Measuring labour market success: a comparison between immigrants and native-born Canadians using PIAAC

Abstract

Canadian society is characterised by a plurality of immigrants and Canadian migration policy and corresponding recognition approaches are strongly geared to economic criteria, qualifications and skills. This paper addresses the question how immigrants who have acquired their highest qualification outside Canada are able to use their foreign qualifications and skills in their current job. The analyses are conducted to verify the assumptions of human capital theory as well as the lack of transferability of human capital across country borders. To answer these questions a labour market success index is developed, which is used as a dependent variable in regression models. The results show that traditional operationalisations of human capital (years of education, years of work experience and skills) have a positive effect on individual labour market success. At the same time, being born abroad and having acquired one’s highest qualification abroad in comparison to Canada, especially in a Non-Western country, has negative effects on the overall labour market success of an individual. Detailed comparisons regarding different indicators of labour market success also prove these comparatively negative effects. The results demonstrate the limited explanatory power of human capital theory and the necessity to complement it with Bourdieu’s concepts of social and cultural capital.

Keywords:

• Human resources
• learning in life and work transitions
• VET and the labour market
• VET and economic development
• race/ethnicity
• policy issues

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank especially Leesa Wheelahan for her critical and very constructive feedback on this paper as well as Michael Tiemann and Stefanie Velten for their support regarding the whole project of which this paper is part. Furthermore, special thanks go again to Leesa Wheelahan as well as The German Research Foundation for giving me the opportunity to conduct this project at the Department of Leadership, Higher and Adult Education at OISE (University of Toronto).

Notes

1. This hypothesis derives from human capital theory as well as from Bourdieu’s concept of capital. Hypotheses 2a and 2b refer to Bourdieu’s concept of social capital (2a) and cultural capital (2b), whereas the latter especially focuses on institutionalised cultural capital.

2. This hypothesis has to be limited to the analysis of the highest qualification, because the PIAAC data-set only contains a differentiation by region for this qualification.

3. In this paper besides Canada, the United States and Western Europe are interpreted as Western countries. This interpretation is made in awareness that especially Australia and New Zealand are also to be perceived as Western countries. The PIAAC data-set unfortunately summarises ‘Asia and the Pacific’ as one region, which does not allow any further differentiation.

4. In the PIAAC study, North America is perceived as the United States of America and Canada. Because in this paper Canada is analysed separately, here North America means only the United States of America.