Immigrant over- and under-education: the role of home country labour market experience

Abstract

Literature on the immigrant labour market mismatch has not explored the signal provided by the quality of home country work experience, particularly that of education-occupation mismatch prior to migration. We show that type of work experience in the home country plays a significant role in explaining immigrant mismatch in the destination country's labour market. We use the Longitudinal Survey of Immigrants to Australia and find that having been over-educated in the last job held in the home country increases the likelihood of being over-educated in Australia by about 45 percent. Whereas having been under-educated in the home country has an even stronger impact, as it increases the probability to be similarly mismatched in Australia by 62 percent.

Racialized Labour Market Incorporation? African Immigrants and the Role of Education‐Occupation Mismatch in Earnings

“…Search and match theory states that over-education, and its corresponding low wages, stems from employees' imperfect information about the labour market (Piracha, Massimiliano et al, 2012). Search and match theory states that over-education, and its corresponding low wages, stems from employees' imperfect information about the labour market (Piracha, Massimiliano et al, 2012).…”

Imbalanced Job Polarization and Skills Mismatch in Europe

“…Higher-quality education system in the home country increases the chances of undereducation (Aleksynska and Tritah 2013), but foreign education -even for the locally-born -is not perfectly transferable to the local labour market, as reflected by higher overeducation risk than for the locally-educated (Støren and Wiers-Jenssen 2010). The type of mismatch after migration also strongly depends on that before migration (Piracha et al 2012;Tani 2012).…”

Born abroad and educated here: examining the impacts of education and skill mismatch among immigrant graduates in Europe

“…To date, only a small number of studies have emphasised the differential returns to location-specific human capital, with human capital that is acquired in the host country demonstrating higher returns (Bell 1997;Shields and Wheatley Price 1998). With respect to mismatch, Piracha et al (2012) report that a history of mismatch in the country of origin is strongly correlated with subsequent mismatch in the country of destination.…”

“…This paper contributes to the existing literature that examines the relationship between migrant status and labour market mismatch (Piracha et al 2012;Lindley 2009;Messinis 2008aMessinis , 2008bBattu and Sloane 2004). This paper adds to the debate on a number of levels.…”