Are ethnic enclaves beneficial? A labour market analysis of clustered migrants

Details

Supervisors

Vandenberghe, Vincent ; Devillanova, Carlo

Faculty

Faculté des sciences économiques, sociales, politiques et de communication

Degree label

Master [120] en sciences économiques, orientation générale, à finalité approfondie

Abstract

The issue of migration is a crucial factor in evaluating the current state of societies. It has an undeniable impact on the social and political transformations of both receiving and sending countries. Therefore, understanding the socio-economic status of migrants is crucial to comprehend their potential contribution or obstacle to the host country’s economic growth, as their skills, knowledge, and experience can enhance the economy’s productivity and competitiveness or decrease the quality of the labour force of the receiving country given the way they are absorbed by the markets of reference. In this framework, empirical studies widely support the idea that migrants tend to move to areas with a high concentration of their same ethnicity, commonly known as ethnic enclaves. To shed light on this phenomenon, this study aims to identify and comprehend the effects of this decision on the migrants’ short-term and long-term economic status. The study employs a Bartik estimator approach strategy using the French Enquête emploi en continu (EEC), a repeated cross-sectional dataset, jointly with national statistic data through the yearly Census per- formed by the INSEE to capture the role of this decision by investigating the effect of these enclaves on migrant socio-economic outcomes. The research seeks to provide a more nuanced understanding of how we expect the migrant status to evolve over time. Considering the theoretical background on which the study is based upon, this study identifies two different results: in the short-term, migrants benefit from their clustering due to the enhanced network effects and lowering of barriers to entry in the labour market. This result is significant specifically to some ethnic groups in particular (Moroccan and Algerian). On the other hand, in the long-term, the study finds a negative effect of ethnic clustering on second-generations migrants socio-economic status, due to less network development, decreased human capital acquisition and due to the closeness of the clustered network.