Labor of Love: Immigrant–Native Intermarriage and Labor Force Outcomes Across European Union Member States

Abstract

Immigrant–native intermarriage has been shown to improve immigrant labor force outcomes. A parallel line of research demonstrates that immigrant employment outcomes are strongly influenced by the sociopolitical climate and overall reception immigrants receive upon arrival in the host society. Our research spans both strands of literature to address unresolved questions about how the association between immigrant–native intermarriage and foreign-born occupational status changes across host societies on the basis of their national-level polices and views toward outsiders. To assess this, we analyze substantive changes in immigrant occupational attainment across twenty European Union countries from 2008 to 2018 using individual-level, cross-sectional data from the European Union Labor Force Survey on occupational attainment merged with country-level data from the European Social Survey on attitudes toward outsiders and the Migrant Integration Policy Index on integration poli cies. Our findings show that the association between intermarriage and immigrant occupation status is stronger in countries with more welcoming policies, whereas attitudes toward outsiders do not have a significant effect net of the moderating role of policy. The novel use of occupational status along with the moderating effect of policy provides further evidence that closed societies impede immigrant integration while deepening immigrant marginalization.