Immigrant Over- and Under-education: The Role of Home Country Labour Market Experience

Matloob Piracha, Max Tani and Florin Vadean

No 5302, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: The cause of immigrant education mismatch in the host country labour market might not necessarily be discrimination or imperfect transferability of human capital, as argued in previous studies. Immigrants who have gained professional experience in the home country in jobs below their education level might be assessed by host country employers as having lower abilities and skills than those expected from their educational qualifications. Using the Longitudinal Survey of Immigrants to Australia we show that a significant part of the variation in the immigrants' probability to be over-/under-educated in the Australian labour market can be explained by having been over-/under-educated in the last job in the home country.

Keywords: sample selection; education-occupation mismatch; immigrants (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C34 J24 J61 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 34 pages
Date: 2010-11
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 (7)

Published - published in: IZA Journal of Migration, 2012, 1, Article 3

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Related works:
Journal Article: Immigrant over- and under-education: the role of home country labour market experience (2012)
Working Paper: Immigrant Over- and Under-education: The Role of Home Country Labour Market Experience (2011)
Working Paper: Immigrant Over- and Under-education: The Role of Home Country Labour Market Experience (2010)
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