Enduring inequality: Labour market outcomes of the immigrant second generation in Germany

Exploiting the 2005 Mikrozensus, the first dataset to allow the full disaggregation of different immigrant origin groups in Germany, this paper examines the effect of context of reception, citizenship, and intermarriage on the labor force participation, employment, and occupational status of the children of immigrants in Germany. Most second generation men have much higher unemployment than native Germans, even after controlling for human capital. Disadvantage is less pronounced among second generation women, and among the employed. There is considerable heterogeneity across immigrant origins, but citizenship and intermarriage have only modest impacts

Who assimilates? Statistical artefacts and intergenerational mobility in immigrant families

This paper assesses estimates of immigrant intergenerationa l mobility that are based on aggregate data sources. We show that aggregation bias strongly inflates estimates of the relationship between immigrants' educational attainment and the educational attainment of their children. Compared to natives, the educational transmission process between parent and child is much weaker in immigrant families. A number of group-level processes, such as societal discrimination, ethnic segregation, or ethnic networks, may render group characteristics more important predictors of second generation educational attainment than parental education

Elite or middling? International students and migrant diversification

Student migrants from former sending regions now form a substantial share of non-EU migration flows to Europe. These flows represent the convergence of extensive internationalisation of higher education with increasing restrictions on family and labour migration. This paper provides the first examination of student migrants’ early socio-cultural and structural integration by following recently arrived Pakistani students in London over an 18 month period. We use latent class analysis to identify both elite and two ‘middling’ types – middle class and network-driven – within our student sample. We then ask whether these types experience different early sociocultural and structural integration trajectories in the ways that the elite and middling transnational literatures would suggest. We find differences in structural, but less in socio-cultural outcomes. We conclude that to understand the implications of expanding third country student migration across the EU, it is important to recognize both the distinctiveness of this flow and its heterogeneity

Ethnic and racial harassment and mental health: Identifying sources of resilience

In this paper, using data from Understanding Society over the period 2009-2014, we find that ethnic minorities with lower socio-economic status and those who were born in the UK report worse mental health (GHQ). Those who report experiencing ethnic and racial harassment (ERH) also report worse mental health than those who do not. We also found that ethnic minorities living in areas with a higher proportion of co-ethnics reported better mental health. However, ethnic concentration was not protective; rather, ERH had a stronger negative association with mental health for UK born minorities living in such areas. . We identified additional resilience factors: number of close friends and having certain personality traits - higher levels of Openness to Experience and Conscientiousness. We also found those who attend religious services more frequently and have higher levels of Agreebleness and Extraversion are poorly equipped to deal with ethnic and racial harassment

Adapting chain referral methods to sample new migrants: possibilities and limitations

Background: Demographic research on migration requires representative samples of migrant populations. Yet recent immigrants, who are particularly informative about current migrant flows, are difficult to capture even in specialist surveys. Respondent-driven sampling (RDS), a chain referral sampling and analysis technique, potentially offers the opportunity to achieve population-level inference of recently arrived migrant populations. Objective: We evaluate the attempt to use RDS to sample two groups of migrants, from Pakistan and Poland, who had arrived in the UK within the previous 18 months, and we present an alternative approach adapted to recent migrants. Methods: We discuss how connectedness, privacy, clustering, and motivation are expected to differ among recently arrived migrants, compared to typical applications of RDS. We develop a researcher-led chain referral approach, and compare success in recruitment and indicators of representativeness to standard RDS recruitment. Results: Our researcher-led approach led to higher rates of chain-referral, and enabled us to reach population members with smaller network sizes. The researcher-led approach resulted in similar recruiter-recruit transition probabilities to traditional RDS across many demographic and social characteristics. However, we did not succeed in building up long referral chains, largely due to the lack of connectedness of our target populations and some reluctance to refer. There were some differences between the two migrant groups, with less mobile and less hidden Pakistani men producing longer referral chains. Conclusions: Chain referral is difficult to implement for sampling newly arrived migrants. However, our researcher-led adaptation shows promise for less hidden and more stable recent immigrant populations. Contribution: The paper offers an evaluation of RDS for surveying recent immigrants and an adaptation that may be effective under certain conditions

Who Benefits Most from a University Degree?: A Cross-National Comparison of Selection and Wage Returns in the US, UK, and Germany

Recent research on economic returns to higher education in the United States suggests that those with the highest wage returns to a college degree are least likely to obtain one. We extend the study of heterogeneous returns to tertiary education across multiple institutional contexts, investigating how the relationship between wage returns and the propensity to complete a degree varies by the level of expansion, differentiation, and cost of higher education. Drawing on panel data and matching techniques, we compare findings from the US with selection into degree completion in Germany and the UK. Contrary to previous studies, we find little evidence for population level heterogeneity in economic returns to higher education

From parent to child? Transmission of educational attainment within immigrant families: methodological considerations.

One in five U.S. residents under the age of 18 has at least one foreign-born parent. Given the large proportion of immigrants with very low levels of schooling, the strength of the intergenerational transmission of education between immigrant parent and child has important repercussions for the future of social stratification in the United States. We find that the educational transmission process between parent and child is much weaker in immigrant families than in native families and, among immigrants, differs significantly across national origins. We demonstrate how this variation causes a substantial overestimation of the importance of parental education in immigrant families in studies that use aggregate data. We also show that the common practice of "controlling" for family human capital using parental years of schooling is problematic when comparing families from different origin countries and especially when comparing native and immigrant families. We link these findings to analytical and empirical distinctions between group- and individual-level processes in intergenerational transmission

Sampling recently arrived immigrants in the UK: Exploring the effectiveness of respondent driven sampling

Surveying recently arrived immigrants in countries lacking a population register poses many challenges. We describe our adaptation of Respondent Driven Sampling, a chain- referral technique, to sample migrants from Pakistan and Poland who had arrived in the UK within the previous 18 months. Specifically, we discuss issues around connectedness, privacy, clustering, and motivation, central to the implementation of RDS. We outline techniques adopted and evaluate their success. We conclude that RDS is unlikely to be suitable for accessing newly arrived migrants. However, in the absence of registers which can capture populations at point of entry there are no obvious alternatives

Gender differences in surgency: A study among children in Sweden

The temperament factor of surgency has a biological basis, however it can also be influenced by the external environment. Sweden is an interesting environment to study gender differences in surgency since it is an individualistic society characterized as fostering gender equality. The study explored gender differences in surgency in 62 children (36 boys, 26 girls) at the age of 9 years old (M= 9 years, 5 months). The study took place in the southern part of Sweden and the children were tested using a caregiver report (TMCQ) and a performance task (ARB-C). Independent sample t-tests were conducted on a total of 8 variables measuring surgency. No statistically significant gender differences were found at p <.05, however some discrete tendencies for differences between boys and girls were present. The results were viewed in regards to important features in the Swedish environment that could be influencing the lack of gender differences. Due to limitations and issues of power the study does not draw any final conclusions or make generalizations, rather it stresses the need for additional work

Are UK immigrants selected on education, skills, health and social networks?

Prime Ministers past and present argue the UK wants to recruit migrants who are ‘the brightest and best’. It is usually assumed that more restrictive migration regimes will ensure not only those with higher levels of educational qualifications, but also those who are more motivated, driven and likely to succeed. In one of the first papers to address whether this is actually the case, Renee Luthra and Lucinda Platt find that it is not. Contrary to received wisdom, they show that migrants being relatively high-qualified compared to others in their country of origin does not come with additional economically beneficial skills, characteristics or networks. Moreover, this is particularly the case for those who face a more restrictive migration regime