Immigrants’ occupational segregation in France: “brown-collar” jobs or a Sub-Saharan African disadvantage?

ABSTRACT

Large-scale labour migration is considered a recent phenomenon in most European countries; however, immigrants have been an integral part of the French labour-force nearly as long as in the United States. Numerous studies document Sub-Saharan African immigrants’ employment and wage disadvantages in France; however, few investigate an important aspect of Sub-Saharan African immigrants’ integration – occupational segregation. Using 2011 French census data, I examine Sub-Saharan African immigrants’ occupational segregation. I find that all immigrants are concentrated, but only Sub-Saharan Africans are concentrated in low-skilled work regardless of citizenship. Department-level regression analyses measuring occupational segregation show that after controlling for socioeconomic characteristics, Sub-Saharan Africans are most segregated. Control variables explain less of Sub-Saharan African women’s segregation than any other group indicating that they experience more discrimination in the labour market than even Sub-Saharan African men. Future research using longitudinal data is needed to determine if these results reflect a persistent disadvantage.

KEYWORDS:

• African immigrants
• occupational segregation
• France
• gender
• race
• labour market

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Author’s calculations, 2011 French census. (Minnesota Population Center 2018).

2 French nationals born abroad typically arrive in France as young adults (Beauchemin, Lhommeau, and Simon 2019) Because these individuals likely migrate after completing their education, their labor market outcomes may reflect the possession of foreign degrees or skills accumulated abroad – characteristics traditionally associated with immigrants. Consequently, defining these individuals as native French (as is typically done) could lead to underestimation of the impact of immigrant status in this analysis. To avoid this issue, I define French natives based on both birthplace and citizenship at birth.

3 For a full list of French occupational categories see: https://international.ipums.org/international-action/variables/FR2011A_0450#codes_section.