Ethnic and migrant penalties in job quality in the UK: the role of residential concentration and occupational clustering

Abstract

Migrants and ethnic minorities in the UK are found to be disadvantaged in their access to work and earnings, but little is known about the characteristics of the jobs they occupy. This paper studies whether migrants and UK-born ethnic minorities attain similar jobs compared to their white British peers by clustering 17 indicators of job quality -covering intrinsic quality, work-life balance, monetary rewards, and employment conditions -into 5 latent classes. We find that non-white migrants are clustered in the worst jobs, while white migrants do relatively well. UK-born ethnic minorities are indeed less likely to work on the best jobs, but the type of disadvantage differs strongly between ethnic groups. Local deprivation drives some of the worse job quality of UK-born minorities while selection into lower-quality occupations and sectors drives much of the disadvantage of migrants. Coethnic support and particularly an economically stronger co-ethnic community in the locality can help shield ethnic minorities from the worst jobs, while ethnic niches in the occupation are associated with low-quality work. Finally, working in migrant-heavy occupations is associated with somewhat lower job quality; primarily affecting other migrants in a possible race to the bottom.

Educational mismatches for second generation migrants. An analysis of applied science graduates in the Netherlands

“…Some mechanisms can additionally foster ethnic penalties. A possible mechanism behind ethnic penalties is selection into occupation (Zwysen and Demireva 2018). This might originate from an unobserved difference in the network of individuals, with migrant coethnic networks often already having jobs that are low-paid.…”

“…This might originate from an unobserved difference in the network of individuals, with migrant coethnic networks often already having jobs that are low-paid. On the other hand, occupational segregation may also be the result of discrimination (Zwysen and Demireva 2018).…”

“…Another mechanism regards community effects. Segregation may affect the type of work that can be locally found and may be of specific importance for migrants as they tend to rely more heavily on their co-ethnic networks (Zwysen and Demireva 2018).…”

“…In this paper we explore ethnic penalties in educational mismatches and unemployment for second-generation migrants. Ethnic penalties refer to ethnic differences that cannot be explained by differences in human capital or demographic characteristics (Rafferty 2012;Zwysen and Demireva 2018). We define second-generation migrants as people born in the Netherlands with at least one of their parents born abroad.…”

The Value of Self-Employment to Ethnic Minorities

“…Such risks might be yet greater for recent migrants (Levie 2007), who often face additional hurdles in respect of legal status, recognition of qualifications, or lack of social networks (Zwysen, W. and Demireva, N., 2018a. ;Zwysen, W. and Demireva, N., 2018b.). However, it is even harder here to disentangle the effects of cultural influences from economic pressures, as recent migrants also have stronger cultural links with their home countries, and selfemployment might be one aspect of this culture.…”