Explaining the Male Native-Immigrant Employment Gap in Sweden: The Role of Human Capital and Migrant Categories
2016 (English)In: IZA Discussion papers, ISSN 2365-9793, no 9943Article in journal (Other academic)
Abstract [en]
Despite having one of the most celebrated labor market integration policies, the native immigrant employment gap in Sweden is one of the largest among the OECD countries. In this study, we use unique Swedish register data to try to explain the employment gap between male immigrants and natives. The results show that the traditional human capital theory only explains a small share of the immigrant-native gap. After controlling for human capital, demographic and contextual factors, large unexplained employment gaps still persists between immigrants and natives and between migrant categories. Our analysis
indicates that admission category is an important determinant of employment integration, and that humanitarian and family migrants suffer from low transferability of their country specific human capital. The article highlights the need to consider migrant categories in integration research, and take into account international human capital transferability when explaining employment outcomes for immigrants.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
The Institute for the Study of Labor , 2016. no 9943
Keywords [en]
Labour market integration, employment gaps
National Category
Social Sciences
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:mau:diva-1280Local ID: 21221OAI: oai:DiVA.org:mau-1280DiVA, id: diva2:1398008
2020-02-272020-02-272022-06-27Bibliographically approved