Immigrants’ Labor Market Outcomes: Contributions from Multilevel Studies

Abstract

The article reviews 18 studies published between 2000 and 2017 which use multilevel techniques and focus on immigrants’ labor market outcomes. It is important to understand why immigrants appear to be at particular risk of experiencing poor economic outcomes, be it participation in the labor market, labor market attainment or income. The multilevel analyses reveal that structural conditions in both origin and destination countries are significantly shaping immigrants’ labor market outcomes, while other factors (such as social capital) have less clear effects. The review also shows that multilevel studies, although they reveal substantial insights, are in want of a better theoretical explanation of the contextual effects, especially when the contexts of interest are at the country level. It concludes that, by incorporating interaction effects and relying on longitudinal data, future multilevel studies have the potential to better account for immigrants’ economic outcomes.