New from IMR: Labor Markets, Cultural Attitudes, and Migration Decisions
April 27, 2023
The Summer 2022 edition of the International Migration Review (IMR) is now available online and in print through paid or institutional subscription. This edition is thematically sorted into four sections. The first section has articles about immigrant wage gaps and labor market performance in Europe. The second section discusses native-immigrant comparisons in neighborhoods, workplaces, and education. The third section is about cultural attitudes, cultural frames, and immigrant incorporation. The fourth section examines migration decisions, development, and networks. Lastly, this edition includes twelve book reviews, which are free to access.
Which Integration Policies Work? The Heterogeneous Impact of National Institutions on Immigrants’ Labor Market Attainment in Europe
Lucinda Platt, Javier Polavieja, and Jonas Radl
Can specific policies support the economic integration of immigrants? Despite the crucial importance of this question, existing evidence is inconclusive. Using data from the European Social Survey, we estimate the effects of integration and anti-discrimination policies, alongside social expenditure and labor market regulation, on the labor market performance of 6,176 non-European immigrants across 23 European countries. We make three contributions: 1) we investigate the distinct role of discrete policy areas for labor market integration outcomes, 2) we allow for heterogeneous effects of policies on immigrants with different characteristics, and 3) we examine immigrants’ occupational attainment while accounting for their selection into employment. We find that immigrants’ employment chances are negatively associated with national levels of expenditure on welfare benefits but positively associated with policies facilitating immigrant access to social security. We also find that labor market rigidity is negatively associated with immigrants’ occupational attainment, but we find little evidence that policies aimed at supporting the transferability of immigrants’ qualifications promote their occupational success. Our results strongly suggest that anti-discrimination policies are important for immigrant economic integration. Yet while these policies are associated with greater occupational success for all female immigrants, they seem to be only positively associated with the occupational attainment of higher-skilled and non-Muslim immigrant men. As this article suggests, anti-discrimination policies can foster immigrants’ labor market success, yet these policies currently fail to reach those who face the strongest anti-immigrant sentiments — that is, unskilled male immigrants and Muslim immigrant men.
What Shapes Attitudes Toward Homosexuality among European Muslims? The Role of Religiosity and Destination Hostility
Antje Röder and Niels Spierings
Muslim migrants and their descendants in Western Europe have consistently been shown to hold more negative attitudes toward homosexuality, the more religious they are. In this article, we go beyond this mono-dimensional view of religiosity and develop a theoretical framework that combines (a) the role of different dimensions of religiosity in anchoring cultural attitudes and (b) the potential impact of destination hostility and discrimination on the retention of cultural attitudes toward homosexuality among Muslim migrants in Western Europe. For the analysis, we use eight rounds of the European Social Survey, enriched with country-level data. Findings indicate that Muslim migrants’ mosque attendance, as a dimension of religiosity, has the negative effect that was expected. Particularly, Muslims who grew up in Western Europe are negative about homosexuality if they attended mosque regularly, whereas among first-generation Muslim migrants, origin-country norms are a strong predictor of attitudes toward homosexuality. In addition, we find that perceived group discrimination drives the maintenance of negative attitudes toward homosexuality, especially among mosque attendees. These results imply that the development of more liberal attitudes among European Muslims is held back by a combination of socialization in conservative religious communities and hostility from host-country populations.
Foreign Accents in the Early Hiring Process: A Field Experiment on Accent-Related Ethnic Discrimination in Germany
Miriam Schmaus and Cornelia Kristen
Based on a field experiment conducted in Germany between October 2014 and October 2015, this article focuses on the disadvantages associated with the presence of a foreign accent in the early hiring process, when applicants call in response to a job advertisement to ask whether the position is still available. We examine whether a foreign accent influences employers’ behaviors via productivity considerations and/or whether foreign-accented speech is related to statistical discrimination or tastes among employers or customers that translate into differential treatment. To address these processes, we supplement our field-experimental data with information on job and firm characteristics from the texts of vacancy announcements and advertising companies’ homepages, on labor supply from the Federal Employment Agency, and on anti-immigrant attitudes from the German General Social Survey. Results suggest that while calling with a Turkish name did not result in a lower rate of positive replies, this rate was reduced for candidates who called with a Turkish accent. Turkish-accented applicants were told more often than the advertised position was already filled. Our findings suggest that the difference in response rates was not due to productivity considerations related to how well individuals understood foreign-accented speakers. Instead, results support the notion that the observed disadvantages were linked to discrimination based on employers’ ethnic tastes. While we found no indications pointing to the relevance of customer tastes or statistical discrimination, we cannot rule out these processes altogether. Our findings demonstrate that language cues can be more relevant than applicants’ names in shaping employers’ initial responses. They, thereby, highlight the need to consider multiple ethnic cues and different stages of the hiring process.
