The role of migrant networks in the labour market outcomes of Senegalese men: how destination contexts matter

ABSTRACT

Research on the role of co-ethnic ties in immigrants’ labour market outcomes has reached mixed conclusions. Some argue they are a valuable resource, increasing immigrants’ labour force participation and wages; others find negative effects such as trapping workers in low-quality employment. Thus far very few quantitative studies have investigated systematically the circumstances under which migrant networks work. Taking advantage of unique data on Senegalese men in France, Italy and Spain, this paper shows that the receiving context shapes the role of pre-migration ties. In France, where the Senegalese community is well-established and socio-economically diverse, networks lead to better economic prospects. In contrast, pre-migration ties in Italy and Spain mostly lead to the perpetuation of ethnic niches developed by the Senegalese in small and precarious trade activities. The article emphasizes the benefits of adopting a comparative and diachronic approach and calls for future work on the factors shaping the role of networks.

KEYWORDS:

• Migrant networks
• social capital
• labour market
• sub-Saharan African immigrants
• Europe
• destination context

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Stock of Senegalese immigrants in 2008: 46620 in Spain (Ministerio de Trabajo e Imigración), 50228 in Italy (ISTAT), 72500 in France (INSEE).

2. One of the four main Muslim brotherhoods in Senegal.

3. Snowballing, intercept-points, contacts through migrant associations were used in France and Italy. A sampling frame was available in Spain where a random sample was achieved. See Beauchemin (2012) for more information on the survey design. The data and codebook are available at http://mafeproject.site.ined.fr/en/

4. Category mostly formed of street-vendors/other types of small-scale and low-skilled commercial activities.

5. Lack of legal status and of income security, high risk of apprehension.

6. Nor among friends, by year of acquaintance, especially since the data on this aspect is not particularly accurate.

7. Including the students yields a similar pattern of results.

8. Adjusted predictions are obtained with the command ‘margins’ in Stata, calculated at the means of the other variables. Confidence intervals at 90%.