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The “Negative” Assimilation of Immigrants: a Counter-Example from the Canadian Labor Market

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  • Gilles Grenier

    (University of Ottawa)

  • Yi Zhang

    (London School of Economics and Political Science)

Abstract

With Canadian data ranging from 1991 to 2011, this paper investigates the effects of the number of years since migration on the earnings of immigrants from the United States and the United Kingdom in Canada. The aim is to test whether the “negative assimilation” hypothesis proposed by Chiswick and Miller (Ind Labor Relat Rev 64(3):502–525, 2011) for immigrants to the United States is a universal finding for immigrants from countries with similar economic standing and skill transferability to those of the destination country. We also expand on Chiswick and Miller’s work by doing regressions for both males and females and by comparing to Chinese immigrants, a representative group from a less developed country. We find that the negative assimilation hypothesis does not hold for the Canadian labor market. Specifically, the assimilation rate is close to zero for U.K. immigrants and strictly positive for U.S. immigrants (although lower than that of a comparison group of Chinese immigrants). The assimilation rates are also higher for females than for males.

Suggested Citation

  • Gilles Grenier & Yi Zhang, 2016. "The “Negative” Assimilation of Immigrants: a Counter-Example from the Canadian Labor Market," Journal of Labor Research, Springer, vol. 37(3), pages 263-286, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:jlabre:v:37:y:2016:i:3:d:10.1007_s12122-016-9230-7
    DOI: 10.1007/s12122-016-9230-7
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Immigrants; Negative assimilation; Canada; Skill transferability;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J15 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Minorities, Races, Indigenous Peoples, and Immigrants; Non-labor Discrimination
    • J24 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity
    • J61 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Geographic Labor Mobility; Immigrant Workers

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