Beyond Migrant Penalty: How Marginalization Between Ethnicities in the Labor Market Is Revealed Across 16 Developed Economies

Abstract

This paper analyses the ethnic penalty by focusing on the racialization of labor market outcomes beyond the migrant penalty. An illegitimate statistical or taste-based discrimination can be revealed specifically by distinguishing migrants into ethnic groups. Accordingly, ethnic penalty based on five different ethnic groups was estimated through the difference in employment and job quality with respect to natives. The analysis was conducted at the country and European average levels using 16 European countries under a framework of ethnic penalty processes in the labor market. According to the analysis, Eastern Europeans were the most prominent ethnicity regarding higher employment across the 16 countries, although they were mostly posited in unskilled jobs. Migrants from the Middle East and North Africa were shown to be subject to a double penalty in both measures, and the penalty tendency was much clearer for females. Asians and South Americans showed the least penalty, while sub-Saharan Africans were revealed to hold an in-between position.