THE OCCUPATIONAL INTEGRATION OF MIGRANTS IN WESTERN EUROPE. THE ROLE OF GENDER AND INSTITUTIONS

Migrant integration has been investigated regarding various conditions such as individual characteristics including education, gender, ethnicity and second-generation status, as well as through politics, migrant policies and similar. However, there is only little research which explores the association between dominant institutions, such as welfare and production regimes, and migrant integration in the labour market since the dominant regimes are regarded to have a more direct relation to natives rather than migrants. Nevertheless, a number of studies which adopt those dominant regimes also have revealed some limitations, including insisting upon a convergence mechanism following one regime’s typology with regard to migrant integration alongside a small number of country cases. Therefore, in order to overcome these limitations and provide insights into the sophisticated effect of the institutions, this study explores migrant occupational integration based on the three regimes including welfare, production and migration across 17 developed countries (16 Western European countries and the US). The analysis proceeds in two ways. First, a descriptive analysis is conducted in order to analyse migrant and ethnicity penalties with respect to natives based on the association with the dominant regimes (welfare and production) and racialisation in the labour market, respectively. A linear probability model is employed for the analyses at the European average and country-specific levels in terms of migrant and ethnicity penalties in employability and job quality. Meanwhile, the second main analysis investigates the detailed association between institutions and migrant penalty by employing macro policy data alongside a cross-classified multilevel analysis. In accordance with these analyses, the migrant penalty was reflected in four penalty patterns across the 17 countries. First, a trade-off pattern with low employability and high job quality. Second, the trade-off pattern with high employability and low job quality. Third, the less penalty pattern showing smaller discrimination with respect to natives. Lastly, a double penalty pattern which indicates low performance in either measure. To be specific, Continental Europe strongly produced the trade-off pattern with low employability and high job quality while Mediterranean countries showed the opposite trade-off pattern. A double penalty was shown mostly in Scandinavian countries, whereas the US and Portugal were clearly seen within the less penalised pattern which also included the UK and Germany to a somewhat lower degree. Beyond migrant penalty, this study found clear racialisation patterns among five ethnicities including Eastern Europeans, Middle Eastern and Northern Africans, Sub-Saharan Africans, Asians and South Americans in association with socio-economic backgrounds. Eastern Europeans were the least penalised in employability despite lower job quality status while Middle Eastern and Northern Africans were penalised the most in both measures. Asians and South Americans showed less penalty although South Americans in the US revealed the highest penalty in job quality. On the other hand, Sub-Saharan Africans showed an in-between position so that their penalty was neither penalised as substantially as Middle Eastern and Northern Africans, nor integrated as favourably as Asians. Meanwhile, in the multilevel analysis, the moderation effect of each regime on labour market outcomes according to migration status was investigated further to discern the specific impact of institutions. Overall, the welfare regime’s effect outweighed the other regimes’ effects on migrant penalty. In particular, migrant women’s job quality was notably positively affected by the welfare regime under between-country effects. Accordingly, the welfare regime showed clear negative and positive effects on migrants’ employability and job quality, respectively. However, the production regime uncovered no significant effect on employability for migrants, while a positive effect on job quality was found despite the meek effect compared to the welfare regime. In terms of the migration regime, the negative association between the migration regime and employability regardless of migration status was observed under within-country effects. The different institutional arrangements between the countries belonging to the same regime typology, as well as association with migrant penalty, were able to be captured through the two main analyses by employing actual institutional datasets. In accordance with the results, this study overcame the limited explanations of previous research based on the discussion surrounding the convergence of dominant regime typology. It also found some exceptional country cases which were not explained by the typologies. Thus, the empirical results from the descriptive and multilevel analyses mutually supported one another and certainly suggested that a reconsideration of migrant occupational integration strategies is needed considering the association with institutions. This should refer not only to one policy arena or migration policy specifically, but also to complementarity between the three regimes to improve migrant integration in the labour market.