The Effect of Linguistic Proximity on the Occupational Assimilation of Immigrant Men in Canada

Alicia Adsera and Ana Ferrer

No 1503, Working Papers from University of Waterloo, Department of Economics

Abstract: This paper contributes to the analysis of the integration of immigrants in the Canadian labour market by focusing in two relatively new dimensions. We combine the large samples of the restricted version of the Canadian Census (1991-2006) with both a new measure of linguistic proximity of the immigrant’s mother tongue to that of the destination country, and with information of the occupational skills embodied in the jobs immigrants hold. This allows us to assess the role that language plays in the labour market performance of immigrants and to better study their career progression relative to the native born. Weekly wage differences between immigrants and the native born are driven mostly by penalties associated with immigrants’ lower returns to social skills, but not to analytical or manual skills. Linguistic proximity affects the types of jobs immigrant hold. The influence of linguistic proximity on the skill content of jobs immigrants hold over time and the associated wages also varies by the educational level of the migrant. Low linguistic proximity between origin and destination language imposes larger wage penalties to the university-educated, and more significantly affects the status of the jobs they hold.

JEL-codes: F22 J15 J24 J31 J61 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 47 pages
Date: 2015-12, Revised 2015-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ltv, nep-mig and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

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Related works:
Working Paper: The effect of linguistic proximity on the occupational assimilation of immigrant men in Canada (2015)
Working Paper: The Effect of Linguistic Proximity on the Occupational Assimilation of Immigrant Men in Canada (2015)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wat:wpaper:1503

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