IMMIGRANT WAGE GAPS AND LABOR MARKET PERFORMANCE IN EUROPE
Which Integration Policies Work? The Heterogeneous Impact of National Institutions on Immigrants’ Labor Market Attainment in Europe
Lucinda Platt, Javier Polavieja, and Jonas Radl
Does Personality Matter? Noncognitive Skills and the Male Migrant Wage Gap in Germany
Marie-Christine Laible and Hanna Brenzel
Wages of Skilled Migrant and Native Employees in Germany: New Light on an Old Issue
Stephan Brunow and Oskar Jost
NATIVE-IMMIGRANT COMPARISONS IN NEIGHBORHOODS, WORKPLACES, AND EDUCATION
Trajectories of Spatial Assimilation or Place Stratification? A Typology of Residence and Workplace Histories of Newly Arrived Migrants in Sweden
Guilherme Kenji Chihaya, Szymon Marcińczak, Magnus Strömgren, Urban Lindgren, and Tiit Tammaru
CULTURAL ATTITUDES, CULTURAL FRAMES, AND IMMIGRANT INCORPORATION
National Cultural Frames and Muslims’ Economic Incorporation: A Comparison of France and Canada
Jeffrey G. Reitz, Emily Laxer, and Patrick Simon
What Shapes Attitudes Toward Homosexuality among European Muslims? The Role of Religiosity and Destination Hostility
Antje Röder and Niels Spierings
Foreign Accents in the Early Hiring Process: A Field Experiment on Accent-Related Ethnic Discrimination in Germany
Miriam Schmaus and Cornelia Kristen
MIGRATION DECISIONS, DEVELOPMENT, AND NETWORKS
Mobile Phone Network and Migration: Evidence From Myanmar
Jorge G. Hombrados, Riccardo Ciacci, and Ayesha Zainudeen
Food Insecurity and International Migration Flows
Michael D. Smith and Dennis Wesselbaum
BOOK REVIEWS
New year, new plans for IMR’s book review section
Katharina Natter
IMR Book Review Editor
What Do We Owe to Refugees?
David Owen
Reviewed by Mirjam A. Twigt
Bootlegged Aliens: Immigration Politics on America’s Northern Border
Ashley Johnson Bavery
Reviewed by Julie E. E. Young
Transnational Identity and Memory Making in the Lives of Iraqi Women in the Diaspora
Nadia Jones-Gailani
Reviewed by Oula Kadhum
The Migrant Diaries
Lynne Jones
Reviewed by Brenna Foley
Time and Migration: How Long-Term Taiwanese Migrants Negotiate Later Life
Ken Chih-Yan Sun
Reviewed by Herbert C. Northcott
Unwanted: Italian and Jewish Mobilization against Restrictive Immigration Laws 1882–1965
Maddalena Marinari
Reviewed by Sarah H. Salter
The Death of Asylum: Hidden Geographies of the Enforcement Archipelago
Alison Mountz
Reviewed by Mary Gilmartin
The Outside: Migration as Life in Morocco
Alice Elliot
Reviewed by Lorena Gazzotti
Island of Hope: Migration and Solidarity in the Mediterranean
Megan A. Carney
Reviewed by Giusa Caterina
Jungle Passports: Fences, Mobility, and Citizenship at the Northeast India-Bangladesh Border
Malini Sur
Reviewed by Md Azmeary Ferdoush
Migration and Hybrid Political Regimes: Navigating the Legal Landscape in Russia
Rustamjon Urinboyev
Reviewed by Olga Tkach