Immigration and Labour Markets

Abstract

The following collection of essays concerns immigration and labor markets, with a particular focus on social networks and immigration to the United States. Networks not only provide information and support for immigrants when adjusting to the new country, but they are a particularly influential component of individual job search. When searching for jobs in the high-skill labor market, networks are useful when they include professional contacts, which new immigrants may not have. Rather, new immigrants may have networks that are primarily composed of friends and family who are employed in various other jobs. Since low-skill jobs have more flexible requirements, a network of friends and family may be a more useful source of job opportunities in the low-skill labor market. These essays examine the impact of networks on the labor market outcomes of immigrants, using a variety of different economic modeling tools. The first chapter uses an applied theoretical approach to illustrate the effect of social networks on the high-skilled labor market for both immigrants and natives, while the second two use methods in microeconometrics to assess the role of immigrant networks in the occupational outcomes and unemployment duration of certain immigrant groups, both low-skill and high-skill.