The Gender Dimension of Refugees’ Integration in the Labor Market

The paper examines the gender differences in labor market integration among refugees and their determinants. It focuses on a longitudinal dataset that includes the universe of the refugee population in Switzerland over a 20-years period. Over the period examined the large majority of refugees come from developing economies. The quasi-random allocation of asylum seekers across cantons, which are different in their socio-economic characteristics, provides a natural experiment to identify the causal effects of the source country culture as well as the role of the local initial conditions in affecting the trajectory of refugees’ labor market integration. Empirical findings highlight the importance of source country culture, though there is some variation in the persistence of the effects over time. The research also highlights the negative role of initial unemployment and the positive role of co-ethnic networks, which vary by gender and according to the characteristics of the network. Moreover, empirical findings show the positive effects of local attitudes towards gender equality in affecting women refugees’ labor market outcomes.