Status Loss: The Burden of Positively Selected Immigrants

Abstract

Immigrants experience an ambiguous social position: on the one hand, they tend to be positively selected on resources from the origin country; on the other, they often occupy the lower rungs of the status ladder in receiving countries. This study explores the implications of this ambiguity for two important individual outcomes: subjective social status and perceived financial situation. We study the diverse sample of immigrants in the European Social Survey and use the fact that, due to country differences in educational distributions, a given education level can entail a very different rank in the sending and receiving countries. We document a robust relationship whereby immigrants who ranked higher in the origin than in the destination country see themselves as being comparatively worse off. This finding suggests that the social position before migration provides an important reference point by which immigrants judge their success in the new country.

Immigrants' selectivity and their socio‐economic outcomes in the destination country: The Italian case

“…The concept of immigrant selectivity is useful to distinguish an immigrant's level of human capital into absolute and relative to the individual's country of origin. Considering the absolute level of human capital would mean to only consider its observable dimensions, disregarding the differential meanings that these may have in different contexts (Engzell & Ichou, 2019; Feliciano, 2005; Feliciano & Lanuza, 2017; Ichou, 2014). Indeed, similar levels of education are likely to be associated with different social statuses across countries with heterogeneous levels of economic development.…”

“…Other studies used a more direct measure of selectivity, comparing the average educational attainment of migrant groups with that of their nonmigrating conationals (Feliciano, 2005; van de Werfhorst & Heath, 2019). Finally, some studies measure immigrants' selectivity at the individual level, in terms of relative position in the distribution of educational attainment in the country of origin (Engzell & Ichou, 2019; Feliciano & Lanuza, 2017; Ichou, 2014; Ichou & Wallace, 2019) or in the region within the country of origin (Spörlein & Kristen, 2019), comparing immigrants with individuals of the same gender and age group.…”

“…Third, the premigration social position might affect immigrants' self‐perception and their aspirations in the destination country (Engzell & Ichou, 2019; Ichou, 2014; van de Werfhorst & Heath, 2019). Immigrants might thus act strategically in the labour market and in their children's educational choices with the aim of recovering their premigration social standing, measured not only in absolute (premigration job position) but also in relative terms (selectivity).…”

“…First, previous studies on the association between immigrants' selectivity and labour market outcomes have measured selectivity as a group characteristic and often through proxies (e.g., Cohen & Kogan, 2006;van Tubergen, Maas, & Flap, 2004). Studies measuring immigrants' selectivity as an individual characteristic investigated its effects on their children's educational outcomes (Engzell, 2019;Ichou, 2014), on their destination country language acquisition (Spörlein & Kristen, 2019), on their self-perception in terms of social position (Engzell & Ichou, 2019), and on their health conditions (Ichou & Wallace, 2019). This paper is, to our knowledge, the first to investigate the association between immigrant selectivity as a direct, individual level measure and labour market outcomes of first-generation immigrants.…”

Educational Aspirations and Attainments : How resources relate to outcomes for children of immigrants in disadvantaged Swedish schools

“…Migration is often followed by downward social mobility, resulting in a less favourable class position (Engzell and Ichou 2020). Migration shifts the institutional context for valuation of resources, meaning that institutionalized cultural capital, such as educational credentials, are devalued (Weiss 2005).…”