The occupational attainment and job security of immigrant children in Spain

ABSTRACT

Little is known about the labour market integration of immigrants who arrived in Spain at an early age. Using longitudinal data from the Spanish LFS (2008–2016) we find that other things being equal the occupational attainment of Latin American, Eastern European and African 1.5-generation immigrants is similar to that of natives both for men and women. First-generation immigrants, however, suffer a persistent disadvantage even after controlling for sociodemographic factors and, importantly, time in the labour market. We also find that social class position does not protect equally against job loss, with a larger immigrant penalty at the bottom of the occupational structure. We find two different explanations for this depending on migration status. For the 1.5 generation, the higher risk of job loss across occupational groups is explained by compositional differences; while for the first generation, particularly men, it is explained by structural factors such as its persistent concentration over time in more vulnerable economic sectors and fixed-term contracts. Our findings confirm, in line with assimilation theory, that the 1.5 generation achieves better outcomes than the first in the Spanish labour market, likely due to their more favourable entry conditions into employment.

KEYWORDS:

• Second generation
• occupational structure
• job loss
• assimilation theory
• social class

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 In many studies, the 1.5 and the second generation are grouped together (see e.g., Li and Heath 2016, 173). In this article, we group the 1.75 (i.e., immigrant children arrived between the ages of 0-5) and the 1.5 (i.e., immigrant children arrived between the ages 6-12) generations together (Oropesa and Landale 1997, 435).

2 Data from the National Institute of Statistics and Permanent Observatory on Immigration show that around 10% of immigrants residing in Spain lacked a residence permit in 2008 (González-Enríquez 2009).

3 In the SLFS we can only identify the second generation when immigrants live with their parents in the same household, as if this is the case we have information on their parents’ country of birth. We cannot identify then as second-generation immigrants those who have already emancipated. Due to these constraints, if we analysed the situation of the second generation in the labour market the results would be biased.

4 The SLFS has, however, two ad-hoc modules focused on migrants in 2008 and 2014 which provide this kind of information.

5 As explained in the methodological section, to study the risk of job loss at t+1 we exclude the self-employed, as we control for the type of contract of employees. Therefore, we only use three occupational categories excluding the ‘petty bourgeoisie’ category.