NBB Working Paper, 2020, 381: The heterogeneous employment outcomes of first- and second-generation immigrants in Belgium

This paper provides a comprehensive quantitative assessment of the relationship between people’smigration background and their likelihood of being employed in Belgium. Using detailed quarterly datafor the period 2008-2014, we find not only that first-generation immigrants face a substantialemployment penalty (up to -36% points)vis-à-vis their native counterparts, but also that theirdescendants continue to face serious difficulties in accessing the labour market. The employmentgap is,ceteris pari…

This paper provides a comprehensive quantitative assessment of the relationship between people’smigration background and their likelihood of being employed in Belgium. Using detailed quarterly datafor the period 2008-2014, we find not only that first-generation immigrants face a substantialemployment penalty (up to -36% points)vis-à-vis their native counterparts, but also that theirdescendants continue to face serious difficulties in accessing the labour market. The employmentgap is,ceteris paribus, more pronounced for the first than for the second generation. Yet,intergenerational mobility patterns are found to be quite heterogeneous: although the children ofimmigrants from the European Union (EU) fare much better than their parents, the improvement ismuch more limited for those from EU candidate countries, and almost null for the second generationfrom the Maghreb. The situation of second-generation immigrants with only one foreign-born parentseems to be fairly good. In contrast, it appears that the social elevator is broken for descendants oftwo non-EU-born immigrants. Immigrant women are also found to be particularly affected, especiallythose originating from outside the EU. As regards education, it appears to be an important tool forfostering the labour market integration of descendants of non-EU-born immigrants. For first-generation immigrants, though, it proves to be much less effective overall. Focusing on the firstgeneration, we find that: i) access to jobs increases with the duration of residence, though fairly slowlyon average; ii) citizenship acquisition is associated with significantly better employment outcomes,for both EU and non-EU-born immigrants; iii) proficiency in the host country language is a key driverof access to employment, especially for non-EU-born immigrants; and iv) around a decade is neededfor the employment gap between refugees and other foreign-born workers to be (largely) suppressed.