How legal patterns over lifetime of migration shape migrants' labour market outcomes: Evidence from Mexican migrants in the United States

Abstract

This article proposes a life-course measure of the legal pattern that accounts for the overall legal pattern over the lifetime of migration and explores the two main pathways to labour market outcomes: selecting into legal patterns associated with different levels of labour market outcomes and realising different labour market outcomes within each pattern. Results suggest that labour market outcomes depend on which legal patterns migrants end up with instead of what they realise within each pattern. Particularly, migrants with more human capital and better social capital select into legal patterns associated with better labour market outcomes, but they do not realise better labour market outcomes given the legal patterns they experienced. From the dynamic perspective, the economic integration of migrants depends on legal patterns. Migrants in legal patterns that initiate with temporary resident status experience economic integration over time. The growth rate is larger for the patterns that involve a transition in legal status. This paper makes important contributions to the literature. First, it identifies holistic legal patterns that account for the legal status over migrants' entire migration history. Second, it sheds light on the selection into different legal patterns and highlights selection as the major process in explaining migrants' labour market outcomes. Third, it shows how legal patterns, jointly shaped by initial legal status and legal transition, determine migrants' economic integration. Finally, the inclusion of temporary resident status, beyond the illegal-legal dichotomy, enriches our understanding of how liminal legality over the lifetime of migration shapes labour market outcomes.

Integration of Unemployed Venezuelan Immigrant Women in Colombia

“…Regular or legal immigrants have more possibilities for social participation and inclusion in health services and thus face less discrimination. However, for those who are undocumented and have migrated illegally, the situation is the opposite (Burton-Jeangros et al 2021;León-Pérez et al 2021;Chen 2023). Access to social programmes and formal rights could be ensured if these were stipulated in the laws of the host countries that determine the scope of social protection based on regular or irregular migration status, which could empower migrants to claim their rights (Vera Espinoza et al 2021).…”