009-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hrm, nep-lab and nep-mig
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Published - published in: Labour Economics, 2012, 19 (3), 298-311

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Related works:
Journal Article: Labor-market exposure as a determinant of attitudes toward immigration (2012)
Working Paper: Labor-market exposure as a determinant of attitudes toward immigration (2009)
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