Understanding Transnational Labour Market Trajectories of African-European Migrants: Evidence from the MAFE Survey

Abstract

Labor market trajectories of migrants are seldom explored in a longitudinal and comparative perspective. However, a longitudinal approach is crucial for a better understanding of migrants' long‐term occupational attainments, while comparative research is useful to disentangle specificities and general processes across destination and origin countries. This article explores the labor market outcomes of migrants from Senegal, Democratic Republic of Congo, and Ghana in different European countries, using the MAFE data to compare their occupational attainments before migration, upon arrival and during the first 10 years of stay in Europe in a longitudinal perspective. Results highlight different pattern of migrants' selection across destinations, influenced by prior employment status and education, gender and colonial legacies, and which impact subsequent trajectories into the European labor markets. Our analyses also show a severe worsening of migrants' occupational status in Europe compared to their situation prior to migration, which is the resultant of a dramatic downgrading upon entry and of a slow occupational recovering during the first 10 years of stay in Europe. Results suggest that the educational–occupational mismatch of skilled workers might represent a long‐lasting “price” for migrants, unless (further) educational credentials are achieved in destination countries.

Five Characteristics of Youth Unemployment in Europe

“…For second-generation children whose parents have low levels of education issues of integration are becoming more important in affecting their own labor market entrance. According to Castagnone, Nazio, Bartolini, and Schoumaker (2014), non-EU migrants experience a dramatic downgrading and slow occupational recovery during their first decade working in Europe. Reducing the educational–occupational mismatch requires obtaining (further) qualifications in the destination countries that employers find easier to recognize.…”

Family reunification – who, when, and how? Family trajectories among migrants in Italy

“…The surveyed families had different lengths of stay in Italy at the time of interview. Thus, as conventionally done (Fuller 2014;Castagnone et al 2015;Kleinepier, de Valk, and van Gaalen 2015), to compare family events among families with the same length of time spent in Italy, we considered as the starting time the date of arrival, measuring the time in months since arrival. We therefore focused on three different observation windows, limiting the analysis to three subgroups of the initial sample: five-year period after arrival with 5,408 families who stayed in Italy for at least five years; ten-year period after arrival with 3,362 families who stayed in Italy for at least ten years; and 15year period after arrival with 1,478 families who stayed in Italy for at least 15 years.…”

The Potential and Limitations of Cross-Context Comparative Research on Migration

“…The general methodology of the ethnosurvey has also been the basis for collecting data on Paraguayan migration to Argentina (Parrado and Cerrutti 2003); Fujianese migration to the United States (Liang et al 2008; Liang and Chunyu 2013); Polish-German migration (Kalter 2010; Massey, Kalter, and Pren 2008); and international migration from Senegal, the Congo, and Ghana to Europe, as well as to other African nations (Beauchemin et al 2015; Castagnone et al 2015; Liu 2013; Toma and Vause 2014; Vickstrom 2014). More recently, this approach has also been used to understand migration in Bangladesh (Donato et al, this volume).…”

“…Given the contemporary boom in individual/household survey data collection (despite ever-present challenges to migration measurement; see Beauchemin 2014; Raymer et al 2008; Rogers, Little, and Raymer 2010), it is arguably more possible now than ever to perform cross-context comparative empirical research. Although data collection efforts have indeed fueled explicit cross-local and cross-national comparative studies, this research has mostly contrasted flows emanating from within the same world region, namely, Latin America and the Caribbean (e.g., Clark, Hatton, and Williamson 2004; Donato and León, forthcoming; Fussell 2010; Fussell and Massey 2004; Lindstrom and López-Ramírez 2010; Massey, Fischer, and Capoferro 2006; Massey and Sana 2003; Riosmena 2010), and in sub-Saharan Africa (e.g., Beauchemin et al 2015; Castagnone et al 2015; Toma and Vause 2014).…”