Asia-born migrants form a majority of Australia's immi-

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This paper provides detailed comparisons of the birthplace, language, ancestry and religious profiles of chief executive officers and managing directors (CEO&MDs) to those of the broader Australian workforce, using 2011 Australian census data, and assesses the extent to which these differences are attributable to the age profiles of these groups. The results show the percentages of migrants from English‐speaking and north‐west European countries, English, Dutch and German speakers, and people with British, Dutch or German ancestry among CEO&MDs are above the percentages of the wider national workforce these groups form. In contrast, migrants from most Asian countries are less prevalent among CEO&MDs than in the wider national workforce. Second and higher order generation southern Europeans are well represented among CEO&MDs, in contrast to the first generation. The patterns are linked to the historical sizes and selectivity of different migration flows, and may raise equal opportunity concerns.

This paper explores the occupational status of immigrant birthplace‐generation groups in Australia, a country which emphasises skills in immigrant admissions. Using 2016 data, the occupational statuses of the first, 1.5, and second generations of Australia's China, India, Malaysia, Philippines, and Vietnam birthplace‐generation groups are compared to those for the main English‐speaking countries, all other countries, and third‐ and above‐generation Australians. The results show that the occupational status of the 1.5‐ and second‐generation Asian groups considered generally exceed that for their first generation counterparts and invariably exceed that for third‐ and above‐generation Australians, even after controlling for a range of confounding factors. For most Asian groups, the 1.5 generation's occupational status exceeds that of the second generation. Modification of the ‘segmented assimilation’ hypothesis to incorporate a new category of ‘hyper‐selective differentiation’ is proposed to capture the extraordinary upward occupational mobility of most 1.5‐ and second‐generation Asian groups in Australia.

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