Local deprivation and the labour market integration of new migrants to England

Abstract

Using data on new migrants to England from the Quarterly Labour Force Survey, we show how a key component of migrant integration -labour market progress in terms of wages and unemployment ratesis broadly positive in the early years after arrival across a range of migrant groups and across gender. However, the precise level of labour market success achieved varies considerably across groups reflecting both the initial entry-level and labour market trajectories after migration. Migrants from Western Europe and the Old Commonwealth countries have unemployment rates (wages) which are generally lower (higher) than other groups, particularly non-white groups, while migrants from the Accession countries experience relatively low unemployment but also low wages. Groups which have better outcomes on entry also tend to experience higher rates of progress over time in England. However, the extent of multiple deprivation in the local authority where migrants reside interacts with years since migration to dampen wage trajectories for some groups and accounting for deprivation highlights the importance of internal migration for access to employment. The results emphasise structural explanations for patterns of labour market integration of new migrants to England.

Persisting disadvantages: a study of labour market dynamics of ethnic unemployment and earnings in the UK (2009–2015)

“…We noted that Pakistani and Bangladeshi women have long been observed to have high rates of economic inactivity, which is also evidenced in our data, where even restricting our sample to the working-age population excluding full-time students, 60% are out of the labour market, with 29% employed and 11% unemployed, resulting in a high unemployment rate. The findings here are very similar to those reported on the basis of the Labour Force Surveys by Clark et al (2018). 6.…”

Migrants’ Integration on the European Labor Market: A Spatial Bootstrap, SEM and Network Approach

“…Hence, we aim to identify best practices concerning the most successful and adequate ways of ensuring a proper labor market integration of these two migrant categories. This approach is in line with the work advanced by Clark et al [5] (p. 17), which stated that "whether migrants have moved for economic or family reasons or are refugees will be important, but is not identified in the data used here". Thereby, authors considered that this "special route" analysis of the migration process would be more conclusive, especially for the United Kingdom, and they recommend it for future research.…”

Opportunities and challenges doing interdisciplinary research: what can we learn from studies of ethnicity, inequality and place?

“…Yet this process, this struggle is not evident in papers themselves when, arguably, it should be (Lawrence 2015). The quantitative studies (Peters et al 2018;Clark et al 2018) may be viewed as reductionist by some, for example in the categorisation of ethnicity in bounded, prescribed groups, but what is not evident is how the work reflects interdisciplinary conversations that have shaped the categories and analyses used. These conversations have disrupted the quantitative-qualitative binary that might too easily be used to describe the contrasting methodological approaches in the papers of this Special Issue.…”

“…All of the papers speak to concerns about processes of exclusion, of (groups of) people and/or places, demarcated in terms of ethnicity. These processes have been shown as operating via national policies (Lukes et al 2018), local institutional practices Harries et al 2018), knowledge production and place shaping Rhodes and Brown 2018) and spatial ethnic and socio-economic unevenness (Peters et al 2018;Clark et al 2018). The concentration of particular ethnic groups in certain geographical areas or neighbourhoods is seen to shape both perceptions of place and perceptions of ethnicity as well as influencing the material circumstances of the groups concerned.…”

“…In Clark et al and Peters et al, the definition of places follows administrative and statistical boundaries (local authorities and output areas) and these are characterised in terms of their levels of deprivation. This approach is not an argument for official boundaries representing the lived experience of neighbourhood, but it does effectively demonstrate that the context in which we live has identifiable implications, be that in terms of economic security and status (Clark et al 2018), the ability to gain from social networks (Peters et al 2018), or otherwise. As one might expect from interdisciplinary work, place, scale and the interconnections of places are conceptualised in several different, and some may say opposing, ways in this collection of papers, yet each can usefully speak to the concern of understanding ethnic inequalities.…”